DJ AM at HARD Haunted Mansion as Daft Punk, Halloween 2008 (FULL VIDEO)

In one of the most infamous festival tricks of all-time, DJ AM started a near riot in Los Angeles on Halloween night in 2008 by trolling attendees dressed in an exact replica costume of Thomas Bangalter from Daft Punk. This all took place at the Shrine Expo Hall only 8 weeks after the plane crash. There was some question up until the day of whether AM would be able to play at the event as scheduled. Turns out he was more than up to the task...

Here is the original flyer for the event, Justice & Soulwax were the main headliners:

A crew of homies including myself went with Adam to the event all dressed for Halloween of course. I went as Red Foo of LMFAO... lol. My wife went as an early 90s raver. Here is the crew with AM pre-set:

Kevin Wolff aka Kevy Kev, Marshall Barnes, Kevin Scott, DJ AM, Eamon Kelly, Joy Scott & Jon Alagem backstage at Hard Haunted Mansion 2008

Here are a few never before seen pics of AM putting on the outfit backstage and walking to the stage before the show kicked off. He had to wear in ear monitors because of the helmet so you can see the headphone plugin cord hang below the jacket in the pics. With the help of my wife, Adam cut holes in the daft punk gloves as well so he could grip the Serato control vinyls. Without the holes, the records were too slippery to keep control of. After the show, he said it was much harder to DJ wearing the helmet and gloves than he had anticipated.

Here's additional shots from this incredible and memorable performance once he got started on stage. The first approximately 40 minutes were mostly Daft Punk tracks lending to tricking the audience into thinking they were really seeing a Daft Punk surprise performance. Judging by their reaction, they REALLY thought they were seeing Daft Punk as a surprise guest:

AM on stage. That's Kevin Kerslake behind him filming. Who could have ever guessed that Kerslake would ultimately be the one to write & direct the documentary of AM's life years later? He's also responsible for the power to the DJ equipment going out in the video... DOH!

At the 40 minute mark of his set, he put on a Speak N Spell loop of "A M" and took off the Daft Punk helmet and jacket revealing himself to the audience. He then started playing all sorts of other EDM bangers from the era. He said afterwards that he was insanely hot with the full outfit on. He was drenched in sweat after removing it but still loving every minute.

This event was approximately 8 weeks after the plane crash. As you can see, Adam was still not completely healed from the burns.

It was an incredible night to be sure, the energy at the Shrine was off the charts as you will see below. For the first time ever, here is the complete uncut video footage of DJ AM at HARD Haunted Mansion. It was shot by my wife Joy on a Flip cam (remember those?) so please excuse the distorted audio and questionable quality (by today's standards anyway):