 |
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
jgrizz
Joined: 12 Jan 2005
Posts: 1049
Location: Claremont/Southern California/USA
|
 Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2010 18:47 |
 |
|
Anyone read the 'NEW' Biography on the Jamiro.com website?
| Quote: |
Biography
JAMIROQUAI THE OFFICIAL BIOG: 2010
Jay Kay has a few rules. He didn’t get where he is – single after single walloping into the charts (over 20 of them to date), murdering on the dancefloor; 25 million copies sold of Jamiroquai’s seven albums (including 2006’s greatest hits); a career lasting (so far) an era-defying 18 years – by being vague, or slack.
First off, when he’s writing songs, “if it doesn’t sound good with just a keyboard and a voice or a guitar and a voice, drop it.” All the best producers and musicians in the world – and Jay Kay knows of what he speaks when it comes to killer compadres – and no matter how golden the funk groove, none of it will make a ho-hum song anything special. But get the base tune right and he’s off…
Similarly, freshly turned 40 and with a brand-new record deal, he’s all about keeping it straightforward. Or, as he puts it with typical blunt-speaking and sharp-thinking: “Stop fucking trying to make it too confusing! I’m a real sucker for going, ‘oh, it’s not very deep, that lyric…’” admits the man with a long-term interest in ecology, religion, space and futurology (and, for sure, in cars and helicopters). “But hold on a minute – some of the best songs in history are simple. Listen to some more Stevie Wonder – ‘all in love is fair, two people play the game…’ It’s not brain-wrenching stuff! But it is heart-wrenching stuff. Sometimes it doesn’t matter if you’re singing, ‘the cow sat on the top of the hill’. If you deliver it right, it works. Golden rule!” he sniffs matter-of-factly.
Some more: No more videos with flashing squares – when you’ve made as many iconic clips as Jay Kay has, from now on he wants to make videos that are more like short films. And yeah, if that means he can call in his chopper and show off his newly-qualified-pilot skills, cool.
Don’t over-analyse in the studio.“What I have done with this record, to stop myself getting bored and then making the wrong call on stuff – ‘oh, I don’t like that any more!’ – is record a song, get it to a certain level, then not listen to it for two months. And then when you go back to it you’re like, ‘ooh great…’”
Don’t over-expose yourself. Yes, Jay Kay had his high-times in the press, in ways good and bad. But better now to let the music do the talking – and to spend time making sure that music is spot-on. That said, it is five years since his last studio album, Dynamite, and four since his greatest hits collection, High Times: Singles 1992-2006. “We are on the line,” he admits with characteristic candour. “If we didn’t get this new album out now, we’d be in the realm of people saying, ‘oh yeah, I kinda remember those guys...’”
Jamiroquai – Jay Kay and his band of time-served musician-teammates – are back. The blistering, poetic, meaty, reflective and inspiring Rock Dust Light Star, his seventh studio album and his first for new label Mercury, is the result of two years’ work. Although admittedly, in that time Jay Kay also learnt how to fly helicopters, a hugely arduous and mentally challenging undertaking.
The album came together at Jay Kay’s home studio in Buckinghamshire; at the legendary Hook EndManor in Oxfordshire ‘best recording gear in the country’, say the album’s young co-producers (along with Jay Kay himself), Charlie Russell and Brad Spence; and in Thailand.
“Why Thailand?” muses Jay Kay. “Bit of a treat for the boys. Otherwise, no particular reason. No, I tell you why! The studio there had exactly the same mixing desk as we’ve got at home, and it was less expensive to go there, food, all-in, everything included, than it was to carry on at Hook End and sit in miserable British February drizzle.”
The epic single, sun-kissed Californian ballad Blue Skies, with its lush string arrangement and emotive vocal, and I’ve Been Hurting (Led Zep riffs meets Donny Hathaway vibes), both showcase a new side of Jay Kay’s voice. The recording of the latter, a brilliantly minimal song, with electric guitar and electrifying voice trading licks, “was the classic half-a-bottle-of-Scotch, 60-fags-at-two-in-the morning job. It works!”
Beyond that (you might say) Method vocal, “I have been using my voice a bit differently, more laidback maybe. I’ve slowed down on it a bit. You’ve got to grow with the music.”
