Travelling Without Moving - Jamiroquai

I can't help think that when an artist is better known for his extra-curricular antics than his 'day job' something has gone wrong somewhere. In some cases, alright many cases, this does not really matter as the original 'package' was not that good in the first place. I'm not sure the same is true for Jamiroquai, or at least Jay Kay the band's frontman. He is probably now better know for liking, and it has to be said crashing, fast cars. Although he only did this once, it was a purple Lamborghini. That sort of thing sticks in the collective consciousness. Purple! In some way this has diminished their musical achievements and gained him the reputation as the 'Twat In The Hat'. Funny but a little unfair.

All this could've been avoided if he'd got his fast car thrills in the same way most adolescent boys (and men) do; in a video game. It has the advantage of bring much safer, a lot cheaper and there is absolutely no way that you can lose your licence. A win-win situation. It could also be argued that if he'd spent more time doing this then he might have gained some insight into how to avoid crashing. Then again maybe not.

To the rest of us mere mortals, the nearest way to recreate the Jay Kay experience circa 1996 was to grab a copy of Ridge Racer for the Playstation. Using that game, letting it finish loading and then swapping the game disc for a copy of this album you could speed around the course whilst listening to 'Cosmic Girl'. You could crash all you wanted and still walk away with your dignity and legs intact. What more could you want for fast thrills.

If you like your funk electric then you could do worse than this album, providing you can overlook the TIAH (I'm trying to keep the sweary language to a minimum) references. It's a tight and rhythmic collection of funk-reggae-pop-instrumental-hybrid kind of stuff. By far the best tracks are the two singles 'Virtual Insanity' and 'Cosmic Girl' but the rest are an interesting and varied bunch.

The creation of custom playlists in video games have made it far easier to recreate the Jay Kay experience so go for it; buy a game, burn some tracks to your console and off you go. For the full experience wear a piece of inappropriate headgear. Just remember to take it off before you go out into public. After all the world only really needs one TIAH.