30 years ago, a Jean-Michel Jarre gig would have been all about extravaganza on a Brobdingnagian scale, an unashamedly Debordian hymn to distraction, with compliant spectators exceeding the visual peripheries and spilling over the horizon. It would probably be in the outdoors, at the invitation of the municipalities of the world’s finest squares, panoramically vast and accommodating millions of sets of eyes with dazzling lasers soundtracked by sheer sonic bombast. These spectacles were the bread and circuses and the loaves and the fishes all rolled into one, during a decade where more always meant more.

For a lone Frenchmen who doesn’t sing, Jean-Michel Jarre has sold an extraordinary amount of records. 80 million is the estimate, which is probably about 10 million more than an era-defining group like Duran Duran. Oxygène on its own has sold somewhere in the region of 15 million to date. Although still popular of course, it’s difficult to reimagine the kind of adoration that Continue reading “Jean-Michel Jarre Live In Paris” →