This Page Last Updated
August 17th 2001

ALBUMS - MUSIC FOR SUPERMARKETS



Release Date: 1983
Label: Disques Dreyfus

Known Instruments Used:

- Fairlight CMI Series II
- Mainly others used on Zoolook and Rendez-Vous

LP Vinyl:
France - Disques Dreyfus - FDM 18113 - limited to one copy (unique)

In 1983, Jean-Michel Jarre was contacted by a group of artists who wanted to organize an exhibition on supermarkets. This exhibition was to comprise paintings and sculptures but was missing the music.

Because of this, they had the idea to to convince a large scale musician to compose the basic music for the exhibition. Jean Michel Jarre accepted this project and composed a 30 minute album comprising of 3 months of experiments. While he was working on the music, Jean Michel Jarre began to compare the future album with a painting or a sculpture; something of a unique, one-off work of art. Because of this, he decided to press the disc onto one unique vinyl copy, and to then put it on sale.

After quite a lot of exposure, Music for Supermarkets' biddings were held at the Drouot Hotel on July 6 1983, and was sold for 69,000 FF, making it the most expensive album sold in France! The collected money was given to the young artists and on the same day, the unique album was taken to Radio RTL (Radio Luxemburg) and gave them the authorization to play the album in its' entirety for the first, last and only time in the world - with Jean Michel Jarre stating the gesture "Pirate me!" as a statement towards his albums being pirated.

Although the album itself is unique, certain parts of the album were re-worked over again by Jean Michel Jarre and were included on subsequent albums. Thus, Music for Supermarkets 3 is a pre-version of Rendez-Vous 5 Part 3, Music For Supermarkets 5 is Blah Blah Cafe (from Zoolook) and Music For Supermarkets 7 is basically Diva (from Zoolook) but without the vocals of Laurie Anderson.

REVIEWS

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Highlights


'FUNKSTÖRUNG'
Interview


FRANCIS RIMBERT Interview


'AKROPOLIS'
Concerts Report

Discography

Welcome to the Discography pages of JARRE UK.

On the internet recently over the past 2-3 years, there has been speculation as to how many parts Music For Supermarkets actually contains - the general assumption was that it contains 8 parts, which is essentially correct, but not in the way that it is Music For Supermarkets parts 1-8, but should actually be seperated in the way shown below...

Tracklisting

Side 1
Music For Supermarkets
Overture
Music For Supermarkets 1
Parts 1, 2 and 3
Music For Supermarkets 2

Side 2
Music For Supermarkets 3
Music For Supermarkets 4
Music For Supermarkets 5