Jamiroquai
It’s quite an achievement to make jazz sound more pretentious.
I had a crush on a girl once. She came to my 6th form, from a different school, liked indie music, but her boyfriend at the 6th form college up the road (the one where you needed all A’s to get in), loved this new acid jazz band Jamiroquai. She was dating the cool guy in town, I must have been the geek. The lead singer could dance and the music was just, well, funky. Hold on, no he couldn’t and no, it wasn’t.
The thing about bad jazz is that it takes the same series of chords and improvises around them without actually getting anywhere. Musically, it goes round and round and round. Bad acid jazz does that on speed with a bloody ridiculous hat as a bonus. Jamiroquai managed that for fourteen years. Let me repeat that. Four-teen years! That’s one hell of a bad trip.
Its almost as if the dancing and the hat were a deliberate distraction, to divert you from your realisation that the tune was a rehash of the last single. Although other bands are guilty (step forward Chilli Peppers), Jamiroquai just aren’t apologetic enough to try alternatives. Which speaks volumes of those willing to fork out for another album.
As for the lead singer. Well, they say a sports car is just a symbolic extension of a man’s personals. Jay Kay, it seems, needs a fleet. And on reading this, it seems he has found someone to hold it too http://funkin.com/the_band/cars/
It boils down to this. Anyone, with any sense, knew from the start they were overblown, unecessary, arrogant peddlers of tripe, led by a guy apparently so far up his own arse that he had to find crazy hats to hide the evidence. And fourteen years on I’ve no reason to change that view.
Everyone currently loves Jay Z. Oh, Jay Kay, so close yet so far.
