Destination Docklands

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The spectacular fireworks at the concert
The spectacular fireworks at the concert

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, however fans who attended the concerts have been quoted saying that the vhs release failed to capture the grandure and spirit of the event.

The stage area, viewed from the audience
The stage area, viewed from the audience

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).

More fireworks
More fireworks

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 Champs 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

[edit] Trivia

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The concert was originally scheduled for September 24, 1988, but was postponed for several weeks due to Newham council's concerns over crowd safety. Jarre and his crew simultaneously tried to satisfy the council's concerns, while hastily seeking alternative venues. In the end the, the event was permitted on the proviso that it be split into two concerts (to lessen crowd numbers on each night), which passed without incident. Some sources claim that the original concert was to be free (like many of Jarre's large concerts before and since Destination Docklands), but this was not the case. The event was always scheduled to be ticket only, although many did see the show for free from the surrounding area.

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.

Princess Diana attended the concert on the second night.

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.

Floodlights and fireworks for the event were visible all across London and as far away as Epsom Downs.

The venue for the concert, the Royal Victoria Dock, is near unrecognisable today, due to heavy redevelopment. Passengers leaving the Docklands Light Railway at the Royal Victoria Station will be able to see two of the buildings that were immediately behind the stage, one of which (Spillers Mill) is still painted white, which was originally done to enable it to be used as a projection screen.

[edit] External links