Daniel Vangarde

No matter how much you think you know, musical six degrees of separation never ceases to yield new surprises.  My mind blowing factoid of the week: Thomas Bangalter's (Daft Punk) father wrote the disco/yacht-pop anthem "Hands Up" by "Ottawan", a near ubiquitous North American 80's TV jingle thanks to a million unavoidable Club Med ads.  This was revealed in the Daft Punk Unchained documentary several years ago, but I never saw it.

Vangarde is a fascinating person, and receives his due in a recent Guardian profile about the man and a recently released retrospective of his 70's and 80's recordings.  He wrote protest songs (which were banned in France), international disco smashes with Ottawan, and took up the cause of royalty rights for Jewish composers who were stripped of their rights during the Nazi occupation years.  One can easily draw a line between his combative attitude toward corporate music industry behemoths and Daft Punk's similarly uncompromising attitude.  In his retirement, Vangarde currently lives as something of a recluse in South America, sharing another similarity with his son who successfully keeps a low profile and avoids appearing in public despite achieving fame at the highest echelons of the music industry.  

Daft Punk retained artistic control of their career from the mid-90's onward, which would be nearly impossible today in the era of pop albums curated by a small army of outside songwriters and producers.  It makes sense if Vangarde did in fact advise them not to settle for anything less than complete control of their work and image.  How did they get away with it?  Daft Punk came along at the ideal time, long before EDM became a buzzword and a billion dollar industry.  In the 90's, companies knew that "electronica" was on the rise but had no clue how to go about marketing it.  The usual A&R strategies wouldn't work with faceless artists who recorded in their home studios and didn't play traditional concerts. Industry types had to make it up on the fly, and engage with artists on a case by case basis.  The Prodigy were a visually arresting group who could make eye-catching music videos.  Chemical Brothers were nothing to look at, but could be promoted as rock crossover artists.  Daft Punk weren't "rock" in the least, but their music had a more underground, exotic quality to it that could make up for the fact that the band members wanted to remain in the shadows.  And they could afford to keep their heads down if Spike Jonze produced their buzzworthy videos.  

So the industry let them do what they want, likely believing that the band wouldn't last long enough or get big enough to earn serious money.  They probably didn't feel like they were signing away that much in terms of future earnings or control.  It's also important to remember that the electronic music scene in Paris was miniscule compared with the more famous hubs in the US and Britain.  What were the chances of a couple of reclusive French teenagers actually breaking out into something big?