(A)Live in the Arena

The Jarre concert yesterday was in Wembley Arena. Not to be confused with the big Wembley Stadium, the Arena is a live music venue that's next door to it's big brother.

We were going to go to London the night before, and stay in a hotel there. Instead, we decided to drive up on the day and park at the Arena itself. Parking was prebooked and everything.

Here's one word - never, ever drive to Wembley Arena. Ever. Never Ever.

Why? Because driving in that part of London is MADNESS. The lanes shift about so quickly that you have to have a 6th sense to be able to predict where to be in time, not helped by the fact that everyone speeds and everyone else knows where they're going, hence making it damn near impossible to swap lanes in time.

Worse still, I had a background driver with me (Kelly), who would jump and thrash and pretend to press brakes every time she thought someone was gonna hit us.

Here's another word - never, ever drive a background driver to Wembley Arena. Ever. Never Ever.

SO - we got there at around 17:00. Gig at 20:00. Wandered over to the local Mc Donalds and almost had three courses there to spend time. Filtered in to the Arena foyer at 18:30 and, remembering the madness after last year's concert, I sensibly bought the merchandise I want earlier on. Sat down in our bit-too-small seats at 19:00 or so and waited.

The show itself was fantastic. The lighting and lasers and smoke that Jarre is so famous for was miniturised into an indoor version, bathing the whole arena with beautiful vistas of colour and sound. There were no graphics nor big projections, but they still managed to recreate the iconic Equinoxe faces using some clever LED trickery.

Jarre is also proud of a French-developed sound system that he is prototyping. It's developed so that you don't see a single speaker, everything comes from behind the stage, all hidden away with some material that is opaque to light but lets sound through. It also distributes the sound evenly, no matter where you are in relation to the speakers you'll hear the same.

The logic behind this makes sense - what he wanted to create is a show, not a concert. A show of light and sound, and speakers would only get in the way. Big towering things that can obscure the vision of anybody at an angle.

It's a great concept and it should start being used more frequently by other artists.

The music was a greatest hits affair. But more of a private one. The crowd-pleasing Rendez-Vous IV was absent for example, a track he's played live almost always. The track list was more like Jarre flicking through his family pictures and picking the ones he likes. You could see him visibly enjoying playing his tunes, improvising here, making mistakes there.

His beloved laser-harp had been tweaked to look FANTASTIC indoors, and he showed it off twice, the iconic Rendez-Vous II being one of them.

The intro was as spine tingling as I thought - the main riff of Industrial Revolution Part II starts, and a cone of laser is on the stage - a hand breaks the cone and slowly moves to reveal the silhouette of Jarre carrying his famous keyboard. Amazing.

He played tracks from almost all his albums, Oxygene got the most has he encored Oxygene IV, a track that started it all for him and happened to be conceived in a London flat, so he's extra-fond of the fact he's playing it in the city it was born.

Finally, best of all, he played Equinoxe 5, a track he last played live in Houston 1986. Even better, it's a track anyone who grew up in Iraq will recognise INSTANTLY. Just press play on the player below :)

Overall, another magical evening spent in the hands of the God Father of Electronica. I was grinning from ear to ear throughout!