Reminiscing about Jarre and Bomb Jack

Gutterbreakz guesting on Loki’s fabulous blog An Idiot’s Guide To Dreaming recalls his early obsession with Jean-Michel Jarre. Gutter writes,

Appropriately enough, I discovered Jarre whilst on holiday in France around the turn of the eighties. One of my Dad’s friends allowed me to have a listen to his new gadget – a clunky item about the same size and weight as a house brick called a ‘Sony Walkman’. The cassette was Jarre’s “Equinox”, and I can honestly say that my young mind was utterly blown and my senses completely ravished by the electronic sounds emanating from those daft little orange spongy earphones. What I heard during the twenty minutes I was allowed to use the Walkman probably coloured my future tastes more than anything else. The swooping filtery analogue melodies, the pitter-pattering electronic percussion, the sense of floating through entire new galaxies of sound…an audio rush that I’ve been trying to reach again and again ever since.

My own interest in Jarre covers a similar period – Rendezvous, Zoolook – all on cassette. Perhaps not surprisingly Jarre was often ‘covered’ by programmers making music as soundtracks for their video games. It was the classic platform-style game Bomb Jack in its Commodore 64 port that made me track down Jarre – his tune Oxygene forms the relentlessly catchy background music to the action. Of course, like all video games of the time, it was uncredited . . . I’m pretty sure the few Jarre tapes I bought for my Walkman are long gone.