Daft Punk's Random Access Memories

Well it's going to take a lot more than this to make me watch the VMAs.

this now seems like a set up to me. it seemed very strange that their first late night thing would be The Colbert Report.

Nah, this is too mean-spirited to be a set up.

HEY THAT BAND YOU LOVE, YOU GET TO SEE THEM ON TV! SIKE! NO YOU DON'T!

i was pretty amped to find out what the heck they were gonna actually do for a performance :(

i was bummed to hear it was going to be a performance, i was pretty amped to find out what the heck they were gonna actually do for an interview

yeah I feel like there's no way Daft Punk could pull off a live performance of any of these songs.

deathgrips should've stepped in

They got Robin Thicke performing Blurred Lines instead, so at least he got another 'song of the summer' being performed.

The fuck are they doing in the VMA's anyway? Daft Punk never released a full video for 'get lucky'.

So much for a 'surprise' appearance too.

We're up all night to get lied to.

I'm totally okay with Stephen ruining the "surprise".

MTV would probably stop Lady Gaga from releasing her single 4 days before the VMAs if they could.

So, Colbert's revenge was to ruin the surprise? If it really was a surprise it doesn't make any sense. If they were a secret VMA perfomance, why would it matter if they were on Colbert, they didn't have any viewers to lose.

Also, since when does MTV care about music?

I'm mad dissapointed at Daft Punk for choosing MTV over Colbert.

Fwiw, Nile Rodgers was on Fallon tonight. I don't know if that means anything.

So I'm sitting here watching Colbert and thinking that what he put together on short notice that he wouldn't have Daft Punk was absolutely brilliant.

But then I read suspicions that it was all a plan to promote Daft Punk on the VMAs.

I don't know why I'm so intrigued by this, but I would really like to know the truth. If it was a set up, that's shady. If they scrambled and did this, amazing.

Show was great regardless. "Flan Cobbler" lol.

I guess what I'm saying is that I hope tomorrow we got the Colbert vs. Daft Punk version of "Death Grips never intended to appear at those shows"

Why would anyone dwell in a set up that results in dissapointment instead of excitement? All I'm reading right now are angry and sad fans expressing their mot incere fuck yous to everyone involved.

Yeah, if this was all a stunt to hype up DP appearing on the VMAs, I'd be really surprised. Unlike Death Grips, Stephen Colbert isn't a complete asshole.

His voice certainly cracked with sincerity when he said something like "MTV has exclusive rights to DP appearances leading up to the VMAs, a fact no one mentioned to me until 2 o'clock yesterday."

Assuming it was all real - which I agree is the better assumption - then I wanna read a detailed account of the staff's efforts from the minute they realized they weren't getting DP to air. From the outside looking in, it seems monumental.

What I don't understand is how would Daft Punk not be aware of their legal obligations with MTV when the exclusivity prevents them from showing up anywhere other than on the fucking VMAs? Also Colbert has been hyping it up for a week or more, wasnt there a single lawyer in any of the two networks following this? they waited until the last day to say, oops not coming?

I'd bet the Hugh Laurie bit was filmed last night with a different intent. Either that, or he was still nearby. Matt Damon is always up for something dorky like dancing in a box. Jeff Bridges was probably around for one reason or another. Colbert and Fallon are tight. Colbert and somebody at America's Got Talent are probably tight too. Not sure who the dance troupe was, but I bet they were in the neighborhood and were happy to be on tv.

Getting Robin Thicke + band there on short notice is the headscratcher. Maybe they all live in NYC?

Oh yeah, and I forgot about the whole Charlie Rose/Breaking Bad crew/Cranston part. I wonder how late they actually filmed the episode. iirc they usually film at 7, but I bet it was pushed back so they could get all this stuff wrapped.

The Thicke segment was prerecorded.

Sure, call all the celebs in NYC you can and see who's willing, then go film a bit with each of them ... but in 24 hours? If that's really the time frame they were dealing with, of course. Maybe they saw a problem coming and got going a day or two before.

It's entirely possible, however, that all or most of them were filmed with a different intent. That would make it a lot more reasonable.

