Comments on: Jean-Michel Jarre

By: Robi

Robi — Fri, 30 Nov 2001 00:00:00 +0000

I think JMJ’s music (in pioneering way) is as important as Kraftwerk or Tangerine Dream at least !!!

By: John

John — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I’m so sorry fot you, because you don know that some of the best masterpieces of your favourite composer (vangelis whom I like too) are composed by jarre’s help.
Also, kraftwerk has helped jarre alot in Jarre’s last album (AERO). I believe that you don understand anything from electronic genre, becasue 1. You don’t know that melodies of electronic genre can differ so much from classical works (you had mentioned that there are few notes in jarre’s works), so jarre’s music shouldn’t necessarily be the same as vangelis. 2. You don understand that there are many talents such as jarre, vangelis, kraftwerk, oldfields, kitaro, and etc who all try to improve electronic genre together. So the person is not really important, this is the group which is important.
I finally recommend you to update your knowledge first and then write.

By: Guru

Guru — Thu, 30 Nov 2000 00:00:00 +0000

Man, you are totaly nuts. Why are you speaking about something that you don’t understand? JMJ is a great genious and as far from ‘untalented’ as you can be. Moroder and Kraftwerk better then him?? You are kidding, aren’t you?

And buy the way, Tubular Bells was composed buy Mike Oldfield and not buy the ‘creative genius’ Vangelis.

For the end, a warm advice from a life-long lover of instrumental music: don’t write on this subject ever again.

greetings

By: Guru

Guru — Sat, 30 Nov 2002 00:00:00 +0000

You are a very sad person. Truth is something that obviously does not interest you. It’s more important to defend yourself, isn’t it.

By: dr Dave

dr Dave — Sun, 30 Nov 2003 00:00:00 +0000

I really don’t fancy continuing such a sterile discussion. However, I will point out what I should have started with (sounded obvious enough to me, but anyway): matters of taste are better left out of arguments… so please don’t bother coming to tell me you like JMJ and that I’m an uneducated prick (I knew that already), if all the arguments you have to bring in are along the line of “you wrong, me right” (and if you are inclined to insert a porn url in your comment as a form of protest)…

Christ, is it so hard to keep a civilized tone and develop constructive arguments when you disagree with people???

By: sb

sb — Sun, 30 Nov 2003 00:00:00 +0000

Guru: You remind me of my old roommate (SF, year 1999 or so). He would would sit in a dark room near the middle of one of the most dynamic cities built and seethe about how ReplayTV beats the pants off TiVO, Volkswagen builds the only cars worth buying, and how anybody who buys anything else is causing him a direct insult.

JMJ was, of course, his favorite music ever. There is one difference between you and him, though. He retreated into his own debilitating horror whereas you appear to lash out in preemtive strikes. Which is too bad — I was looking forward to hearing Dave’s take on Mike Oldfield (or Vangelis or Ray Lynch or…).

DrD, don’t you think this is sort of like shooting fish in a barrel? I mean, what’s next, deconstructing Tomita? Mike and the Mechanics?
Kenny G? Madonna’s newest album?

By: dr Dave

dr Dave — Fri, 30 Nov 2001 00:00:00 +0000

Scott: just kidding about Oldfield and Co. No way am I gonna waste one more second of my time on their stuff.

Re: shooting fish in a barrell: yea, I agree these are ridiculously easy targets. But the reason I decided to go over JMJ is that, as I stated at first, it is honestly possible to wonder if he really was a genius ahead of his time… and admittedly the line between his stuff and other real pioneers like Kraftwerk or Moroder *is* very thin. But I still think there’s a clear case to be made for the sheer laziness of his arrangements.

By: sb

sb — Tue, 30 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000

That’s too bad — I was looking forward to a good Oldfield rant. I haven’t seen one of those since the mid-90s!

Inspired by your question, I’ve been listening to some Kraftwerk (Tour De France soundtrack and a Live in Leverkusen 22.04.74 boot) and some JMJ (I only have Zoolook). The line is thin but I don’t think it’s THAT thin. I think it mostly boils down to the hard-to-describe but easy-to-recognize cheese factor.

Kraftwerk keeps things agile. They don’t often give you 12 bars in a row of the same tired sequence. When they down a simple riff, it stays simple. When JMJ lays down a simple riff, he covers it with decoration and sonic flourishes. I think that JMJ is trying too hard, kind of like he’s a real estate agent struggling to upsell a condo.

What’s the difference between Johnny Cash and Billy Ray Cyrus? Or Gladiator and Troy? Or chillout and soft jazz… I do realize my thesis here is stupefyingly obvious. Wish I could offer more. If you could somehow quantify cheesiness and the difference between good cheese vs. bad cheese, I think you could make a ton of money in Los Angeles.

By: dr Dave

dr Dave — Sun, 30 Nov 2003 00:00:00 +0000

Scott: brilliant, couldn’t have expressed it better.

But I must also add that Zoolook is not even the worst example. If I really had to save anything in JMJ’s stuff, that might be it (I said: if I *really* had to)… To fully grasp the meaning of cheese, one has to give a listen to his equally popular “Equinoxe” or “Oxygene” albums… not to mention “Magnetic Fields 2″ or “Rendez-Vous 4″, anthemic JMJ stuff that makes a serious case for a Geneva Moratorium on the use of clap boxes in Electronic music.
And I’m charitably omitting all the obvious tax-motivated semi-albums and pseudo-remixes that sprinkle his discography.