The first taster of the new album is White Knuckle Ride, a rattling synth-disco tune, whose genesis dates back a few years. “It developed over a period of time. But lyrically, the main part of it, once I was on it, it was 15, 20 minutes really.”
It is, he says “a cautionary tale - be careful what you wish for”, his fleet-footed take on his experiences in the “business”, but equally applicable to anyone’s life in these pressure-cooker times.
“And, the nice thing about it is, it’s live. Everything on the record is live. It’s a real band record. The last record, fantastic – but we would play it in the studio, then it would get snipped it up into sections. ‘Can we just move the snare across a millisecond?’ The whole thing became very sterile,” says this intuitively self-critical writer-performer – instincts that have helped him sustain his musical progress, and his sanity. “So this time we said, it’s gotta be live. Why you feel it building all the time is because it’s getting stronger and stronger. You’ve got something to flow off when you’re doing the adlibs, like on stage.”
There’s more candour in the blues-reggae Goodbye To My Dancer. “It’s sort of based on someone I know, but it’s been switched around a bit. But yeah, a girl I used to go out with, then she got married…” It contains elements of “that bitterness you’re left with when you’re left out in the cold. And yeah, it’s a bit naughty, a bit cheeky.”
One thing that hasn’t changed over the years is the no-holds-barred, informed and opinionated mind of Jay. The album title track – a vibey party tune with a pointed message – came about during a Far East tour.
|
|
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Rita
Joined: 29 Dec 2008
Posts: 510
Location: Portugal
|
| Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2010 14:47 |
|
|
i read it on the official universal music site
_________________
jamiroquai music is like the air...you need it to live
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
cosmic lola
Joined: 13 Nov 2004
Posts: 214
Location: Madrid
|
| Posted: Fri Sep 03, 2010 13:54 |
|
|
Yes, I lissen and I think is like a interview, more interesting wich only a biography.
_________________
Planet Home is blue and green |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
HoneyBee
Joined: 21 Jul 2010
Posts: 673
|
| Posted: Thu Oct 14, 2010 16:56 |
|
|
All good. But I think Sola's & Rob's bio are good ones to read. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Jamirocat
Joined: 29 Feb 2004
Posts: 282
Location: deeper underground
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
flender
Joined: 15 Mar 2010
Posts: 15
|
| Posted: Mon Jul 04, 2011 14:29 |
|
|
come to thailandddddd arrrrrrrrr |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Jamirocat
Joined: 29 Feb 2004
Posts: 282
Location: deeper underground
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2011 02:49 |
|
|
Re: Anyone read the 'NEW' Biography on the Jamiro.com websit
| jgrizz wrote: |
| Quote: |
Biography
JAMIROQUAI THE OFFICIAL BIOG: 2010
Jay Kay has a few rules. He didn’t get where he is – single after single walloping into the charts (over 20 of them to date), murdering on the dancefloor; 25 million copies sold of Jamiroquai’s seven albums (including 2006’s greatest hits); a career lasting (so far) an era-defying 18 years – by being vague, or slack.
First off, when he’s writing songs, “if it doesn’t sound good with just a keyboard and a voice or a guitar and a voice, drop it.” All the best producers and musicians in the world – and Jay Kay knows of what he speaks when it comes to killer compadres – and no matter how golden the funk groove, none of it will make a ho-hum song anything special. But get the base tune right and he’s off…
Similarly, freshly turned 40 and with a brand-new record deal, he’s all about keeping it straightforward. Or, as he puts it with typical blunt-speaking and sharp-thinking: “Stop fucking trying to make it too confusing! I’m a real sucker for going, ‘oh, it’s not very deep, that lyric…’” admits the man with a long-term interest in ecology, religion, space and futurology (and, for sure, in cars and helicopters). “But hold on a minute – some of the best songs in history are simple. Listen to some more Stevie Wonder – ‘all in love is fair, two people play the game…’ It’s not brain-wrenching stuff! But it is heart-wrenching stuff. Sometimes it doesn’t matter if you’re singing, ‘the cow sat on the top of the hill’. If you deliver it right, it works. Golden rule!” he sniffs matter-of-factly.
