Robot Rock

I've just heard a really silly story on the radio. Two guys from Paris (I think their names were Luc and Francois) e-mailed in to say that they had a hard time when they tried to imitate their heroes.

But when your heroes are Daft Punk, it's always going to be hard to match.

Anyway, they went down to the Arc de Triomphe dressed as robots in tuxedos and armed with two acoustic guitars (how on earth they thought they were going to get away with replicating the duo's electronic-dance sounds with only two guitars, I have no idea!). They parked themselves in front of the monument and started playing every single Daft Punk song that has words in it. Considering that a) there aren't many Daft Punk songs that have words in them and b) when the songs have words they generally only consist of one or two lines, they were drawing a pretty good crowd playing songs like "One More Time" and "Around the World".

Well, they thought they were doing well. Pretty great up until the point when it seemed like everyone was booing and telling them to play something good, or to remember the words before they started busking. Another told them that they had been slaughtering the classics.

After a little while, the police appeared and told them that they were a nuisance and were causing noise pollution because their renditions were so awful. They stopped for fear of being arrested and returned home humiliated, wet and without a penny for their trouble.

So I guess the moral of the story is to think about what you might want to play if you go busking, make sure it has more than two lines of lyrics and that you have the proper equipment to cope with complicated arrangements. Happy busking.