I just heard Virtual Insanity on my playlist and I forgot all about how brilliant that song was. I heard that they are a very group that do many diverse things with their sound. Someone told me to start with the Traveling Without Moving album, and then someone else said that A Funk Odyssey and The Return of The Space Cowboy were their best albums. Where should I begin?

All there albums have good and bad.
Traveling without moving is probably their best with a Funk Odessey running a close second! But it does become a bit repetative after a while!

check out the songs

"Seven Days in Sunny June"

"Little L"

"Dynamite"

get The Return of the Spacecowboy if only for this track...

http://www.youtube.com/wa...-HZJBaM9hI

fav song by them ever!

My favorite Jamiroquai album is 'A Funk Odyssey' so I recommend that you start there.Songs like "Little L","Love Foolosophy","Picture Of My Life" and "Corner Of The Earth" are classic Jamiroquai,imo.This is my favorite album from this decade.

They have a Greatest Hits.

DieTaylorDie said:

Yeah,that might be a cool place to start.

Well, since virtual insanity is your starting point, then maybe listen to the above. If you want the inspired, tight, fun-loving, funkfilled, bestest-warm-sounding-music, organic, real-bass-playing music from a band called Jamiroquai, start with the first two albums, chronologically. And leave it at that.

Emergency on planet earth
Return of the space cowboy

If you're looking for the bland, feel-good, disco-pop that made them famous go for traveling without moving. All the rest is more of the same. The sharp turn could be because of bass-player Stuart Zender who left the band after the first two wrecka's to have more time for his 'All Saints' girlfriend. Stuart is now a part of Mark Ronson's live band.

Sander said:

Make that after the third record.

silverchild said:

If you dig this...

http://www.youtube.com/wa...udrLmxijOE

then get their first 3 cd's....."Emergency on Planet Earth," "Return of the Space Cowboy," and "Travelling Without Moving." All 3 are excellent! On the soul/funk/jazzy tip.

emilio319 said:

Loved seeing that again. Funny guy Jason is!

Oh, and, yeah, what emilio said!

name edit..
[Edited 4/15/08 8:21am]

I like that "Space Cowboy" video I remember it was banned from MTV because of the drug references.

emilio319 said:

'Synchronized' is the album that turned me into a diehard Jamiroquai fan.

"Planet Home"

"Canned Heat"

"Where Do We Go From Here?"

"Falling"

SoulAlive said:

I love "Falling." That's my favorite song on that cd.

emilio319 said:

it's a beautiful song I also like the other slow song "Butterfly".

speaking of 'Synchronized',there are alot of interesting details about that album.It's a popular topic on the Jamiroquai forums.Did you know that...

***The album was originally recorded with bassist Stuart Zander but he left the band soon thereafter.To avoid legal issues,the entire album had to be re-recorded with a new bassist after Stuart Zander departed.

***Jay wanted this album to include a duet with his hero Stevie Wonder,to be produced by Quincy Jones.He also wanted Roy Ayers to make a guest appearance on the album.Everybody agreed but alas,it never happened.

***More than 20 songs were recorded for the album.Many of the outtakes have been circulating for years.Here's a clip that supposedly contains unreleased demos from the album:

ironicly his BEST album per se is DYNAMITE-all strong jams

normally his albums havent been that cohesive-but you cant go wrong with THE BEST OF

the man fuckin rocks and is criminally underrated

also check out PLEASE the space cowboy remixes

jonylawson said:

You really think so? I like 'Dynamite' alot and the high points are amazing ("Seven Days In Sunny June","Starchild",the title track) but I don't think it holds together very well.It's not as tight and focused as the previous album 'A Funk Odyssey'.

SoulAlive said:

its realy weird as jamiroqui is a band i buy no matter what

bought dynmaite-thought it was very average-then came back to it and came back to it and DANG! out of all his albums its the one i play the most

i think its his most COHESIVE album-definatly hasnt got his best songs on but as an album its up there

jonylawson said:

I'm gonna pull it out and play it very soon.Summer's almost here,and I like to play "Seven Days In Sunny June" during the month of June

Aha, now I understand why the later albums get all the high praise here:

"America was next in line for the band's third effort, 1996's 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 year's end" (allmusic.com)

America missed the first two album altogether and only knows him for his plastic disco stuff. Shame, they're missing the best. Oh well...

On Stuart Zender:
"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 album's worth of new tracks in order to start from scratch with a new bassist " (allmusic.com)

So there probably are a few excellent tracks left in the vault! Judging from above youtube video, there most definitely are!

We all know they retired, right? Lack of inspiration and all that?

"A Funk Odyssey" and "Dynamite" are the best albums because they are nothing but gool ole ass shakin' disco/funk. The earlier albums are too slow and have too much jazz in them which make them sound sort of artsy/fartsy.

vainandy said:

Yeah, same goes for Hiphop. That really developed as of recently, it used to be, oh look at me, I'm bad, all pretentious and with some pseudo-message. Nowadays hiphop is where it's at! Don't you agree?

I think the first 2 albums stand apart. They are more band sounding than the reat. They are also less Dance influenced (I feel that the Space Cowboy remix messed up their direction IMO).

So I would start with Return of the Space Cowboy. IMO that's their best. Travelling without moving is good...I think that the one after that one really tried to capitalize on the sound from Travelling as some of the songs didn't really "break out" until later on.

No, shit hop is exactly the opposite. Jamiroquai started out kinda dull and got much better. Shit hop started out as rap or hip hop and was what it should have been which was good uptempo ass shakin' party jams, many of which were made with real music and not samples. It eventually stripped down all the instruments, starting relying mainly on samples only, and worst of all, slow the tempo down to be as boring as a damn opera. This is when the name changed from hip hop to shit hop.
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I agree with VainAndy, and offer this..

JK has done more to salvage R&B/Funk/Soul/Disco than so called New Jack, Hip hop, RnB, etc has done in the last 15 years.

Although it's not 100% new, I feel it's accurate and authentic in it's motives.

I would start with Space then Travelling then Funk Od....

First 2 are important due to Stuart Zender's unbelievable grooves.

Space cowboy is compressed to hell though so I does sound very muted, but the songs are excellent. Travelling really did deserve all the attention it got. And Funk has some amazing melodies and great guitar.

aalloca said:

Yeah, what happened with The Return of the Space Cowboy album ? It sounds awful compared to their other stuff.

I would recommend Travelling without Moving and Funk Odyssey, by the way...

pjh1972 said:

Hi,from what I hear with my ears the whole Space Cowboy album was run through several compressors which take out the dynamics of the recording when done poorly. This gives it that dolby NR quality of a old cassete tape. Also it almost sounds like the "Dorothy Parker" syndrome/experiment where the high end of the mixing board was crapped out and gave it that unique sound. I am not a recording engineer, so I may be talking loud and saying nothing. but again to my ears something is not right with the levels. The music itself is fantastic

The songs I'm listening to right now:

Cosmic Girl

Dynamite

Starchild