Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, Fuckeder

I'm not too fond of French music, actually not fond of it at all, but I remember when I first came to France in 1999 the big buzz in terms of music at that time was Daft Punk who had just released their album Discovery. Everybody liked it, everybody sang it... well only one song, "One more time" (which was actually said like... 150 more times, and played a million more times on the radio!). Everybody who didn't have a particular music genre in their library liked it, it was the popular young music and every radio played One More Time. Everybody also saw the music video a million more times, so basically people got the point that the ongoing lyrics in the song were "one more time" and that other thing about celebreeaeeyayeeeaa. I personally didn't care much about the music. Then there was Aerodynamics which came out but it wasn't a big single and One More Time was still the most played on the radio. Then came Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger which I found was much better, I liked the beginning especially, the intro riff that sounded like it's coming out of a small alarm radio.
Anyway it was during this time of my life and late childhood (pre-teens) when I still dressed the way my dad liked it and listened to cheesy pop music and was a fan of the Spice Girls. But I knew about Daft Punk, I heard it and saw it everywhere, and at that time I didn't know yet about all the underground music and mainstream music clash, and to me Daft Punk sounded OK. I was not really accepted at that time in my school, the EaB Margueritte school, ie the Franco-French section of the EaB schools. I went to that French school for like 2 years which was when I became familiar with the perfectly well organized and logical French education system. This was also the reason why I decided to swap to the English international section where I was much better welcomed from the beginning. Anyway at that time I experienced a culture shock from having lived in a welcoming country (Turkey) for 7 years, and having absorbed non-stop English culture at the British School in Istanbul, hence I had built myself a full Anglophile and Anglophone attitude and way of thinking and making jokes. This wasn't too accepted in that French school.... well what the hell it wasn't accepted at all! Nobody understood my British jokes and the only good grades I had were in English. Note that at that time I was more into the British type. My American thing came once I settled into the American section of EaB.
So since I was quite an outcast of this intolerant and close-minded society I thought "maybe if I build or find common points with these guys I can fit in better!"
Boy was I wrong. It did nothing. But after thinking of that, I noticed their common centers of interest. The major one was Daft Punk, which gets us back to the point of this post. I thought "If I buy Daft Punk's album maybe I'll fit in better!". So I did, I bought the album, and I listened to it. I still have it but it's in a bad shape. I actually liked the album and I thought some songs were well written. When I read the credits at the end of the booklet I noticed some pieces had samples from other songs. I tried downloading them at the time when p2p technology was brand new in France and the rest of the world already knew about it. It was these times when I was a complete n00b and I used KaZaA to download my music and porn. Boy did that software give me problems, with all the 200 spywares it had on it! Then came KaZaA lite which was better but that's not the point.
I never got a hold onto the original songs Daft Punk sampled from.
Oh yea and if you're wondering; No, buying Daft Punk's album did not make me fit in better with the others. The best solution was to just quit and change schools which I did ever since and am damn happy about.
Since then Daft Punk became world-known, and when Around the World came out I was confused because I already knew this song because I had heard it like some time in 1997 or 1998 on Turkish radio when I lived in Istanbul, but I was confused to hear it like it was a new single that had just come out.
Now I don't care much about them anymore really.
But I have recently found something really interesting. FrenchFlava has published a list of Daft Punk songs compared to the original songs they sampled. I must admit, I was expecting Daft Punk to sample their songs from Techno and shit, but actually no! They sample their stuff from old funk and disco songs from the 70s and 80s! It's actually quite surprising, and now that I have found the original songs I think that these guys have actually good music tastes, and it made me discover new funk and disco artists which would be relevant to my actual mood since right now I'm into my 70's retro period.
So this made me think again about these guys, the have good music tastes, they're enigmatic, they signed big bucks with Leiji Matsumoto for their movie and music videos, and they know their stuff. I'm not a fan, I don't hate them but I don't adore them, but I think they actually deserve big kudos.
So yay, Daft Punk!