Daft Punk posted a live version of “Rollin & Scratchin” online during a show at the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles in 1997. The clip was shown once as part of a twitch stream last year, in which the French electronic duo broadcast their complete set from the Mayan Theater.
The 2022 stream marked the anniversary of their split in 2021, as well as the 25th anniversary of their debut Homework (1997). The published video also has another special feature: Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter did not wear their iconic robot masks at the performance in Los Angeles.
The 1997 version of “Rollin & Scratchin”
Daft Punk’s idea of releasing technically refreshed videos from their archive is slowly becoming a habit. They previously released recordings of “Da Funk” and “Revolution 909”. In October 2022, they also joined TikTok, where they increasingly share snippets from the past with their followers.
Here is the said video from the Daft Punk Collections:
“One of the reasons Daft Punk is so successful is that they did exactly what they wanted to do”
Daniel Vangarde, disco pioneer and father of Thomas Bangalter, one part of the duo, spoke to NME recently. During the interview, when asked if he ever expected his son to follow in his footsteps and become a musician, he replied: “Never. His mother wanted him to learn the piano and his teacher was at the Paris Opera. After a while I asked him if Thomas was good, and the teacher said, ‘He’s okay, but he has a great sense of rhythm that makes people dance.’” He continued, “As Thomas [seinen Daft-Punk-Kollegen] Guy-Manuel, their mutual love was cinema. I think Thomas only came to the studio with me once, which is good because otherwise he would have learned to produce in a normal way and lost what made Daft Punk so unique.”
He also talked about how he helped Daft Punk in the early stages of their career. “They were in their 20s when they started, so I stood by them and advised them so they had total artistic and financial freedom and ownership of everything they made. And I’m glad about that, because I think there’s too much interference between when an artist develops a project and when it’s released: it comes out distorted.” Finally He summarized, “One of the reasons Daft Punk was so successful is that they did exactly what they wanted and then it came out of their heads unfiltered and out into the public domain.”
The fourth and last work “Random Access Memories” (2013) can be heard here: