I went to a rave last week. The music was supplied by a slightly mad French pensioner. Welcome to 40 years of Jean-Michel Jarre.
If you were vaguely interested in avant-garde/ambient music, and had an ear for the relatively new-fangled synthesiser sound, you’ll have been impressed by JMJ’s Oxygene album, boldly announcing the Frenchman’s arrival into the big time, late in 1976.Spooky skull-in-a-peeling-planet-earth cover and all, this gently pulsing masterpiece set him off on a career involving numerous awards, spectacular and record-breakingly vast outdoor concerts in unusual places and more the 20 albums.
The most recent of these, Electronica 1 & 2, saw him collaborate with an impressive who’s-who of current and veteran musicians, and his first visit to the Top 10 album chart in a quarter of a century.
He’s not exactly been growing old gracefully, either. Some of these recent tracks are firmly in the techno/dance/rave category, with relentless beats and decidedly up-tempo pace.
I headed up to Glasgow last week to catch him on tour. To set the scene on what was to come, the support act was a DJ/producer, who delivered a 30 minute set of trippy, pulsing, house-y music that baffled the people in the row behind me. I can confirm this by the fact that they spent the entirety shouting at each other about how it wasn’t music, but just some guy with a Macbook.
I didn’t hear them once Jarre started. Considering he’s no poulet de printemps, the sound coming from the array of speakers was decidedly modern, and his bank of synths was accompanied by two other musicians playing percussion, additional keyboards, vocoders and some other stuff I’d probably need an electronics degree to describe.
Amazing curtains of LED lights could one second be a screen displaying dazzling computer-generated graphics and images when on, or see-through when off. They also moved around, parted and came together in front of, and behind, the musicians.
It wouldn’t be a Jarre show without lasers, and they painted a stunning picture through the dry-ice-cloud filled SECC. There was even his signature laser harp, where breaking a beam creates a note.
A heavy (in all senses of the word) number, with video on the LED curtain of Edward Snowdon, put the frighteners on the crowd with it’s dark message about privacy in the modern era, whilst the beats attempted to crush your skull.
The audience loved it all too – I saw the sort of waved-hand gestures I associate with rave culture, and they were of a wide range of ages, showing just how well Jarre has continually kept in touch with, and influenced, other artists.
He even played a track from the forthcoming Oxygene 3 album, which will be released 40 years to the day the original came out.
Pumping your fist in the air in a crowded room with lasers flashing above your head. Not bad for a 68 year old. Him, not me. I’m too old for that sort of thing.
This post first appeared as my 'Thank grumpy it's Friday' column, in the North West Evening Mail, on the 21st of October 2016. The paper re-titled it as 'Jean's genius shines brightly' - fair play, I'm liking that.
Once again it is on their website, but not on any menu - I had to search for "Jarre" to find it. You can view it on their site here - interestingly, my title was used for this version.
It was a great gig, and further evidence of my eclectic taste is music. So far this year we've been to see a-ha, Jeff Lynne's ELO and JMJ - next up in December - Status Quo. Must find out my denim collection for that one, although the seams on the underpants do chafe a bit.
As an entertaining aside, on arriving at our hotel in Glagow for this gig, we were wondering why there were were so many smartly dressed people around wearing yellow lanyards - didn't seem like your regular French-synth-God crowd. Heading out the following morning, we realised that the SNP conference was in the venue next door to the gig.
All the complimentary newspapers outside bedroom doors on our floor were copies of The Times. We' have had The Beano, but it wasn't on the hotel's list.
(CD A-Z: The Kinks - "The Ultimate Collection".)
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