A guest post from our reader Damian:
Over Memorial weekend at The Forgotten City, the Las Vegas official Burning Man regional over 800 participants witnessed what can only be described as the conclusion to the urban myth that is Daft Punk playing at the Trash Fence.
In the event guide released the week before an entry of “SURPRISE!” was listed at 9pmon Saturday night. Sound camps such as Rootist Lounge and Epyklandia had been contacted and told to go dark at that time and to avoid the urge to use social media. In production meetings, a small handful of leads were given the logistics of creating a minimum 27ft x 27ft stage on which a pyramid would be built and an additional 70kw of power to be supplied on top of the existing solar array powered Funktion-One sound system. The stage was to be wrapped in a trash fence. Additional security was hired to patrol the ridge line of the location to prevent the predicted horde of zombies that may appear. In fact regional Cameron Grant was so convinced that he personally contacted Burning Man HQ with his concerns.
With a five hour construction of the pyramid during the day the rumors and guessing of what the surprise was had begun, and by 9pm when Daft Punk’s Contact began playing from the pyramid and then two helmeted legends stood up, the crowd literally began to lose their shit. It was mayhem: half the crowd were numb and in total astonishment, the other half were pumped and in total disbelief repeating “no way, is it really them?” endlessly. The urban myth was in full force with 800 participants standing in front of a trash fence, blinded by an iconic LED pyramid wall and listening to Daft Punk played by a duo in suits and helmets.
The aftermath on social media has been priceless with people demanding to know whether Daft Punk played, deniers doubting the budget of the event and booking price, the technical specification of the pyramid, the look of the EL wire in their suits and Burning Man HQ coming down on use of headliners at a regional event.
What can be said however is that everyone had a Daft Punk at the trash fence experience and everyone experienced some controversy including the event organizer who received this voicemail message: http://tinyurl.com/q52tbrq
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I will be impressed when Ringo and Paul show up at the trash fence.
Draft Punk was a camp at the Burn last year. It had a trash fence and a bar which gave away free beer while the bartenders wore the Daft Punk helmets and played their music. Everyone seemed to love the play on the joke.
The name of the act is One More Time and they are a daft pink tribute. I have set up that show before.
“Everywhere else, it’s just a rumor.” #TFC6 #OurTrashFence ..DaftPunk or GotPunked… you decide. LOL #fuckyerburn 🙂
help me here, is this already happen? :3
As your question illustrated, time will be relative. Is E came after Sirspoilsalot, or before?
The funniest thing of all, was people posting images on Facebook and then hours later hitting ‘delete’ or ‘untag’ because of the controversy. We’re all so concerned with our online status and virtual street cred. You can’t buy fun like this. “Vegas won, it’s over, go home.”
The new Burning Man is on the Internet! BingO!
Absolutely brilliant Cam!!
The fact that nobody seems too sure is what makes it great.
if you can’t tell whether it was the real Daft Punk or not, does it matter? Andy Kaufman would be *so* proud.
This looks like a great place to ask. HELP! I NEED TWO TICKETS AND A VEHICLE PASS FOR BURNING MAN! Thanks Universe!
Easy. Make a million-dollar contribution to the BMP. Next question….
Daft Punk cover group called “One More Time” they have a facebook page too. Your welcome 😉
Glad somebody else could tell it was the cover band xD
That’s pretty clever of the organizers, and nice going on somehow getting Daft Punk to actually show up. That said, gushing over mega-stars at a regional leaves me cold. In 2009, there was a giant scaffolding being built mid-week to hold a very large backdrop for a photographer to shoot portraits of art cars. I was acting as tour guide on our art car and my schtick all week was, “they’re building a stage for the U2 show on Saturday.” It was funny because it was ridiculous, of course U2 weren’t playing Burning Man, and who cares if they did? Well, I guess I was wrong.
Sorry, I didn’t read closely enough. Looks like it was two guys pretending to be Daft Punk? Now THAT I can get behind. Hilarious, if that’s what went down.
Funny you should mention U2…did you know that Bono was at Burning Man this year? He sang WITH burners but not FOR them. 😊
How do you know about Bono singing at the fence line with burners?