Pop Quiz: Jamiroquai

Pop Quiz: Jamiroquai

Aidin Vaziri | Jay Kay tells us about the nasty little habit that nearly derailed his career, life on a big English country estate and love found again behind the wheel. Just don't ask the 35-year-old Jamiroquai front man about that Costa Rican hangover. Or where he buys those ridiculous hats. The British funk outfit releases its latest album, "Dynamite."

Jay Kay
Q: The song "Hot Tequila Brown" is about a three-day cocaine binge that almost killed you.
A: Yeah, it talks about being awake after three days and wondering what the hell I'm doing. I'm watching the sun come up and not realizing the Costa Rican sun comes up pretty quick and gets pretty hot. So the bottle of brown tequila I had on the bed with my eyes lolling about came to my lips and it was like, it was like ... drinking coffee from Starbucks.
Q: That's like drinking diarrhea.
A: This s -- burned my lips off. After that, I thought, I don't want to play this game anymore.
Q: Is the cocaine to blame for the 20-minute didgeridoo solos on your previous albums?
A: No, that's the dope.
Q: Have you given up dope as well?
A: No, you can still smell the sweet scent of sensei around me.
Q: Your last release was a breakup album. Have you gone on any dates lately?
A: No, I haven't. I haven't been thinking about it, to be honest. But if you're asking me if I've been having regular, enjoyable sex, the answer's yes.

Reviews: Ryan Adams & the Cardinals

Reviews: Ryan Adams & the Cardinals

Ryan Adams & the Cardinals "Jacksonville City Nights": Aidin Vaziri | Less than six months after his previous release, the Grateful Dead-inspired double-disc set "Cold Roses," Ryan Adams returns with another album and another makeover. "Jacksonville City Nights" is a lovingly crafted collection, built around a set of honky-tonk ballads that would have made a fitting follow-up to his pedal-steel-heavy 2000 solo debut, "Heartbreaker." There's a nice Norah Jones duet on "Dear John" and a solid single in "The Hardest Part." Yet after hearing Adams try on numerous guises over the past few years -- from the radio-ready rock of 2001's "Gold" to last year's British-pop-aping "Love Is Hell" -- it's hard to ignore the feeling that it's all just another put-on, especially with regrettable lyrics like "At the diner in the morning for a plate of eggs/ The waitress tries to give me change/ I say, 'That's cool, just keep it.' " His third album this year is due in December.

Pop Quiz: Natasha Bedingfield

Pop Quiz: Natasha Bedingfield

Aidin Vaziri | It can't be easy opening a radio festival bill that includes Maroon 5, Billy Idol, Josh Kelley and the members of Duran Duran, knowing full well that across the Atlantic the whole thing would be the other way around. But having already sold millions of albums in Europe (along with brother Daniel, who scored a U.S. hit with "Gotta Get Thru This"), Natasha Bedingfield is ready to take over America from the ground up. The pop singer's hit "These Words" is already all over MTV and VH1.

Natasha Bedingfield
Q: Did Daniel subject you to some horrible music growing up?
A: Daniel's my older brother, so I always liked everything he liked. Do you mean the music he made?
Q: No, I mean he seems to have a thing for Michael Jackson.
A: He loves Michael Jackson. But he has good taste. Of course I would say that. I really looked up to him as a kid.
Q: Does it feel good when you have a better week than he does on the charts?
A: I'm never comparing who's going higher because it's never about that for me. I'd make music even if no one was listening to it. Yeah, I try not to get too pleased when mine is higher than his, but of course we tease each other. Family keeps you down to earth, don't they?
Q: Are there any more Bedingfields we should be prepared for?
A: Well, there are four Bedingfield kids in our family, and they all are very good. My sister is like one of my favorites.
Q: Next year you can put on your own show in the park.

Reviews: Paul McCartney, Tracy Chapman

Reviews: Paul McCartney, Tracy Chapman

Paul McCartney's 'Chaos and Creation In The Backyard': Aidin Vaziri | It's not like Paul McCartney is hurting for cash. So why has the former Beatle let a luxury car company buy up advertising space on the cover of his new CD, become a spokesperson for an investment company to promote it and signed an exclusive deal with Clear Channel to take it to the public? Could it be that, in a rare spurt of vulnerability, McCartney realizes that he's just made his 20th incredibly mediocre solo album? "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard" was supposed to represent a new chapter for the songwriter. Produced by Nigel Godrich (Radiohead), with McCartney playing all the instruments himself, it should have been a pretense-free piece of work that found McCartney taking stock the year before he turns 64. Instead it is another disc full of cliched lyrics, empty nostalgia and playground melodies that would have been laughed across Abbey Road by John Lennon.

Tracy Chapman's 'Where You Live': Aidin Vaziri | Three years ago, Tracy Chapman revisited the stripped-down emotional terrain of her breakthrough debut to chilling effect with the acoustic-based "Let It Rain." On her latest release and seventh studio recording, "Where You Live," the San Francisco singer-songwriter goes the other way with producer Tchad Blake, who is known for taking folkie artists like Tom Waits and Suzanne Vega and making them sound as if they were singing in a glue factory. It's to Chapman's credit that the clanging beats, production-line riffs and steam whistles (OK, not so many steam whistles) don't distract from the bruised, vulnerable blues of songs like "Don't Dwell" and "Love's Proof." Well, not too much, anyway. "America" belongs on an Audioslave record.

