I watched this interview today, and I actually got emotional...
(and it's fun to hear his view on electronic music, and also seeing him showing how to experiment with sounds by hitting the old equipment
)
Jean Michel Jarre - Oxygène 4 | The story behind the song
(
@pinball1970 , I've mentioned The Beatles, ABBA and ELO as my early musical core, but I should really put in Jean Michel Jarre there too, I forgot about it in the ABBA thread)
I might even have started to listen to Jarre before the Beatles, actually.
It was my dad who introduced me to the Jarre album
Oxygène, likely in the late 1970s,
and I've been a fan of Jarre since then. I must have heard the Oxygene album hundreds of times, but I'm still not tired of it
. The music listening path I took I think was: ABBA -> ELO -> Jean Michel Jarre -> The Beatles.
Jean Michel Jarre has a very, very special place for me; I've met a few famous people in my life but I've never ever felt star-struck, but I'm not sure I would hold it together as well if I met Jarre
, I am such a big fan of his that it is ridiculous.
When I started playing synthesizer in the early 1980s I learned to record music by first doing a cover of
Axel F (Harold Faltermeyer) and after that Jarres
Rendez-Vous 4 (Jarre), using Korg synths, Roland drum machines and a Tascam four track multirecorder. I've still got the master on cassette, I have to digitize them some day.
I've attended one concert of his,
Paris La Défense – Une Ville En Concert in 1990, and I remember there was a RIDICULOUS amount of people attending;
Wikipedia said:
About 2.5 million people standing in front of the pyramidal stage all the way down to the Arc de Triomphe witnessed this event, setting a new Guinness Book of Records entry for Jarre.
(a week later I attended the historical concert
The Wall – Live in Berlin where Roger Waters of Pink Floyd performed together with a bunch of other musicians; the concert was watched by a live audience of 350,000 and broadcast to more than 500 million people worldwide)
So... that week was one of the best weeks I've ever had
.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anyway, this thread is about favorite songs, so here are some Jarre favorites of mine:
Magnetic Fields Part 4 (pure magic)
Magnetic Fields Part 4 Cover
(a good cover of the song; it reminds me of how I started, but he's got better gear than I had back then)
Jean-Michel Jarre - Oxygene, Pt. 1 (Official Music Video)
(the opening track on the
Oxygene album, darn I love this piece so much
)
Millions of Stars (Water for Life) (very suggestive, in my opinion)