Jean Michel Jarre - Music For Supermarkets (1983)

This really is an album that I wish existed, as once it did, and now it doesn't. I'm sure most people know the story of this recording, but for those who don't I'll recap. Jean Michel Jarre had received massive acclaim in 1976 and 1978 for his 'Oxygene' and 'Equinox' albums and after the follow-up 'The Magnetic Fields' album and a live recording from a concert in China, he was at the height of his success. Some artist friends of his were putting together an exhibition, where items from an ordinary shop would be shown in a different light and then auctioned off, and they needed some music for the exhibition, which Jarre agreed to compose for them. Somewhere along the line, he realised that he too could participate in the exhibition if he released an album of the music in a single copy, which could be auctioned off like the other pieces. Francis Dreyfus, president of Jarre's record company, agreed to do this - a lone voice amongst the horrified protests of the rest of the company - and Jarre announced the auction. Immediately there was a clamour from the press and public to hear at least some of the music before it was sold, and so Jarre agreed to play the album once on the radio before the master plates were destroyed, but he chose to play it on an AM radio station, which is why all bootleg copies are such poor quality, and when the DJ announced side one of the album Jarre played side two(!) - it's never been decided it this was a deliberate joke or not. The album was sold for $9,000.00 in 1983, and has never been heard properly since, although a couple of pieces have turned up on subsequent albums in a reworked form.

Track listing

01 Music For Supermarkets 1
02 Music For Supermarkets 2
03 Music For Supermarkets 3
04 Music For Supermarkets 4
05 Music For Supermarkets 5
06 Music For Supermarkets 6
07 Music For Supermarkets 7
08 Music For Supermarkets 8

Now for the surprise.......this isn't the badly recorded AM broadcast of the album, but a note-for-note remake by Nordlead313 which was posted online some time ago, and which I've only just discovered. It's highly regarded by fan blogs as the closest to the original 'Music For Supermarkets' that's yet been attempted, and at last we can hear in pristine quality what that successful buyer hears when he plays it (as if!). 

If you do want to hear the original broadcast to compare it then that's posted as well. Someone's done a good job in trying to clean it up, but it's still not that great.

....and when Discogs lists this as a limited edition, for once they are telling the literal truth.