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OMG...Stu Zender could play...


TheGreek

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I think part of the problem for me was around the time Stuart Zender left, Jamiroquai seemed to head towards a more clinical, clean crisp dance/disco vibe.  Before that (and this is all IMHO) they had been a little bit rougher around the edges, a bit dirtier, a bit funkier.  

 

I don't know if that was due to the loss of Mr Zender's feel and tone, or a coincidence of the route they decided to take, but it is all too clean for me whenever I see footage of them playing now.

 

I loved Acid Jazz music at the time but always hated that over-produced, sterile pop sound they always seemed to get (i.e. Brand New Heavies, Young Disciples etc).  It is probably why I was such a Mother Earth fan...

Edited by Huge Hands
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  • 2 weeks later...

Jamiroquai's 1st 2 albums are the only two I really love. The later stuff is so much more sterile in comparison. That said, I love Paul Turner's playing and we'd all love to play with Derek McKenzie on drums every week.

I've met JK a few times. My wife works for Audi motorsport but was previously involved with Porsche at Silverstone and he has been a regular at events with both companies. He's a very likeable character and really polite and respectful. He isn't at all standoffish like many of the other big names.

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On 05/10/2021 at 20:56, TheGreek said:

I'm used to listening to the studio albums but it must have been amazing seeing Jamiroquai live when Stu Zender was the bass player. He was 19 when this was recorded!!

 

 

How to start a gig 👍

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Interesting story... back in 1997 I was working for a video games company, and we had a motion capture studio that we would rent out to clients when we weren't using it for game stuff. One of the clients we got was Sony, who were making a Minidisc ad that was going to feature a little CG character made of Minidiscs that would morph into Jay Kay doing his funny dancing. So we had to motion-capture him doing the dance. The place was in a warehouse on a sleepy industrial estate in Croydon, and, even when we had big name people there (we did a football game where we got several Premier League players down) it was always quiet. Not on that day - the place was full of Sony people from Japan, they brought a Winnebago down for Jay Kay to use as a changing room (the Premier League footballers were perfectly happy to use the toilets) and then he shows up in a souped-up Mercedes. 

 

Stuart and Derrick were with him, and they hung out with us and were very cool, but Jay would only speak to my boss, and very much had that "I'm too important to talk to you" vibe going on. Everyone just thought, "d*ck". 

 

Still, we did the job. They made the ad, and I got a Jay Kay anecdote out of it. :D

 

For what it's worth, this was the ad (or one of them, anyway - apparently they made several, but this was the only one I could find, and it doesn’t have the morphing thing): 

 

 

Edited by Russ
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32 minutes ago, Russ said:

Interesting story... back in 1997 I was working for a video games company, and we had a motion capture studio that we would rent out to clients when we weren't using it for game stuff. One of the clients we got was Sony, who were making a Minidisc ad that was going to feature a little CG character made of Minidiscs that would morph into Jay Kay doing his funny dancing. So we had to motion-capture him doing the dance. The place was in a warehouse on a sleepy industrial estate in Croydon, and, even when we had big name people there (we did a football game where we got several Premier League players down) it was always quiet. Not on that day - the place was full of Sony people from Japan, they brought a Winnebago down for Jay Kay to use as a changing room (the Premier League footballers were perfectly happy to use the toilets) and then he shows up in a souped-up Mercedes. 

 

Stuart and Derrick were with him, and they hung out with us and were very cool, but Jay would only speak to my boss, and very much had that "I'm too important to talk to you" vibe going on. Everyone just thought, "d*ck". 

 

Still, we did the job. They made the ad, and I got a Jay Kay anecdote out of it. :D

 

For what it's worth, this was the ad: 

 

 

Funnily enough, if you pronounce Jamiroquai the French way, it means Snarling Jami...

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Watching the Funk Bass GOAT piece it's interesting because I always found Zender's lines so completely intuitive to play - not saying I do so with any aplomb - while the guy on the left describes how he finds them less so. I mentioned Zender as one of my key influences on here about 10 years back and I think a few folks replied suggesting that he was a plagiarist as opposed to an innovator (although the same could and probably has been said of the whole band), but I hear more in his playing than I ever heard in the funk players he was alleged to have borrowed from. Stunning player, especially given how young he was at the time 👍 

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16 hours ago, Russ said:

Interesting story... back in 1997 I was working for a video games company, and we had a motion capture studio that we would rent out to clients when we weren't using it for game stuff. One of the clients we got was Sony, who were making a Minidisc ad that was going to feature a little CG character made of Minidiscs that would morph into Jay Kay doing his funny dancing. So we had to motion-capture him doing the dance. The place was in a warehouse on a sleepy industrial estate in Croydon, and, even when we had big name people there (we did a football game where we got several Premier League players down) it was always quiet. Not on that day - the place was full of Sony people from Japan, they brought a Winnebago down for Jay Kay to use as a changing room (the Premier League footballers were perfectly happy to use the toilets) and then he shows up in a souped-up Mercedes. 

