Interview: Jean Michel Jarre

SWATCH OUT! JEAN MICHAEL JARRE OVER EUROPE

At a press conference announcing his first ever concert tour, Jean Michael Jarre, the French synth wizard, professed his admiration for U2's ZOO TV concept, as well as an interest in "Le Rave."

The tour which differs from the seven mammoth one-off concerts he has staged in his 24-year career, is taking a massive stage set featuring cityscapes, pyrotechnics, and lasers across Europe to back the release of his new album Chronologie as well as the launch of a new range of watches by Swatch who are sponsoring the tour.

Asked whether he would have still called the album Chronologie if he had been sponsored by someone other than the Swiss watchmaker, say McDonalds, the youthful-looking 44-year-old Frenchman responded: "I was very interested in the work being done by Swatch with youth and street culture, for example, its use of Keith Harings images. As for deals with McDonalds and Pepsi, I leave that to Michael Jackson."

The Fly

Riff Raff

July, 1993

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!