Some more: No more videos with flashing squares – when you’ve made as many iconic clips as Jay Kay has, from now on he wants to make videos that are more like short films. And yeah, if that means he can call in his chopper and show off his newly-qualified-pilot skills, cool.
Don’t over-analyse in the studio.“What I have done with this record, to stop myself getting bored and then making the wrong call on stuff – ‘oh, I don’t like that any more!’ – is record a song, get it to a certain level, then not listen to it for two months. And then when you go back to it you’re like, ‘ooh great…’”
Don’t over-expose yourself. Yes, Jay Kay had his high-times in the press, in ways good and bad. But better now to let the music do the talking – and to spend time making sure that music is spot-on. That said, it is five years since his last studio album, Dynamite, and four since his greatest hits collection, High Times: Singles 1992-2006. “We are on the line,” he admits with characteristic candour. “If we didn’t get this new album out now, we’d be in the realm of people saying, ‘oh yeah, I kinda remember those guys...’”
Jamiroquai – Jay Kay and his band of time-served musician-teammates – are back. The blistering, poetic, meaty, reflective and inspiring Rock Dust Light Star, his seventh studio album and his first for new label Mercury, is the result of two years’ work. Although admittedly, in that time Jay Kay also learnt how to fly helicopters, a hugely arduous and mentally challenging undertaking.
The album came together at Jay Kay’s home studio in Buckinghamshire; at the legendary Hook EndManor in Oxfordshire ‘best recording gear in the country’, say the album’s young co-producers (along with Jay Kay himself), Charlie Russell and Brad Spence; and in Thailand.
“Why Thailand?” muses Jay Kay. “Bit of a treat for the boys. Otherwise, no particular reason. No, I tell you why! The studio there had exactly the same mixing desk as we’ve got at home, and it was less expensive to go there, food, all-in, everything included, than it was to carry on at Hook End and sit in miserable British February drizzle.”
The epic single, sun-kissed Californian ballad Blue Skies, with its lush string arrangement and emotive vocal, and I’ve Been Hurting (Led Zep riffs meets Donny Hathaway vibes), both showcase a new side of Jay Kay’s voice. The recording of the latter, a brilliantly minimal song, with electric guitar and electrifying voice trading licks, “was the classic half-a-bottle-of-Scotch, 60-fags-at-two-in-the morning job. It works!”
Beyond that (you might say) Method vocal, “I have been using my voice a bit differently, more laidback maybe. I’ve slowed down on it a bit. You’ve got to grow with the music.”
The first taster of the new album is White Knuckle Ride, a rattling synth-disco tune, whose genesis dates back a few years. “It developed over a period of time. But lyrically, the main part of it, once I was on it, it was 15, 20 minutes really.”
It is, he says “a cautionary tale - be careful what you wish for”, his fleet-footed take on his experiences in the “business”, but equally applicable to anyone’s life in these pressure-cooker times.
“And, the nice thing about it is, it’s live. Everything on the record is live. It’s a real band record. The last record, fantastic – but we would play it in the studio, then it would get snipped it up into sections. ‘Can we just move the snare across a millisecond?’ The whole thing became very sterile,” says this intuitively self-critical writer-performer – instincts that have helped him sustain his musical progress, and his sanity. “So this time we said, it’s gotta be live. Why you feel it building all the time is because it’s getting stronger and stronger. You’ve got something to flow off when you’re doing the adlibs, like on stage.”
There’s more candour in the blues-reggae Goodbye To My Dancer. “It’s sort of based on someone I know, but it’s been switched around a bit. But yeah, a girl I used to go out with, then she got married…” It contains elements of “that bitterness you’re left with when you’re left out in the cold. And yeah, it’s a bit naughty, a bit cheeky.”
One thing that hasn’t changed over the years is the no-holds-barred, informed and opinionated mind of Jay. The album title track – a vibey party tune with a pointed message – came about during a Far East tour.
|
|
thanks for posting this. yes! I don't login to that site much as i forgot the password. and yes yes to all the bios of the bandmembers. I met someone's mum at the airport... She noticed the Jamiroquai sticker on my passport. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group
|
Editorial
Search
Memberlist
Register
Profile
Private messages
Log in
