Jamiroquai
By All Music Guide
By All Music Guide
Kays home demos caught the attention of the record label Acid Jazz, which issued Jamiroquais debut single When You Gonna Learn? in late 1992. With Kay enlisting the help of others (Jamiroquais best-known lineup included drummer Derrick McKenzie, keyboard player Toby Smith, bassist Stuart Zender, and vibraphonist Wallis Buchanan), the single was a success and was soon followed by a long-term and lucrative recording contract with Sony. Jamiroquais full-length debut, Emergency on Planet Earth, followed in 1993 and became a major hit in their native England (peaking at number one on the charts), spawning such Top Ten hit singles as Too Young to Die and Blow Your Mind. The bands second release, The Return of the Space Cowboy in 1995, managed to steer Jamiroquai clear of the sophomore jinx that affects so many up-and-coming bands by out-selling its predecessor in Europe and was a sizeable hit in Japan, as well.
With most of the world dancing to Jamiroquais beat, America was next in line for the bands third effort, 1996s Traveling Without Moving. The album spawned the worldwide hit Virtual Insanity, for which an award-winning video was filmed and helped the album achieve platinum status in the States by the years end (as well as a highlighted performance at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards). Despite achieving breakthrough success, bassist Zender opted to leave the group during sessions for its follow-up, which resulted in Kay scraping almost an entire albums worth of new tracks in order to start from scratch with a new bassist (the slot would eventually go to newcomer Nick Fyffe). During the downtime, Jamiroquai contributed a brand-new track, Deeper Underground, to the soundtrack for the 1998 movie Godzilla.
But the long wait between albums seemed to kill Jamiroquais momentum in the U.S., where a fourth release overall, 1999s Synkronized, was largely ignored (yet back home and across the globe, it was another major commercial success). Subsequently, it appeared as though the majority of Jamiroquais U.S. media attention focused on non-music related events, such as the band turning down a million-dollar offer to play at a concert on New Years Eve 1999, and when Kay was accused of assaulting a tabloid photographer (with the charges later being dropped). It didnt take Jamiroquai as long the next time around to issue another album, with A Funk Odyssey hitting the racks two years later in 2001. Kay also helmed a volume in the mix-album series Late Night Tales. From there, Jamiroquai spent the next two years gathering material for a sixth studio album. Dynamite, which was finally released in 2005, was written and recorded in Spain, Italy, Costa Rica, Scotland, New York, Los Angeles and Jamiroquais own Buckinghamshire studio.
