Destination Docklands
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Destination Docklands was a concert held by musician Jean Michel Jarre on the Royal Victoria Docks, Docklands, London on Saturday October 8 and Sunday October 9, 1988, to coincide with the release of Jarre's new album Revolutions. The concerts were attended by 200,000 people (not including the people who watched the concert from the nearby streets and households) and the October 8 show was broadcast simultaneously on BBC Radio One, featuring concert commentary by DJ Simon Bates.
Accompanied by heavy wind, rain and fireworks, the concert also featured The Shadows guitarist Hank Marvin who joined Jarre on the tracks "London Kid" and "Fourth Rendez-Vous". A live album and a VHS were released afterwards.
The grandstands for the audience (surrounding a standing-room area) lined the North side of the dock. The warehouses on the South side of the dock, by then mostly empty, were painted white to provide enormous backdrops for projected images, along with a number of large scaffolding installations in between, matching the height of the warehouses. The stage floated in the middle of the dock and the concert was accompanied by the musician's trademark breathtaking firework and searchlight show. The original concept was to have the floating stage traverse up and down the Docks, providing a view of the stage to the audience on the North Bank - however, strong winds and prevailing rain prevented this from occurring and the stage stayed anchored for the duration of the concerts (indeed, wind almost caused one of the hung scaffolding backdrops to be torn from its mountings after the October 8 show with repairs having to be undertaken before the following nights performance).
Contents |
[edit] Track listing for concert
Part 1: Industrial Revolution
- Industrial Revolution: Overture
- Industrial Revolution: Part 1
- Industrial Revolution: Part 2
- Industrial Revolution: Part 3
- Equinoxe 5
- Ethnicolor
Part 2: Swinging Sixties
- Computer Weekend
- Les Chants Magnetiques II / Magnetic Fields II
- Oxygene 4
- Equinoxe 7
- London Kid (with Hank Marvin)
Part 3: The Nineties
- Third Rendez-Vous / Laser Harp
- Tokyo Kid
- Revolutions
- Souvenir de Chine / Souvenir of China
- Second Rendez-Vous
- Fourth Rendez-Vous
Part 4: The Final
- September
- Revolutions (encore)
- The Emigrant
[edit] Musicians
- Jean-Michel Jarre: Synthesizers
- Michel Geiss: Synthesizers
- Dominique Perrier: Synthesizers
- Francis Rimbert: Synthesizers
- Guy Delacroix: Bass
- Jo Hammer: Drums
- Dino Lumbroso: Percussions
- Sylvain Durand: Synthesizers
- Christine Durand: Soprano
- Hank Marvin: Guitar on London Kid and Fourth Rendez-Vous
- Mireille Pombo: Vocals on September
- Sori Bamba: Conductor of Mali Choir on September
- Kudsi Erguner: Turkish Flute on Revolutions
- Bruno Rossignol: Choir Conductor
- Xavier Bellenger: Ethnical Music Advisor
- Setsuko Yamada: Solo Dance Performance
[edit] Instruments used
- Akai MPC-60
- ARP 2600
- Batterie Simmons SDX
- Cavagnolo MIDY 20
- Casio SAX DH-100
- Cristal Baschet
- Dynacord ADD1
- Elka AMK-800
- Elka Synthex
- EMS Synthi AKS
- EMS Vocodery Emulator
- Ensoniq ESQ-1
- Fairlight
- Stratocaster guitar
- Laser Harp
- Kawai K5
- LAG Insecte
- LAG Circulaire
- LAG Meuble
- Matrisequencer
- OSCar
- Roland D-50
- Roland S-50
- Yamaha KX5
[edit] Trivia
The concert was postponed for several weeks due to Newham council's concerns over crowd safety, during which time Jarre hastily sought alternative venues. In the end the concert was permitted and passed without incident, though the planned free concert (There was NO free concert planned, tickets were always being sold from the day the concert was announced) had to be converted to two ticketed concerts on consecutive nights.
The film for TV and video is of the second concert (recorded by Mike Mansfield), an evening when even heavy rain was unable to dampen the enthusiasm of the crowd. In fact it probably added to the effectiveness of the laser light show. The first evening had no rain until the concert actually finished.
The event was broadcast live on British BBC Radio 1 and French NRJ radio.
It is said that astronauts orbiting the Earth could see the light produced by the massive fireworks used during the concert, yet this is unlikely to have happened.
The stage was actually supposed to move up and down the dock on its barges and actually did move during various rehearsals but due to high wind and severe weather on the night this idea was stopped by the safety crew.
The queues for fans getting into the event were more than 1 mile long at various points during the day.
People in the queue were being interviewed by BBC Newsroom SouthEast.
Floodlights and fireworks for the event were visible all across London.
During various parts of the concert bass levels were so low fans could feel the concrete vibrating under their feet.
