Here's another artist who can easily divide the room. It's musical Vegemite, love it or hate it, and for me, I'll have it on toast every day of the week !!
As a kid I loved the spacey BBC Stereophonic Workshop 'Doctor Who' theme. Although classed as an early piece of electronic music it was created before commercial synthesisers. It was assembled from pieces of tape, some of just one note on a plucked string, manipulated, stretched, oscillated and generally used and abused. Pitch was altered, speeds were changed, sounds were mixed without the invention of multitrack machines.
In 1969 Gershon Kingsley recorded 'Popcorn' for his album 'Music to Moog By' and the track was subsequently rerecorded by many others. The most popular was by Hot Butter in 1972 but that same year another version was released by The Popcorn Orchestra with Jammie Jefferson - the whole thing being an alias for Jean-Michel Jarre.
Then came 1976 and this album, 'Oxygène'. This was Jean-Michels 3rd album, the first two having limited release as soundtracks. It wasn't until the middle of '77 that it was available internationally and I grabbed it as soon as I could. I was in New Zealand and I've written previously (June 28 2020 - Hall & Oates) about how myself and a friend would play at being audiophiles, testing, calibrating and generally messing about with stuff. When I got hold of this album it became not only one of my favourites to listen to, it was also one of my favourite 'test' records.
Back in the day it was always said when you were buying or testing new audio equipment, take along a record you knew well, one you could compare with how you knew it SHOULD sound against how it sounded on other setups.
This was my 'control' record. I knew the nuances, the best and the worst of it and when it was sounding the way it should sound.
The album tracks were individually titled by part number, 'Oxygène (Part I)', 'Oxygène (Part II)' etc., and the single from the album was 'Oxygène (Part IV)'. Even today when I play that track I'm taken back in time to my flat in Mt. Eden, Auckland, putting marbles under speakers to help with isolation and trying to precision balance the tone arm with adjustable counterweights .. ah, those heady days of being pretentious !!
Jean-Michel followed 'Oxygène' with another couple of albums, 'Équinoxe' and 'Les Chants Magnétiques' which I got to know from tracks included on his 1983 compilation 'The Essential Jean-Michel Jarre'. The tracks included from 'Les Chants Magnétiques' are listed as 'Magnetic Fields (Part VI)' etc, even though the literal translation is 'Magnetic Songs'. It all comes down to homophones and a play on words and French/English and to be honest I lost interest a while ago. Just let it be known that the music is excellent.
If this is new to you, listen with an open mind. 'Oxygène' is over 40 years old now and electronic music has come a long way, but this came after the early pioneers when people like Jean-Michel were becoming masters of their craft. Mostly the critics, particularly the British critics, disliked this album, but I always thought it stood on it's own two feet and didn't need to apologise.
Just for the trivia and movie buffs out there, he was married for 20 years to the English actress Charlotte Rampling between '76 and '96.
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