Destination Docklands (The London Concert) - Jean Michel Jarre > Reviews > Destination AWESOME!

Author's product rating:   

Originality	Groundbreaking
Lyrics	Not applicable
Quality and consistency of tracks	A couple of weak links
How does it rate alongside the competition	Outstanding
Value for Money	Excellent

Advantages:	As good as being there
Disadvantages:	No fireworks .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I was at the 1st night of these concerts so I can give a pretty good opnion of how this varies to the performance given on the night I attended.

Essentially what your hearing on this cd is the music that was recorded on the night Mike Mansfield shot his Destination Docklands Video.

Track 1 is a short intro version of Revolutions which I don't remember being played on the night itself at all.

Track 2 is Industrial Revolutions Overture which was recorded on the 2nd of the 2 nights (I can tell because theres no 2nd set of cheering near the start when they screwed up getting one of the projections back to front then upside down)

Track 3 is Industrial Revolutions parts 1-3 and these sound very good, the crowd cheering is mainly reactions to projections & some fireworks, you are hearing the console master version of the music so you won't hear any of the fireworks in the background as all the mics are aimed the stage. Crowd reactions were louder than the fireworks!

Track 4 is Magnetic Fields part 4, one of JMJ's staples which is very well received.

Track 5 is Oxygene 4 which gets a great reaction to all the fireworks & projections again.

Track 6 is Computer Weekend, it wasn't a hugely popular track on the album & didn't get much of a reaction when performed live either.

Track 6 is Revolutions. This got a huge reaction as it was very popular & we could dance to it to keep warm (this was early October & we were freezing cold!).

Track 7 is London Kid. Hank's comment "This is not wet, this is England" definately shows it was night 2 of 2 as it didn't rain until after the concert had finished on the 1st night. Everyone was happy to see Hank (he'd entertained us by playing some of "Apache" during the sound checks before the night of the 1st concert) & this track got a huge good reaction from the crowd.

Track 8 is 4th Rendezvous made famous from his Houston & Lyon concerts, also got a good reception from the crowd, Hank also played some backing guitar on this. We never knew if that had been rehearsed or if Hank had just decided to join then in that number.

Track 9 is 2nd Rendezvous & this was what everyone had waited for as this was the laser harp & it was AWESOME! This thing had so much bass we could feel the concrete vibrating under our feet (it was over 8 feet thick!) That was the 1st time in my whole life I was actually aware of my brain in my skull as I was certain that was vibrating too. Probably the best track of the whole evening.

Track 10 is September. Never a popular track, the applause you hear is the crowd being incredibly generous purely for the content of what the song was about (Victims of political intolerance).

Track 11 is The Emigrant. This track can still bring me to tears even today as none of us wanted to hear it because we knew after that the concert was finished and that we had to go home. A lot of us were standing arm in arm (to keep warm but also because of the great buzz from the concert) and this got a sad but great reaction from the crowd.

This album is still as good today as it was when it was recorded in 1988 and I still remember it with very fond & passionate memories. In fact every year since then I have played this album on the day I attended to remember that great day.