BlahBlahCafe - Jean-Michel Jarre forum

06/04/2022
Via Houston Chronicle

This day in history, April 6, 1986: The day after 'Rendez-vous Houston'

Laser beams and visual images were projected as high as 70 stories on several Houston skyscrapers. A stunning fireworks display accompanied the performance of “Rendezvous Houston: A City In Concert,” at the Houston International Festival on April, 5, 1986, featured Jean-Michel Jarre's music.

Houstonians this Sunday morning in 1986 were probably waking up and wondering, "Did that really happen last night?"

About a million had converged just west of downtown for Jean-Michel Jarre's "Rendez-Vous Houston: A City in Concert," which was part of the annual Houston Festival at the time. It was billed as a celebration of NASA's 25 years of human spaceflight and the Texas sesquicentennial.

When all was said it done it set a then-Guinness record for the largest rock concert in history.

Source: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/h ... 059656.php

I'm still rather fond of the bass "mess-up" during Oxygene 4 in this gig

Well, fond of the bassline from this version overall

In a recent episode of Let’s Talk on Houston City Beat, host Mike Acosta interviewed Rochella Cooper, a woman whose indelible mark on Houston’s cultural history still resonates. Rochella shared her journey to Houston, her leadership in the Houston Festival, and her audacious feat of bringing Jean-Michel Jarre’s Rendez-Vous Houston: A City in Concert to life in 1986. This spectacle, celebrating Texas and Houston’s Sesquicentennial and NASA’s 25th anniversary, became a defining moment for a city reeling from economic hardship—a testament to Houston’s can-do spirit and a tribute to the Space Shuttle Challenger astronauts.

Fantastic interview

She's a wonderful character, full of stories. Mike Costa is a good interviewer, but I wish he'd let her talk more with fewer interruptions. She had so much more to say!

I hadn’t heard about Rochella before, her name hasn’t come up before for me. I knew about Kathy Whitmire, the Mayor of Houston had a hand in bringing Jean-Michel Jarre to Houston, but Rochella seems to have had the main role in making the show happen.

Interesting that his first idea was big screen set up around downtown, but she wanted something more ambitious and only when she took him on a helicopter ride did he start to think big. She should have stuck with him as part of his team! She’s amazing!

I love the fact they she ran research with the local population about what Houston means to them to inspire the programme for Houston Festival ’86 and the two key messages were “Arts and Technology” and those two words became the basis for the show – perfect!

Rochella says that she saw a film of the Concerts in China that gave her the idea to invite JMJ and refers to “fireworks coming off buildings” but that must be a hazy recollection because all the 1982 China shows were indoors. Perhaps she saw a mix of China and Concorde?

She says film-maker Bradford Thomas is putting together a "behind the scenes" documentary about Rendezvous Houston - that should be great! By when will this be ready? Next year, perhaps, the 40th anniversary of the show?

No crime that night, and the mesmerising effect of the show, people talking about it for weeks later, like in the grocery store “Did you see the show?” – this is something JMJ has talked about with his shows, and features in the La Défense photobook insert interview, that his shows bring people together in an age when they don’t even know their neighbours.

When he was planning Docklands in the years after Houston, the London councils were worried about crime, and I recall Charlotte Rampling saying that the authorities should stop thinking about a JMJ show like a rock or pop concert – and the disorder that can come with these events – and instead think of it like an opera.

I wasn't aware of her before the weekend either but I think I saw her in this video giving a interview very briefly (if it's not this video then it will be a very the user has linked on that page).
There is also some other footage I hadn't seen before.

At 10'17" in that YouTube.... Christine Durand wearing a purple hat dancing to Oxygene Pt 2 while dry ice blows behind her: absolutely epic!

One other detail I hadn't paid attention to before: Rendezvous (the album) was only released a few days before the Houston show, so no time for radio airplay to generate audience familarity with the Rendezvous tracks as performed live, and no chance for the public to listen at home either. Everything will have been new and a surprise, including much of the music. Imagine hearing Rendezvous 4 for the VERY FIRST TIME with lights, lasers and fireworks across a kilometre wide city skyline. That experience will never leave you.

Chrono93 wrote: Mon Apr 07, 2025 12:07 pm I wasn't aware of her before the weekend either but I think I saw her in this video giving a interview very briefly (if it's not this video then it will be a very the user has linked on that page).
There is also some other footage I hadn't seen before.

The correct video is this one. She appears at 2'50"

JMJ's most emotive concert.

If there is one music concert in history of humanity I would like to been to it would been this.