So what do you do after your fourth record ends up on several end-of-the-year best-of lists, earns some Grammy love, snags you three spots on Saturday Night Live, headlining festival sets, and a ton of licensing deals? According to Spin, French hotshots Phoenix “are turning their backs on the sound that made them international superstars.”
As we shared last night, along with hundreds of others who were there to personally witness it live, Phoenix surprised their fans during their encore by bringing out electronic duo, Daft Punk out on to stage. The crowd went wild, text messages were sent and Twitter was blowing up with the news.
Those of you who were lucky enough to be there last night were either elated or underwhelmed. To each his/her own but if we were there, we would have definitely have been as excited because Daft Punk hasn’t performed live since their Alive tour back in 2007. Also, because we love our readers we were able to find some footage from last night so you can either relive it all again or experience a snippet of it for the first time. Check it out below!
CMJ may be going on in NYC this week for the freshest bands, but if you opted to see a bigger band – say, Phoenix – you may have just witnessed the most surprising and awesome event to get you through your middle of the week slump. French electronic duo, Daft Punk, gave Phoenix fans an extra bonus for paying those prices to get into Madison Square Garden tonight. Even if you didn’t have a friend in NYC texting you like crazy about this magical moment, the entire nation got into a huge tizzy over it on (you guessed it) Twitter.
Our time up in San Francisco went by faster than we had hoped! Outside Lands Festival 2010 was literally a nice breath of fresh air compared to festivals like Coachella. It also had that breeze we didn’t get at Lollapalooza the weekend before. Most of all, it had a lot of hippies who just wanted to share the love… man. To see everything from your favorite bands such as Empire of the Sun, Chromeo, My Morning Jacket and more, enjoy our Outside Lands Festival 2010 photo gallery of ALL the photos we took.
We’ve also broken our photos down into each individual day: Saturday and Sunday. However, if you’d like to take a look at all our photos at once, we’ve got every single one of them below for you!
Lollapalooza‘s first day may have had Lady Gaga, but day 2 was jam packed with artists whether you were a huge electronica head, an indie rocker or Bayside ska kid. We knew we definitely had our day cut out for us but with Grant Park’s massive size for a festival, we must have walked miles as we rushed to see band after band.
Some big names that got us warmed up for the night’s headliners included Stars, Metric, Grizzly Bear, AFI, Spoon and more. We were able to support our Los Angeles bands such as Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, The Soft Pack (San Diego’s close enough), Dawes and more as well. However, the night ended with fireworks during Green Day, Phoenix and Empire of the Sun. Take a look at our day in photos below!
For a big band such as Green Day headlining day 2 of Lollapalooza, a decent amount of the massive sea of people still decided to go with Phoenix to end their night. Even with Empire of the Sun (with a full band) also starting a late slot a half hour later, the Parisian band had a crowd extend all the way from the Budweiser stage to the opposite end where the Playstation stage boundaries were.
Their set was a combination of both their old material and their new songs from the critically acclaimed and successful album, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix and the hits, “1901″ and “Lisztomania” echoed from the stage into the slightly cooler city air. Watching Phoenix play next to all the skyscrapers of downtown Chicago was a scene that truly justified my departure from Green Day’s set (which involved several annoying”mail bombs” in their overplayed American Idiot backdrop).
After announcing a dizzyingly varied lineup that range from Arcade Fire, The Strokes, and Phoenix to a veritable music Axis of Evil (Lady Gaga, Green Day, and Soundgarden), and then adding an extra 60,000 tickets because its not already overcrowded enough, the Lollapalooza 2010 set times and complete lineup have now been announced.
Thomas Mars (from Phoenix) moves the way Jim Morrison used to and on Sunday he leaped into his crowd, threw himself on the stage floor, and looked to be enjoying every second of the attention he was getting. Mars is a wild man and along with the rest of his band, put on one of the best shows at Coachella 2010.
Ok, festival kids, the Coachella set times are now up, and the inevitable queasy feeling in your stomach can now begin as you decide which favorite acts you’ll be missing, or only catching a part of, in order to watch MGMT suck for 50 minutes (kidding, kidding—but not really, as MGMT really do suck, guys). Owing to a slightly more spread-out schedule than in recent years, with (for myself anyway) fewer must-see bands clumped together, there aren’t as many conflicts as one might think.
