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It took me a long time but...


Post Posted Tue Mar 01, 2016 2:44 pm
Fabien D.


Posts: 9

Hi everyone,

It took me a long time to create my profile on the forum I'm daily visiting since... wow, god knows, many year.

My name is Fabien, I leave in France, I'm a long time Jarre fan, I remember as a kid being scared by the Oxygen Vinyl Jacket with this skull that my parents owned, but being amazed by the Equinox one... Coming from a classical background, it took me a while before starting to listen to Jarre and co, I was "by design" more attracted to Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Stravinsky, Gershwin, Satie, etc. Then one day I was offered for my 10th anniversary a CD of the Synthesizers Collection (volume 2) which was basically Synths themes replayed. I remember falling in love of Vangelis, Jarre, and Kraftwerk at this moment, but not in the original version the replayed one. Equinoxe Pt. 4 and Zoolookologie were in this release. The year after I bought the 9th volume of the collection, with more Jarre, Vangelis and others on it. Calypso Pt. 3 and Chronology Pt. 4 were on it. I was totally in love with Chronology (and this remain a huge master piece for me today), but still laying on replayed versions. I tried to listen to Oxygen at this period, and other albums like Equinoxe or Zoolook but it wasn't the right time I guess.

I was starting to be a huge fan of Enya at this moment of my life, and the album The memory of Trees was part of my every evening for a long time, and my growing collection of Synthesizers CD too, with a huge preference for Jarre, Starink, Art of Noise, Vangelis, Kraftwerk, etc.

Then someone get me into computer stuff and I discovered .mid files (MIDI files), and I started to look for many many different midi files, amazed by the fact that a file could contain a sort of score that could be replayed again and again, and with different sounds by changing the soundcard or some instruments. I downloaded loads of mid files, looked for a lot of Jarre "tracks", some awful, some really great, it was a fun time.

Beside this, I was already a musician, I had already learn violin and piano, piano because I wanted to play synthesizers and so I was told that I needed to learn piano for that. I loved piano all these years and went back to my classical roots with it, having hard and wonderful time with my beloved classical artists, being also a singer for the Lyon Opera as a kid, fun fun time.

I remember in 1995 buying a VHS of Europe en Concerts, I was gonna see JMJ first time on stage, via TV but when you're 11, it counts ;)
I was at first puzzled, honestly, a bit deceived because the notes and the video were not really in sync, I was discovering the charm of JMJ concerts videos that I today enjoy, but at the same time I was amazed by the kind of show it was. Lasers, huge screens, choirs, and this funny guy with gloves, a strange costume, sunglasses and all.

Years passed and I finally met my best friend via computer passion, and we exchanged a lot of midi files together via mail, or via floppy discs as we were at the same school for a year and not to far from each other. At this time I felt the need to know more about JMJ and other artists and started to collect his albums and decided to give them a very good listen, starting from Oxygen and then following his album releases as I would do with some classical artists (they were not releasing albums of course, but the idea was the same).
I totally fall in love with Oxygen at this time, and started to listening to it with headphones or quite loud, discovering a new sound nearly every time, noticing a new pattern at different levels, and enjoying this new sound for me. It was not the dance music that I didn't like much and that was the main thing at this time, it was, to me, like classical music, with other instruments, a definition that I will discover later from JMJ himself, and that was totally describing my feeling at this moment.

I then started to listen more and more of Jarre, the magnificent Equinox, the fun and dynamic Magnetic fields, Zoolook the UFO to me, but in the good way, I was found of The 5th element movie when I listened to Zoolook and its Diva, I liked it, then Rendez-Vous that was less interesting to me, but I have to admit this is a wonderful piece of music during concert, Revolution with Computer Weekend that I was fond of, Waiting for Cousteau and this amazing approx. 47 min track, Chronology that I was totally in for, and at that time, the new Oxygen 7-13 that I found different in the sound but great.

Internet changing a lot of things, I started to know the Jarre world a bit better, the bitter comments of the musicians that considered him as a fraud (and Jarre not helping with that), I started to see few bits of concerts, his horrible english accent that I would enjoy later on, and all that.

At the same time I started to take a strong interest into Vangelis with the same method, but less success, even today (I mean by that that I'm more selective about Vangelis work), a little bit of Kraftwerk.

I remember the launch of Metamorphoses before 2000 and seeing Jarre explaining he learned to like his voice and so he was including it in his new release. I took me a while before accepting this album, it was different from before, I liked the symphonic part of JMJ, with just instruments, and that was sort of a new direction for me. I saw via TV the evening part of the millenium concert, I've always took a very string interest into egypt ancient history, so it was like christmas after christmas ;)

Then a long silence, I used Internet to grab concerts, and many other things like discovering the album Images with 2 tracks I had never listen to (Moon Machine and Globe Trotter), and many many things.
Session 2000 album felt a bit dry to me, huge potential but empty, Geometry of Love was a return to the roots, then Aero (I did the impossible to be able to listen to that on a 5.1 system) with the fun Aerology track that many person told me : but the track is total cr**, hey, I liked it.

Then came Téo&Téa, I remember a leak few weeks before the release, many of my friends told me it wasn't jarre, and so it was a fake. I pointed out that the "may I ask" sentence in the background of Téo&Téa was indeed very much Jarre, they wouldn't believe me, well, it was him. I liked few tracks of this album, but it wasn't the initial Jarre I liked. I'm still very mad at him to have added the moanings to Beautiful Agony, the track by itself is nice, but difficult to listen in public.

Then came the rumor feed by Jarre himself of a project like a tree with a song that would evolve, then an album next year, postponed to next year, etc. Then the Oxygen concerts and indoor tour that were going to be my first occasions to see JMJ in a real concert, not via a screen. I intended Marigny, then Marseille in France, then Toulouse few days after, I even went to Monaco, a great show with the laser harp being as buggy as I saw on internet videos.

And last year Electronica 1 with a new Jarre keeping some roots and Electronica 2 sounding the same.
And I will certainly try to attend Barcelona concert this year.


So basically a long presentation for a Jarre fan. I made a lot of people discover his music and sometime changing there mind about him, I even had my sister writing a master memoire on Jarre using Zoolook as a background. It's her wonderful work but I was happy to see Jarre being analyzed in our french musicology sphere, and not just disliked.


I tried to register in this forum manny time last year but it was closed to new users, so I left the idea in my mind for later and here I am ;)

I know the discussions are sometime passionate about JMJ, even here, I hope to have a good time around and find the respect each member here deserve, as we are all Jarre fans here.

Live long and prosper and hope to chat with all of you soon.
Fabien D.
My Soundcloud : https://soundcloud.com/fabiendefaye

Check out my few albums : sKy (2016) / Klub (2015) / logiK (2014)
Post Posted Tue Mar 01, 2016 3:06 pm
Dr_Jones


User avatar
Posts: 3729
Location: Leiden, Netherlands
Likes given: 194
Likes received  : 402

You're probably not the first who got into JMJ after listening to the Starink renditions of his songs (the series was called Synthesizer Greatest in the Netherlands).

Welcome to the forum. It's always nice to see new blood.







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