Or maybe I don't have a good sense for what kind of time/effort this would take.

Agree that Thicke is the biggest hurdle of all. And the fact that it was him, with the "song of the summer" tie-in, is the best argument for the set up theory.

Fwiw, Nile Rodgers was on Fallon tonight. I don't know if that means anything.

I'm mad dissapointed at Daft Punk for choosing MTV over Colbert.

Well The Colbert Report wasn't around in the early 80s, whereas MTV was.

I'm mad that I missed the window on making Death Grips jokes

I am pleased i didn't

it's okay, I just went to Twitter/Facebook instead

good to see Kissinger getting yet even more post-war crimes work

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/07/things-get-kind-of-crazy-among-colbert-daft-punk-and-mtv/?smid=tw-nytimes&_r=0

ok lol @ "Click and Clack"

colbert is a fantastic dancer

Soooo, in lieu of the band that cancelled, Colbert already had this cameo-studded singalong montage taped?

It's my suspicion, and I mentioned this upthread, that some or all of the stuff may have been filmed a short while ago with the intent of using it in a very different way than it was used last night.

He is a great dancer! Most of the clips were extracted from his previous dancing appearances in other shows to promote 'Colbchella'.

According to three people who were briefed on the talks or directly involved in them, Daft Punk’s planned appearance had already been a source of stress for “Colbert” since the group was only willing to appear in costume, and not perform or sit for an interview.

This, though, if they weren't perfoming or getting interviewed what was this all about? They were just going to stand there and maybe do some awkward dance?

I already don't think Random Access Memories is very good, and now this is souring me on them altogether. FUDP

According to three people who were briefed on the talks or directly involved in them, Daft Punk’s planned appearance had already been a source of stress for “Colbert” since the group was only willing to appear in costume, and not perform or sit for an interview. Then on Monday, while flying to New York from Paris, the group called producers to cancel, citing the conflict with MTV, according to these people, who spoke anonymously because of the privacy of the matter and the volatility of the personalities involved.

Seems like filming a bunch of dance sequences was probably a good plan even if they were showing up.

According to three people who were briefed on the talks or directly involved in them, Daft Punk’s planned appearance had already been a source of stress for “Colbert” since the group was only willing to appear in costume, and not perform or sit for an interview.

Uh what were they going to do exactly, stand around?

hahaha xpost

Death Grips non-show must be involved in this too, right?

They could have sat on the shelf like Michael Stipe, with or without Eno:

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.spinner.com/media/2011/11/colbert-stipe-eno-456.jpg

Urgh. Come on. This isn't difficult. They booked Daft Punk about a month ago and have spent the lead time preparing a montage for the show. Most of the guests in the montage were on the show in the last month and were presumably shot while they were around (Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon is from a box skit they did the night he was on). And recently Colbert has been coming out on various other shows dancing to Get Lucky. I don't know when they shot Kissinger but I laughed my face off.

Flash forward, shit goes down, Daft Punk cancel yesterday. They decide to run the montage anyway since it takes all of after the first ad break and they fill the top segment with jokes at MTV's expense. Meanwhile, holla at Thicke (who has also been doing promo recently anyway and wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't already filming something this week) and bam, ya got a show.

Yes, it wasn't what they expected and yeah it was slightly more compressed than they are used to but hey.. they do write a bunch of the show day to day, so you know...

Nobody is hating on Colbert in here. If anything he was the best man in this whole ordeal.

But, yeah fuck MTV and fuck Daft Punk.

Colbert has about a million viewers each night. The VMAs on a bad year have 6 million and on a good 12 million.

Umm... pick one.

Colbert

Try again. I'll give you one more shot.

More 15 second ads.

The xtra millions might just help this lil French band become popular

They've spent the past six months trying to have a big cultural crossover moment and they're taking the chance of being the widely reported news story from the VMAs, which is a show covered much more widely than a random episode of Colbert. You're having a tantrum because they wont fill your niche interest anymore. Like, let it go. They wanted to do both but ~ life ~.

yeah I don't get why people would be seriously upset by this

total nontroversy