Born again Jarre-fan....

Feekzoid · Post by **Feekzoid** » 06/12/2003 - 17:27

I'm sure that Abbot-fiend will find this most amusing... ;)

I was in the car the other day driving my usual 35 min trip to work but on this particular day I had a guest in the car, and he brought a CD with some MP3's on it.

First track started and caught my attention right away... I thought "Hey! Sounds like the title music from "StarGlider" on the C64!"

Several more tracks followed before realisation dawned and my memory caught up with my ears.

After around 20 years... - 13 since I began C64 music composing - I have begun to like Jean-Michel Jarre music. And lo, it is good.

The tracks?

Zoolookologie (The "starglider" one)
GlobeTrotter
Fishing Junks at Sunset (thought I was hearing Vangelis)
Calypso 1 (frowned with suspicion, having heard this track "somewhere")
Renezvous 4 (OMG! OMG! OMG! NOOO!!! ITS JARRE!)
Chants Magnetiques (used to HATE this track.. strangely appealing now)
Equinox 5
Oxygene IV (always harboured a secret like for this one)
Magnetic Fields IV - OMG! Yie Ar Kung fu! Love! (Still prefer Martin's)
Equinox III
Magnetic Fields V (HA! Still awful!)

As an aside, the guy who's CD it was only recently started work with us but revealed himself early on to be a C64-friend, and there was an extremely hilarious moment when one day at work he asked me:

"....are you... FeekZoid ?"
*lol* "yeah" said I.
Much humorous FZ-ego boosting did follow, and much nostalgia, and much technical discussions aboot our favourite composers.

Chris Abbott · Post by **Chris Abbott** » 06/12/2003 - 20:00

You're right, I find this extremely amusing. Now you've got another 10 years before you realise that it wasn't JMJ at all most of the time: it was Michel Geiss

Chris

Feekzoid · Post by **Feekzoid** » 06/12/2003 - 20:03

What, JMJ in MilliVanilli shocker?

Chris Abbott · Post by **Chris Abbott** » 06/12/2003 - 20:09

> What, JMJ in MilliVanilli shocker?

Almost

Basically the story goes that Oxygene was already pretty much finished when JMJ came into the picture: but of course it needed a rich and pretty flamboyant frontman: and besides, JMJ was into the synth stuff: you can tell from listening to "rarities" what his level of skill was. It was too much of a jump from "crap synth stuff" to "music of the future". So together they collaborated on many albums: Geiss was the genius who did most of the custom hardware.

I suspected as much because when JMJ was on stage or in a video, he never played ANYTHING that made sense in relation to the music. It was as if he just couldn't play the keyboard. But, they needed him to sell albums.

Geiss left him (?), I think after Chronologie, which was probably (a) why there was such a big lag between albums and (b) why Oxygene 2 was received so badly, and (c) why his work has (for me) pretty much stunk ever since.

Marcel will be able to correct me on salient points!

Chris

Kenz · Post by **Kenz** » 06/12/2003 - 20:21

The guys name (who had the mp3 CD) wasn't Martin was it? Just wondering cos I sent a Jarre mp3 compilation (for, er, "evaluation" purposes

) to a chap a while ago and it included all those tracks.

Chris Abbott · Post by **Chris Abbott** » 06/12/2003 - 20:25

* (b) why Oxygene 2 was received so badly

Although actually I liked it.

Chris

Subzero · Post by **Subzero** » 07/12/2003 - 0:13

Trust me - JMJ aint pretty!!! Front row - Wembley Stadium some years ago - Seriously UGLY MAN!!!!!

Great composer though

merman · Post by **merman** » 07/12/2003 - 10:57

Chris Abbott wrote:* (b) why Oxygene 2 was received so badly

Although actually I liked it.

Chris

Me too. It's the abomination that is his new "jazz" album that I can't stand...

CraigG · Post by **CraigG** » 07/12/2003 - 15:07

I thought Oxygene 7-13 extremely weak. It was like a crappy cover album, and I never bought the whole "it was meant to be 13 parts" argument - yeah, right.

Chris Abbott · Post by **Chris Abbott** » 07/12/2003 - 15:12

> I thought Oxygene 7-13 extremely weak.
Well, it was no classic, but I thought it was... listenable. And of course, I'll forgive anything for sounding remotely like the earlier albums.

Chris

Feekzoid · Post by **Feekzoid** » 09/12/2003 - 10:57

Ooooh! More!

Faves:

Calypso 2

Arpegiator

Chronologie 4

Oxygene 10 - I've only got the sash remix, and thats quite good tho I cant cope with generic-dance-mixitus... but I heard a clip of the original and it sounds a little too sedate for my liking... is there a better mix?

CraigG · Post by **CraigG** » 09/12/2003 - 12:11

Hmm - according to iTunes, I have 98 Jarre tracks. My faves are:

Zoolookologie/Zoolook
Souvenir of China/The Concerts in China
Arpegiator/The Concerts in China
September/Revolutions
Fourth Rendezvous/Rendezvous
Oxygene X/Oxygene 7-13
Je me souviens/Metamorphoses
Oxygene II, III, IV/Oxygene (although the whole album is great)
Magnetic Fields I (from 11:39)/Magnetic Fields (should have been a separate track IMO)
Magnetic Fields II/Magnetic Fields

Best albums, IMO:

The Concerts in China
Oxygene (the first one)
Magnetic Fields
Zoolook

Lord only knows where my Equinoxe tracks have buggered off too. Time to delve around for the CD...

merman · Post by **merman** » 09/12/2003 - 12:27

September is probably my least favourite Jarre track. Jarre Live is probably my favourite album because that's the one I heard first.

CraigG · Post by **CraigG** » 09/12/2003 - 12:29

Feekzoid wrote:Oxygene 10 - I've only got the sash remix, and thats quite good tho I cant cope with generic-dance-mixitus... but I heard a clip of the original and it sounds a little too sedate for my liking... is there a better mix?

I doubt it. I have the single, with the remixes on it. The others are by Apollo 440 and are, in my opinion, dire, and sound like synth and reverb demos from the front of Future Music magazine.

merman · Post by **merman** » 09/12/2003 - 21:52

Have you heard/got the remix album Odyssey through O2? That's a pretty mixed bag.