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Jamiroquai

Formed.

1992

Group Members.

 Jason Kay - vocals
Stuart Zender - bass guitar
Toby Graffety-Smith - keyboards
Derrick McKenzie - drums
Wallis Buchanan - didgeridoo
Simon Katz - guitar
Sola Akingbola - percussion
Adrian Revell - flute and saxophone
Martin Shaw - trumpet
Winston Rollins - trombone
Darren Galea a.k.a. DJ D-Zire - turntables

Former Members.

 Nick Van Gelder - drums
Andrew Levy - bass
Simon Bartholomew - guitar

Quotes.

"At the rate we're going we've got 10 years to turn this world's head around. I can only think of the worst if we don't. But somehow inside I know we can . . . Know which side you're standing on, don't let people tell you you're wrong when you know you're right. If you do, we may all regret it, because it will all be over. I think it's time we had a Revolution." - Jason Kay, 1993

Description:

Spreading the Word:
Jamiroquai's Domination of Planet Earth

Jamiroquai burst onto the music scene in London in late 1992. On the strength of one single, "When You Gonna Learn," released on the eponymous label Acid Jazz, Jason Kay, the front-man and alter-ego of Jamiroquai with the sultry-sweet voice was signed to an almost unheard of eight record deal with Sony. Kay, then just 23, surrounded himself with equally superb - and equally young - musicians. He gathered together bassist Stuart Zender, the baby of the group, barely 19, keyboard player Toby Smith, his good friends Darren "DJ D-Zire" Galea and Wallis Buchanan, who plays the Australian aboriginal instrument, the yidaki (aka the didgeridoo), and drummer Nick Van Gelder, to create the entity now known as Jamiroquai.

Released in June 1993, Jamiroquai's debut album, Emergency on Planet Earth, was a funky alternative to much of what was going on in contemporary pop, dance, and R&B music. Jamiroquai were the first of the acid jazz acts to get signed by a major label and make it big. After "When You Gonna Learn" hit the UK charts in October 1992, Jamiroquai followed it up with progressively more successful singles; in March 1993, "Too Young to Die" reached #15 and in June, "Blow Your Mind" reached #10. A few weeks later Emergency leapt onto the UK charts, selling 100,000 copies in its first week of release, entering at #1, remaining at that position for three weeks and spending a total of 21 straight weeks on the charts.

Jamiroquai's immediate popularity was not difficult to explain. The band's sound was urgent and raw, straight from the streets. Jay was mouthy, maybe a little naive as the press was ready to impute, but certainly sincere. When he crooned in that (Stevie) Wonder-ous voice, "A revolution is the only way that we can change change change / I wanna fight the power" you knew-- you felt-- he meant it. Kay took on everyone and everything in his songs and his liner notes, searching for a Robin Hood for our times and then assuming those very duties himself by promising to donate a portion of the album's proceeds to Greenpeace. Kay was calling for awareness and responsibility, not just about the environment, but as a credo, a politics, and a way of life.

Kay wanted us to change the way we live our lives and the epicentre of this change was London, Jamiroquai's homebase. London was an exciting place to be the summer of 1993. Subway-size posters emblazoned with the buffalo man-- Jamiroquai's distinctive and endearing logo-- were plastered everywhere. Kay himself was also everywhere, mostly getting slagged by the press. Journalists gave Kay a hard time for his political and social views, accusing him of spouting clichés and teasing him about his concern for the environment. Reviewers over-emphasised Kay's vocal resemblance to Wonder and seized upon his often outlandish headgear. ("Cat-in-hat" was Kay's moniker in the press.) A "punny" piece In London's Time Out claimed that Kay ("the milliner's friend") would be "hair today, gone tomorrow." But Kay fought back, promising in the liner notes to Emergency "backlash next week."

