I’m always super curious with how artists / bands first started out before they became well-known. It’s also a question I ask musicians in Australia regularly when first meeting them through my job. Usually makes a good story & paints a great picture of who they are as an artist.

Now I know this example is pretty old (22 years), but I still think it’s really cool.

Thomas Bangalter, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Laurent ‘Branco’ Brancowitz met at school in 1987 and discovered they had the same tastes for rock bands such as MC5, The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys or The Stooges. So they formed a group called Darlin’, which is a tribute to a Beach Boys song. They released their first EP on Stereolab’s record label Duophonic, 800 copies in all. Later an english journalist from Melody Maker (a weekly UK music mag), who reviewed this record, said it was “a bunch of daft punk”.

So they decided to do some other music and Thomas and Guy-Manuel took this name, Daft Punk, as the name of their new group. In 1993 they discovered electronic music and were inspired by its sound. But Branco didnt like it so he decided to leave the group to join his brother, Christian Mazzalai in his band which was later called Phoenix.

To hear tracks by Darlin’ – head to their unofficial myspace. I’m sure a copy of their EP is ridiculously rare.

And here’s The Beach Boys song that started them off in their musical careers… Great track!