Search - Jean-Michel Jarre :: Jarre Live

It just does not encompass the scale of it all.

Roger Spencer-Jones | USA CT | 03/02/2006

(2 out of 5 stars)

"It was billed as the largest ever concerts staged in London. Originally tabled for September 24th 1988 Jean Michel Jarres' Destination Docklands-The London Concert was beset by difficulties right from the start.The Multimedia Son et Luminaire extravaganza was to be staged in and around The Royal Victoria Dock in Londons East End. The stage was 9 transportation barges welded together, weighing in at three hundred tons all told. It had all the makings of a ship and floated like a garishly lit pontoon out in the water and affectionately refered to as "My Battleship" by Jean Michel. Projections of art work depicting the History of England's might as an industrial empire, its movement through the fashionable swinging sixties and its demise and break up, historically ending in the riots of Brixton and Toxteth, the Wapping print unions dispute, the closure of the steel foundaries and coal mines and the grizzly underside of Thatchers Britain that went chhek by jowl with the glamourous technological outlook of the priveledged. The colourful animations were projected on the facades of the nine story Spillers Millenium Mill and the scandelously demolished CWS mill a photograph of which appears in the sleeve notes of the Jarre Live album sleeve notes. Three hundered choir and musicians were on stage, and one thousand French and British technicians engineered two hundered and fifty tons of fireworks, 12 world war two search lights, fifty sky searcher lasers.Further accompanyment was provided by Sufi and Bali dancers and a Japanese Jazz Trumpeter. The French have a word for it, Boum Fest, and the British have a word for it, nonsense. And that is what killed it for Jean Michel. In a stunning media display, The councillors of the Town of Newham in London, took away Mousieur Jarres performance licence protesting that the crowd was to big, the long abandoned buildings that stretched for over one mile of the docklands skyline, would catch fire, it was'nt nearly safe enough for the crowd and, oh yes, and he is French. Nearly 1 million Londoners that had read about the build up for over a year were waiting to see what "That Concert" was all about, 170,000 tickets had already been sold, I had one of them, and for those Eastenders that did not have tickets for the eclosed area, well they were going to see the Destination Docklands concert whether they wanted to or not. While I bit my nails through English lit class at school waiting for the news that night to see if the concert was going to be cancelled I was releived to hear on the radio that Jarre had negotiated to have two concerts scheduled for October 8th and 9th 1988, instead of just the one extravaganza, with the idea of halving the crowd so at least the concert would take place at all.

I was there with my best mate, on a freezing Saturday night, we were lucky, the Sunday concert took place in the pouring rain. "As you know we have had one or two difficulties in the past few weeks, but actually you know Frogs like rain!" He told them "And the reason we are 'ere tonight iz because of you. Nothing will stop us now." is what he told a freezing but mesmerized crowd who had packed dressed in Wind cheaters and trash bags to keep out the cold to watch him play the legendary laser harp and transform an abandoned limb of a very depressed london into a giant imax theatre. It was a concert that you had to be there for, to feel it, to even describe what happened there would take to long, each song was a scene that told a story, each group of songs were labelled as an Act, to which motifs, like in a Brecht play were projected onto the front and sides of three hundered foot tall mills. It was a concert about Britain, about Empire about its place in the world and its possible "Destination" in the future.

My brother was too young to come with me and my mate, Dr Octopus, now an ER doctor in Australia, but he dutifully bootlegged the BBC Radio 1 broadcast, hosted and narrated by Simon Bates a concert about encomapssing all of the technology available at that time, 1FM was part of the concert itself because Jarre needed the FM signal to relay to all the speaker systems along the dockside and at that time Radio1FM were the only FM channel in existence. The radio broadcast really gave the concert its darkness and mysteriousness that did not transfer to the later released album. The concert itself was over two hours and some of the better tracks were left out from this flimsy recording released here. Equinox VII, Tokyo Kid, Ethnicolor 1 were left out, as was the sonorous depth of sound from the Laser Harp (Rondez-Vous III). The album is a good and only momento, since I have lost my brothers bootleg on double C90 cassette between moving apartments. None of the artwork and real dramatic moments from the concert is relayed to the covers or even into accompanying booklet. After the concert Jarre left Britain in a hurry without taking a performance fee and was not to return for another five years. He was too busy dealing with a commission from the French President to celebrate the Bastille night in Paris for 1990. A concert that took place in tropical heat and where 2.5 million Parisians saw the La Defense area of the capitols skyline lit up on balmy tropical night, where the album Waiting For Costeau was first played and show the maudlin British officials how a city should party.