Nothing the press said really mattered, though. Jamiroquai delivered the musical goods. The band brought back an intensity and a consciousness largely missing from music since the 70's. The songs of Emergency list a masala of social ills, from depletion of the world's natural resources, drug addiction, corrupt politicians and governments, and racial inequality, to name a few. True, as journalists were quick to point out, these issues may seem less urgent or less imposing today than the war in Vietnam or the civil rights movement in America did in the 1960's and 70's which served as the impetus for the music of many black American R&B artists of the 70's, including, especially, Marvin Gaye's seminal work What's Going On (1971). But that is Kay's precise point. "We gotta wake this world up from its sleep," Kay sings in "When You Gonna Learn." Emergency is a literal wake-up call, picking up right where Gaye left off twenty years before; Gaye asked "what's going on" and Kay begged us all to "stop it going on."

The next year the band's sophomore release, The Return of the Space Cowboy, arrived to great critical acclaim and popularity nearly equaling their debut release. Drummer Van Gelder had left Jamiroquai and Derrick McKenzie stepped in to more than fill his shoes. ("What a difference a Derrick makes," Kay would later quip.) Return has a kind of spacey energy unique in contemporary music, but definitely reminiscent of Kay's 70's influences. (Check Gaye's tune, "A Funky Space Reincarnation" from Here, My Dear (1978) for the roots of "Light Years" and Earth Wind & Fire's single "September" for the source of the "badeyahs" peppered throughout "Mr. Moon.")

Despite the complaints Kay would make later about the production of Return being rushed, the individual tracks work together to build a truly solid album. Less fervently political and less angry than Emergency, the sound of Return is more intimate and more introspective. Return is permeated by an unconquerable survival instinct, sometimes manifesting itself as contentment bordering on joie de vivre. In the superb "Stillness in Time" Kay expresses an affirmation of the potential bounty of life singing, "Anything you give me today / I will be thankful for." Live audiences' perennial favourite, "Mr. Moon," finds Kay discovering peace and harmony when the "stars and moon synchronise" above him. Clearly Kay had found his place in the cosmos and planted himself squarely in it. In "Light Years," Kay invokes the ideals of brotherhood and "duty to assistance"; if Kay had found satisfaction for himself, he was ready to give a voice to others who aren't so lucky. In a trilogy of songs ("The Kids," "Just Another Story," and "Scam") Kay describes the plight of a kind of lost generation, displaced and driven to great lengths to make a place for themselves in the world. The album's most political track, "Manifest Destiny," is a poignant coming-to-terms with Kay's inherited responsibility for the atrocities committed by colonialists against native peoples, including the native American Iroquois Confederation, from whom, of course, the name "Jamiroquai" is derived. Return urges us all to live life with empowerment and responsibility.

Although in two years Jamiroquai had released two highly successful albums, Jamiroquai had really begun to make a name for themselves by playing live gigs. Jam is what they do best and, when they play live, they're stripped down, no strings, minimal back-up vocals, exuding only pure funk energy. When they're good, they're very good. Kay's mouthiness really works on-stage; he knows how to work a crowd, simultaneously working up a good sweat with some of his signature dance moves. Even though many journalists seem to consider Kay and company whipping-boys, reviews of their live shows concur: Jamiroquai are consummate entertainers. And although the press would have us think that Jason Kay and Jamiroquai are synonymous, Jamiroquai concerts are not, by any means, one-man shows. Kay is careful to draw attention to his ensemble, giving each member of his ten-piece band his chance in the spotlight, from D-Zire's scratches on the turntables to the horn section's tight solos to Sola Akingbola's stint at the front of the stage on the Bata drums. And then there's Wallis Buchanan, who, when he's not wowing the audience with his breath-taking circular breathing techniques on the yidaki, steals the show by busting some Australian aboriginal moves and schmoozing with the front rows. Often accused of being "retro" or, in less kind terms, "derivative," in concert Kay and company pay homage to their predecessors by covering their classic tunes. They have performed Weldon Irvine's "We Getting Down," Wonder's "Signed, Sealed, Delivered," Roy Ayers' "Don't Stop the Feeling" and "Coffy is the Color," and Kool & the Gang's "Hollywood Swinging" just to name a few. Kay's on-stage personality is impossible to resist. Although he's a mesmerising showman, Kay is disarmingly humble in concert; in September 1995 at Chicago's Metro, after performing a cover of Ayers' "Don't Stop the Feeling," Kay paused, his head tilted off to the side and reflected, "I wish we could write one like that." Most Jamiroquai fans think that they already have.

