HATMAN!

SOME might say it's in his walk; a streetwise, feline strut which suggests agility and attitude. Others might say it's in his voice; a soul naturally syncopated scat which calls to mind a looser version of Stevie Wonder or a buzzier Billy Preston. But I say it's in his hat, which furls around Jason Kay's head like an extension of his own identity, a strange, furry creature which bobs precariously above the 27 year old's animated, alert figure.

Don't believe the hype, though the singer with funky pop band Jamiroquai does not eat, drink and sleep in his headgear - although he did wear it into battle later on, when Jamiroquai played their storming show at Dublin's Point Depot. No, he's just trying on this particular number, which is being styled for him by one of Britain's top milliners. And here was me thinking that Jason picked up his trademark hats in secondhand stalls and flea markets, or simply scraped them off the side of the road. "I used to," jokes Jason, "My first hat was actually a bag!"

So is this a way of asserting your individuality, then? Wearing a hat, I mean, not a bag. "Yeah, I think that's something I've yearned for all my life, to be a little bit different - which I suppose manifests itself in the music you've chosen, or the way you approach it. Because I don't think we approach music on a street level, and I don't think we approach it on a wholly commercial level either. It's just approached on good quality music, real musicians, and live, and played all at once. It is the basis of what music used to be."

What music used to be is encapsulated in Jamiroquai's three albums, Emergency On Planet Earth, Return Of The Space Cow boy, and the newest one Travelling Without Moving. Basically it's a revival of all the groovy, musical values we treasured back in the Swinging Seventies, but which most of us have relinquished to the tyranny of Techno, with its pre programmed samples and read only memory.

Jamiroquai's music offers an organic option, sampling the energy and the vibes of pop's past, and trying to unearth ideas which still connect with the party people of the 1990s. Yes, you could call it retro, but rather than shuffling down memory lane, Jason believes he's dancing along the yellow brick road towards a brighter future.

Jason's immersion in "quality" music began with his mother, Karen Kay, a singer in the tradition of Dinah Washington, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. She was also Britain's first female impressionist, starring in the 1970s comedy series, Who Do You Do? "She was very good, did Shirley Bassey and Lena Horne spot on," says Jason.

SOME would say that Karen's son has inherited her impressionistic talent, particularly the ability to "do" a certain blind, black Motown wunderkind. How do you plead, O Behatted One?

"I think that accusation has to be dropped after a while. I mean, it's a bloody good impression to be keeping up after five years and three albums and about 400 live shows. It'd be nice if people could actually look and think, well, you know, I have actually done some stuff, I did write some of the music, I wrote the lyrics - just little things, you know, nothing special!

"Inevitably, things will end up sometimes sounding derivative, because of the nature of the music. But if you put on a Jamiroquai record and then you put on a Stevie Wonder record, there's a million miles between them. The only small link between them, and let's face it, this Stevie Wonder thing started with someone going, `who do you like?', and I went, `I love Stevie Wonder', and the next minute, all I read was how I wanted to be Stevie Wonder, that I copied Stevie Wonder, that I'd nicked Stevie Wonder's songs, and I'd nicked his riffs and how he sings."

None of which is true, of course, as even a casual listen to Travelling Without Moving will confirm, although a nagging doubt still hangs over the hook line for Jamiroquai's early single, When You Gonna Learn? However, in an age where Oasis can lift the intro to John Lennon's Imagine almost wholesale for their Number One hit, Don't Look Back In Anger, and Ocean Colour Scene can carefully retrace the steps of 1960s Britpop, having a bit of Stevie in your voice seems like a minor misdemeanour. But Jason has been accused of a far more heinous crime, i.e. copping a black sound and selling it back to white people.

Jason brings up the subject himself. "What people have gotta remember is, they say, oh, you've been successful off the backs of black musicians and people who didn't get a chance, and they've picked you, the little white guy, to go forward. But then again, a lot of the magazines that write this are the people who didn't give them the coverage in the first place. And you left me to hold that spot. So it's no use blaming me I don't run the record company.

The buzz about Jamiroquai began in 1992 when the band released the Wonder-ful single, When You Gonna Learn? on London's hip AcidJazz label, which led to an eight album deal with Sony's 52 label. The debut album, Emergency On Planet Earth, announced itself with a simple cover illustration: a silhouette of Jason wearing a large horned hat, making him look a bit like a buffalo headed hippie. The silhouette has a since become the instantly recognisable Jamiroquai logo, and on the new album, Travelling Without Moving, the logo has been incorporated into a Ferrari style crest, a nod to Jason's abiding love of classic cars. "They're calling me a gas guzzling environmentalist," he complains.

The first single from the album, Virtual Insanity, has already become a massive hit, and songs like Cosmic Girl, High Times and Use The Force have honed Jamiroquai's 1970s sensibilities to sharper effect. How much is Travelling a progression from the previous two records?

"I think what it was, on the first album, it was very jazzy, and the content of the lyric was not the sort of thing that people danced to. People don't dance and go, `yeah, yeah, chopping down the trees!' The second album, the lyrical approach is very different; I became introspective on it, because I got so sick of hearing journalists tell me that I was some kind of guy preaching about the environment, you know, just because I cared that we should be a little sensible with our beautiful countryside and the beautiful creatures that were in it. And suddenly I was the troubador of social conscience, and I don't wanna be that, I just wanna make a point.

"And now I'm getting knocked with this new album, that you need a lobotomy to hear the lyrics, but look, it's like, shit, you listen to some of the funkiest and greatest tunes, and the lyrics arc, Hey, hey, hey, what you gotta say!' What I'm saying is that if you wanna make people dance, it's good to empty out, and that's why a song like Alright, which is the danciest tune on this album, is very simple."

So is this Jamiroquai's new agenda, to get the people dancing a bit more and thinking a bit less?

"Yeah, it is, I mean, because my big complaint was, we'd go on the stage, and although everyone loves it out there, I'm not really enjoying it, I wanna have a bongie, I wanna move about. And it's like, oh, this is just a bit jazzy, we haven't got something that goes bang! And the key to all this is, and I don't mean to sound like a record company executive, but really wanted to get it out of that one point three million, one and a half million records and get it up to, like, five. Let's start kicking some ass here."

AH, so it's all coming out now! Has the cat in the hat finally been exposed as a corporate rock pig who just wants to shift as many units as humanity possible, and who believes that the quickest way to the kids' wallets is through their dancing feet? Is he trying to get five million people moving to the music, or just trying to get them to shell out 15 quid apiece and fatten his bank balance?

"A bit of both, really!" laughs Jason. "Because it buys you time; success buys you time. Time makes you a better album. And I don't ever want it to drop from this standard ever again. I think this is a good album, it's the one I like. And the key is, it's proving to yourself that, hey, what you like, other people like. That's what it's all about, and on your point of getting five million people to jig up and dance down to it, yes. Then you know you've hit the spot somewhere."