 

Stuart and Derrick were with him, and they hung out with us and were very cool, but Jay would only speak to my boss, and very much had that "I'm too important to talk to you" vibe going on. Everyone just thought, "d*ck". 

 

Still, we did the job. They made the ad, and I got a Jay Kay anecdote out of it. :D

 

For what it's worth, this was the ad: 

 

 

 

'97 would be after the third album, that certainly fits with the timeline of him disappearing up himself from most accounted I've heard.

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On 19/10/2024 at 07:09, Beer of the Bass said:

 

'97 would be after the third album, that certainly fits with the timeline of him disappearing up himself from most accounted I've heard.

He definitely left a bit of a bad taste in our mouths with his behaviour that day. I've met quite a few "famous" musician types over the years, and most of them were very nice, normal people doing a job and glad that people liked what they do (Stu and Derrick were very much in this mould). Others were obviously living in their own little bubble and were nice enough but a bit weird, but very few were unpleasant and/or obnoxious. He was one of those few. Never really enjoyed Jamiroquai again after that, especially with their subsequent, post-Stu change in direction. 

 

The footballers were great - one of my colleagues at the studio was a huge fan of Spurs, and Jamie Redknapp in particular, to the degree that he named his son Jamie. He told that to Neil "Razor" Ruddock (one of the guys we had come down to do some mocap stuff for us) and he pulled up Redknapp's number on his mobile and called him up, and put my colleague on the phone with him. That made his year. :D Ruddock's a big softie really!

 

 

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19 hours ago, Beedster said:

Watching the Funk Bass GOAT piece it's interesting because I always found Zender's lines so completely intuitive to play - not saying I do so with any aplomb - while the guy on the left describes how he finds them less so. I mentioned Zender as one of my key influences on here about 10 years back and I think a few folks replied suggesting that he was a plagiarist as opposed to an innovator (although the same could and probably has been said of the whole band), but I hear more in his playing than I ever heard in the funk players he was alleged to have borrowed from. Stunning player, especially given how young he was at the time 👍 

A bit OT, but IMO a plagiarist is someone who copies like for like. Find me a musician that hasn’t been influenced by anything or anyone else. They don’t exist. Stu’s lines and styles were evidently influenced by those the bass community often refer to as the players that pushed bass playing forward, which is all the more impressive considering his few years of learning before writing the lines to these tunes. The most striking attributes for me is how effortless his timing is and with how much ease he navigates the fingerboard. Twenty years of learning and I don’t have it the way he did after two!

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On 18/10/2024 at 20:04, Russ said:

Interesting story... back in 1997 I was working for a video games company, and we had a motion capture studio that we would rent out to clients when we weren't using it for game stuff. One of the clients we got was Sony, who were making a Minidisc ad that was going to feature a little CG character made of Minidiscs that would morph into Jay Kay doing his funny dancing. So we had to motion-capture him doing the dance. The place was in a warehouse on a sleepy industrial estate in Croydon, and, even when we had big name people there (we did a football game where we got several Premier League players down) it was always quiet. Not on that day - the place was full of Sony people from Japan, they brought a Winnebago down for Jay Kay to use as a changing room (the Premier League footballers were perfectly happy to use the toilets) and then he shows up in a souped-up Mercedes. 

 

Stuart and Derrick were with him, and they hung out with us and were very cool, but Jay would only speak to my boss, and very much had that "I'm too important to talk to you" vibe going on. Everyone just thought, "d*ck". 

 

Still, we did the job. They made the ad, and I got a Jay Kay anecdote out of it. :D

 

For what it's worth, this was the ad (or one of them, anyway - apparently they made several, but this was the only one I could find, and it doesn’t have the morphing thing): 

 

 

 

I had a completely different experience when I met Jay and the band at a charity 5 a side event.  Stu was the only member of the band that didn't turn up to play. 

The rest of the band were approachable and chatted with us at length - we had a laugh taking the piss out of some of the other artists that had turned up.

Good day out...

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On 07/10/2021 at 12:44, Huge Hands said:

I remember loving Deeper Underground which I understand was the last track he was recorded on (although they may have overdubbed him). 

Deeper Underground trivia question. At what point in the track is there a stray low note? At what point is it copied and pasted for it's 2nd appearance?

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