Jarre referred to Destination Docklands and his problems with its climate, both political and meteorological, technical and musical as "Trying to shoot Apocalypse Now in one night."

Jarre Live is an album that is probably the only momento left of one of the most bizarrist episodes in British Pop culture, but for some reason it is little remembered. British culture is rife with cutting down succesful people as if they have problems with the scale of possibility and it was the need to cut down the scale of the concert to something containable and conservative that damaged "Destination Docklands" itself. As a Brit I beleive that this is most likely because Britain is a culture awash with dulcet soap operas filled with tragic maudlin characters that are so caught up with there own problems they fail to see the big picture and it is preferable that things happen on a much more conservative compact scale. The album Jarre Live seems to be a cast over the shoulder to the fans who wanted more, but got the super condensed version that seems to lack depth and emotion and the listener, especially one who was there feels that the recording just does not encompass the scale of it all, something that other live albums carry within them. There is little footage of the concert itself save a very bereft VHS movie that is no longer avaliable. And its one of those things that a very forward moving artists like Jarre is not willing to dwell on relive or rerelease for any logical reason. He is a man who is constanly moving forward and looking at how technology affects us in every aspect especially culturally. Jarre wrote in his sleeve notes to his 1976 album Equinox, that one day we will not even need records to listen to music, we will just have to make a phone call and we will be able to ask for whatever we want. In 2006 I did that specifically to get Jean Michel Jarres Interior Music "Whispers",an audio art work that seems to be fitting to the fleeting ethereal and intangeable nature just like MP3 seems to be, how uncanny.

"Docklands" was a night that inspired me to go to art college and since then his albums have accompanied me everywhere even to the USA where I now live. Jarre is an ispirational man as he still is to many millions of artists politicians, writers and scientists all over the world. His concepts of art, music, architecture and technology all combined in time and space are truely awesome.

As to the photograph of Jean Michel in the sleeve notes of Jarre Live, and for any other Jarrists out there who might be interested, the instrument that Jarre is playing and to all intents and purposes looks like a klavierchord-guitar, is actually called the "LAG Insect". The microphone coming of it is a vocoder inserted inside the main body of the instrument, which along with the keys is made from wood.

"

The Catalyst

Christopher | Wengen-en-esprit | 03/05/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

""It's a bit wet tonight! This is normal, right - this is England." So begins track 8, "London Kid," with Hank Marvin cranking on the guitar!



There are hardly any reviews for this album (on Amazon), but from those few, I've actually learned a bit from them. Now that I understand Jarre a little better, I would agree that this album is not superior in terms of quality, and the songs are rather shorter in length. The crowd cheering "Jean-Michel" is blatantly looped if you're listening on headphones and paying close attention.



Despite these shortcomings, this album, on a highly used cassette tape, played by my cousins in south France circa '89, hooked me onto Jarre.



Pointless story: I remember hearing the music and really liking it. But I didn't realize Jarre was the last name of one man. I thought it was a band. And why were there pictures inside of a man with a microphone if there was no singing on this album?! Jarre had me frustrated. I figured I would buy it in America. I was never able to find his music here (and too young to just *go* and look, and this was before the Internet). I tuned out Rendez-Vous IV onto the piano and played the theme for an entire year until we returned to France. Back in France, I begged my cousins to let me hear "that tape" and...again, before leaving for America, my mom and I went to a CD store and asked for Jarre. No one knew what we were talking about.



When all was said and done, I literally waited years of my life to finally figure out Jarre and by that time I was old enough to buy all his albums and LOVE every single one of them!



Now for a quick review since that's what I'm supposed to be writing: the Revolutions tracks were made to be played live, and these here out-perform the studio recording. Also, Rendez-Vous IV--with Hank Marvin playing the guitar!--is one of the best versions I've come across.



"Jarre Live" has significant history for me. Following his music led me down different paths, allowing me to enjoy a wider range of music. This album started it all. I find no faults with it. But for the super-Jarre fan who owns and has everything, this may very well be a disappointment."

Horrid

Sir Grand Citizen | Earth | 01/07/2003

(1 out of 5 stars)

"I'd give this NO stars given the opportunity.
A complete waste, this one. The songs are EDITED DOWN to a fraction of their original running-time, and the results sound rushed and thin.
The set-list is GREAT IMO, and if it were spread-out over 2 CDs (allowing for the UNEDITED versions to play-out fully), then this might be a very good release (not the best-sounding live album, but strong material).
But as it stands now, this isn't fulfulling for ANYone!Avoid.
The "Concerts in China", "Huston/Lyon" and "Hong Kong" live albums are all vastly superior, and highly recommended."