My first record that I spend my hard-saved money on as a boy was of Jean-Michel Jarre and the other he released followed quickly and these were my first records that I played to the death on my parents stero. I re-invested in his music when they came out on CD and was also the reason for me to get a CD player (to transfer to cassette so I could listen in my Walkman) and therefore when I heard he was doing his second oxygene tour here in Stockholm I of course got tickets for it.
Image courtesy of Jokuno / Flickr
The entrance was grand, through a curtain of laser light but from there the concert was a bit flat. People in the audience was really more listeners than participants. The light show was just outright brilliant and well orchestrated and the sound was great in the old ice-hockey rink of Hovet near the Globe (where he played the last time but the sound was not very good there) and that saved the concert.
He did most of his well known routine and then thanked the audience and went of the stage. People then called him back and this is when things started to get really interesting, this is where the concert really takes off. People are standing, shouting, whistling clapping their hands and Jarre makes a splendid performance. The extra numbers are long, well though out and he gets called in a second time to do even more of that and practically this is the real concert and it was topped by a great finale.
The concert then ended just as he had entered – drawing back through a curtain of brilliant laser light and afterwards I felt that this was a really good concert even thugh the first part was a bit stiff and flat the extras recovered well.
Go see it.
Tags: arena, concert, event, hovet, Jean-Michel Jarre, stockholm
Your Jarre history sounds a lot like mine.
I was there too and am now able die happy, having seen the laser harp in action for the first time.
I particularly loved that he played the entire Second Rendez-vous as an encore. It’s one of my favourites and I got a second chance to see the harp.
I also love that part and it is definitely one of my faves as well! Album wise I am trapped by Magnetic Fields and Equinoxe whenever they play which are my favourite albums by Jarre. Unfortunately it seems Spotify does not have much of his older material for some reason.
To bad I did not know you where going, we had dinner at Akkurat prior to the concert and a few beers and then went together with some other electronica nerdy friends…
I had pretty much three musical idols when I was a little boy and that was James Last Orchestra, Klaus Wunderlich (yeah, I know) and Jean-Michel Jarre (I still spell his name with the hyphen he used then).
It seems that JMJ was not very happy with the lasers either judging from http://www.jeanmicheljarre.com/blog/scandinavian-ellipsis:
“In [Oslo] you don’t have these far too strict regulations like in Sweden for lasers”