In September 1996, Jamiroquai released the exceedingly slick and very danceable Travelling Without Moving, which would prove to be their breakthrough album. Not so raw as Emergency nor so smooth as Return, Travelling, and particularly all the press surrounding it, show Kay living out Glam rock star fantasies. Girls, music, drugs, and, most importantly, cars. The cover art for Travelling adapts the Ferrari logo and the album's title track, in which we can hear the engine noise from Kay's own Lamborghini Diablo, is a love song dedicated to a car. The album is also filled with more "traditional" love songs. But Travelling isn't all about living out glamorous fantasies of speed and sex. The album shows us that both have their darker sides, namely breakdowns and break-ups, respectively. As the album's title suggests, Travelling Without Moving explores life in a state of stagnation, with heartache and frustration as the results. The deceptively titled "You Are My Love" describes the object of Kay's affection as having "serpents snaked around [her] hair" and the cloyingly joyous, disco-influenced "Cosmic Girl" is, after all, about an earthling in love with a woman "from another galaxy" (a long distance relationship, for sure). Reminiscent of the revolutionary fervour of Emergency, the vaguely Luddite "Virtual Insanity" decries technology-gone-mad and "High Times" cautions against addiction to hard-core drugs.

Despite its dark undertones, the album is far from being grim or pessimistic. Travelling is about what it means to have hopes and dreams in an impossibly flawed world. Travelling is about desperation, but also about the possibility of redemption and spiritual growth. "I know that we can make it happen," Kay assures his lady-love in "Spend a Lifetime." And in "Use the Force," Kay's own personal mantra is "I must believe / I can do anything." It is an album for the end of the century, indeed, the end of the millennium. Travelling displays an unrelenting faith in life on this planet and celebrates a kind of 1990's patience. Some versions of Travelling end with the raucous "bonus" track, "Funktion." Kay describes the track, done in one take, as "a bit o' fun." His voice is at its best on the track, pulling off a bit of a Bootsy Collins sound, even dropping a Bootsy-esque lyric, describing his dance partner's perfume as "boogalicious." "Funktion" ends the album on a real up vibe, reminding us that the best cure for stagnation is to "get loose" and "swing it to the music." Travelling is the soundtrack to do help us do just that.

For many years wildly popular in the UK, the rest of Europe, and Japan, Jamiroquai have just begun to conquer the United States, in Kay's words "the final frontier." In the UK, Kay is (and has been for quite a while) a gutter news headline king. And in Japan, television viewers can find Kay schlepping Sony Mini-Discs in commercials. But the US has been much slower to embrace the sounds of acid jazz in general and Jamiroquai in particular. However, the signs of Jamiroquai's mainstream acceptance in the US are undeniable. Jamiroquai have shown up at musical festivals thrown by Chicago's WKQX and Washington DC's WHFS alongside "alternative" rockers Beck, Bjork, and their ilk. Jamiroquai was also the most-nominated artist at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards, garnering ten nominations for their ingenuous video "Virtual Insanity" including-- strangely for a band that's been around for half a decade-- a nomination in the "Best New Artist" category. They took home four awards, including one for "Breakthrough Video" and also, in the biggest coup, the coveted "Best Video of the Year."

In the past Kay has dreamed of writing "that tune that sits amongst the greats." Now, with their savvy that has come with experience and maturity, combined with their sheer talent, not to mention good looks, sincerity, charm, and real style, Jamiroquai are poised to make Kay's dream come true. And now, with the whole world listening, Kay's wish may become real beyond Jamiroquai's wildest dreams.

Description from Kara Reuter, September 1997

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