Pop Quiz: David Gray

Pop Quiz: David Gray

Aidin Vaziri | David Gray famously became a pop star with 1999's home-recorded "White Ladder," even scoring a belated Grammy nomination for best new artist, after releasing three failed albums. Now with "Life in Slow Motion," the British singer-songwriter has once again backed away from obvious radio fodder like "Babylon" (a hit he's attempting to retire) and gone for twilight-tinted ballads that take on the soul and the world.

David Gray
Q: It's funny because despite the circumstances, "White Ladder" sounded like such a hopeful album, and this one feels so dark.
A: Granted.
Q: Too much money in the bank?
A: Well, "White Ladder" is very heartfelt, but it is the sound of me overcoming all the negativity that had accumulated in my life up to that point. There's similarly a joy on this album, an equally rooted sense of fun from the signals the music gives off. But in terms of the lyrical pictures that are painted, the ideas that I turn over in it and some of the musical atmosphere, I suppose you could say it's quite bleak.
Q: What's wrong?
A: It's just that at the moment I've become increasingly cynical about illusions of a better world, this sort of quaint myth that's propagated in order to inspire us towards peace and harmony. It's just bull -- . The world is always the way it is: Ruthless people take power; X,Y and Z take place; you end up back at the beginning, square one, start again; and then some ruthless f -- comes in and takes power.
Q: Well, at least you're not pessimistic.

John Mayer Gets The Blues

John Mayer Gets The Blues

'I'm a bluesman,' says Mayer, but the little girls may not understand: Aidin Vaziri | John Mayer is about to commit career suicide, and there's no stopping him. It's Tuesday, a few hours before the first of his two sold-out shows at the Fillmore, and the singer-songwriter is lounging in a suite at the Four Seasons on Market Street. The first sign of trouble is the clothing. In tattered jeans and loose-fitting white T-shirt, his hair a mess of wayward curls, he doesn't look so much like a multiplatinum pop star and sorority house pinup as a bellboy playing hooky from work. "I'm done with fashion," Mayer announces, his 6-foot-3-inch frame slumped on the couch. He isn't kidding. On his feet are a pair of Adidas running sneakers and white ankle socks. It's the same outfit he'll wear onstage later. Then there's this: The 27-year-old singer-songwriter is in town to begin a tour with his new project, the John Mayer Trio, a blues-rock ensemble that includes bassist Pino Palladino, the British session player who served as John Entwistle's replacement in the Who, and drummer Steve Jordan, a musician who has worked with Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones. That's right, a blues-rock ensemble.It's not exactly the left-field move Mayer's managers were hoping for after the remarkable success of his past two albums, the quadruple-platinum 2001 debut "Room for Squares" and its 2003 follow-up, "Heavier Things," which entered the charts at No. 1 and sold 2 million copies. But Mayer says his bosses, like his numerous critics, will just have to deal with it. The fans, well, they can make up their own minds. "I'm walking into the line of fire, but you got to see the way I walk. It's quite a strut."

Pop Quiz: Jet

Pop Quiz: Jet

Aidin Vaziri | Jet doesn't just sound like the Rolling Stones circa 1974, its members live like them. Since the release of Jet's 2003 debut, "Get Born," which spawned the iPod-endorsed hit "Are You Gonna Be My Girl?" and AC/DC- style "Cold Hard Bitch," the four musicians in the Australian retro-rock band have been racking up the frequent-flier miles with incessant touring and partying. After gigs with the Stones and the Vines, the group is headed our way with like-minded brother act Oasis for a show next Sunday at the Shoreline Amphitheatre. We spoke with drummer Chris Cester.

Jet
Q: When was the last time you had a shower?
A: We usually take showers every day. A misunderstood thing about Jet is that we actually do shower. Some of us just have beards, that's all.
Q: I was under the impression that you have pine tree-shaped air fresheners hanging under your armpits.
A: Yeah, well, that's stupid.
Q: Is it hard living up to all these myths that surround Jet? For example, I expected you to be drunk right now.
A: You expected me to be drunk at 12 in the afternoon?
Q: Sure. Why not?
A: Let me tell you something, I'm just waking up right now.
Q: Because you did so much coke and slept with so many hookers last night?

Review: Seu Jorge

Review: Seu Jorge

Seu Jorge 'Cru': Aidin Vaziri | Decent performances from Bill Murray and Owen Wilson aside, everyone knows Seu Jorge was the real star of Wes Anderson's "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou." Wearing a red beanie and crooning endearingly weird versions of old David Bowie songs -- in Portuguese -- he was the only reason anyone sat through it twice. It turns out the part-time actor has been a full-time pop star in Brazil's rough favelas for years. On his second solo album, recorded in Paris, he reaches out to the rest of the world with skeletal dance tracks ("Mania de Peitão [Large Chested Mania]"), dreamy ballads ("Fiore de la Città") and the kind of extraterrestrial covers (Elvis' "Don't") that ensure he steals the show off the big screen, as well.