MTV Interview - Music For Supermarkets - Jean Michel Jarre

A SINGLE RECORD July 6th : public sale of a new album which I recorded from February to May 1983 and which has been pressed in one single copy officially verified by a notary. A single copy for a single buyer, like a painting with a single owner. Following the auction, the record will be broadcast on the radio one time only in its entirety. That will be the only chance to hear it, except naturally, for the potential buyer. In a time when everything is standardised, overbroadcast, a time when we are endlessly overinformed, saturated with sounds and images, it seemed to me worthwhile to demonstrate that a record is not only a piece of merchandise without value, infinately multipliable, but it can be, like a painter's picture or a sculptor's bronze, an integral part of a musician's creation. Francis Dreyfus, President of my recording company, has accepted the challenge of introducing a single album outside the usual channels, and in this way he shows that a business can be creative, can recognize the artist's identity and even be humouristic about it. About one of his paintings, called "Discs in the City" Fernand Léger said "A work of art must stand the comparison with any manufactured object". I would rather say today that the progress of technology will put us in the opposite situation : step by step, manufactured objects will stand the comparison with works of art. "Music For Supermarkets" accompanied the Orrimbe show at the Jean-Claude Riedel gallery from June 2 to 30 1983. Hurray for supermarkets! Our environment is a supermarket : cross-breeding of merchandise, blending of consumer and cashier, everything is for sale, everything is commonplace, everything fades, everything is altering - our food, our language, our roots. The supermarkets may well be the galleries and the museums of tomorrow. The music for everybody can also be the music for each of us individually. Jean Michel Jarre