Hey there, welcome to a new episode of Muzikxpress. My name is Twan and in this week's vlog
you will see the interview that I did with Maxi Jazz, the lead vocalist of "Faithless".
Because of the 20th anniversary of "God Is A DJ", I decided to dedicate this week's vlog,
to this great dance track. Enjoy!
"Faithless" is a British electronic band which got formed early 1995 by Rollo and Sister Bliss and Maxi Jazz.
Rollo mostly takes care of the production for the band,
while Sister Bliss does most of the composing, plus she's playing the piano,
violin, saxophone and bass guitar.
Maxi Jazz is the lead vocalist of "Faithless",
plus he takes care of most of the songwriting for the band as well.
So far "Faithless" sold over 15 million records worldwide.
Their most successful singles are "Salva Mea",
"Insomnia", "We Come 1"
And "God Is A DJ".
And that one came out in August 1998, as the lead single of the Sunday 8 PM album of the band.
It reached the number 6 position in the UK
and it also reached the number 1 on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart in September 1998.
Besides that it reached the number 1 of the Dutch Top 40 chart and the RPM Dance chart in Canada.
Furthermore "God Is A DJ "was a Top 10 hit in countries such as Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Norway,
Finland, Austria, Scotland, New Zealand, Spain and Switzerland.
"Faithless" won a Brit Award for Best British Act in 1999
for their work on "God Is A DJ", plus other tracks on the Sunday APM album.
Early 1999, Billboard Magazine claimed in an article that many people involved with dance music
thought that "God Is A DJ" should have been nominated for a Grammy Award for "Best Recording Of 1998",
but... that never happened...
So, because this is one of my favourite tracks of "Faithless",
plus because "God Is A DJ" came out exactly 20 years ago,
I thought it would be a good reason to catch up with Maxi Jazz to talk with him about the story behind
"God Is A DJ"
My first question to him, was what he did remember from the writing process.
I remember we were doing a ...
We were doing a rehearsal.
And Dave Randall was our guitar player.
And I remember him walking into the rehearsal, wearing this T-shirt.
It was a blue T-shirt with a V-neck, a white V-neck and white around it.
And across the front it said; "God Is A DJ".
I don't know where he got it, I think it was Portobello Road market.
Sister Bliss, loved this T-shirt! As a DJ she would.
So she decided that
the next single we would make would be called "God Is A DJ".
Now I'm a DJ; I've been a DJ. I'd been a DJ for years at that point.
I don't even like DJs...
This whole idea about writing a song about "God Is A DJ". How am I going to do that?
So I came up with this idea of "This is my church, this is where I heal my hurts".
Which is kind of true.
So that was how I kind of managed to write the lyric.
Because, I say "This is my church" quite a few times but "God Is A DJ" only once!
But yeah, it was a
fantastic piece of music
that she had written; I really do think that Sister Bliss is a genius
with what she does, how she writes and what she comes up with.
It is so generally so catchy and
she has a real talent,
so I think that...
The lyrics and the music really go well together. Yes, I think we get on very well, but her
ability to compose riffs and little melodies that stick in people's heads...
She's amazing with that!
Was there any music done already by that time or did you come up with the lyrics first?
No generally it's the music first.
They will give me like a CD with 5 or 6 tracks on.
And then we'll sit around and we'll play them.
And Rollo and Bliss Sister Bliss will say "This song reminds me of a
wet Monday in London and you got to go to work and you're feeling depressed... Write me a lyric!"
That kind of a thing.
But this song was called "God Is A DJ"
so I already had a title, I had to write to that.
How long did it take you to finish the lyrics?
It wasn't long actually!
That was one of the songs that
take almost no time.
It's like that when you get the idea; "This is my church, this is where I heal my hurts"
Aah got it now!
And it all got written.
Certain songs take weeks...
months...
years...
But that one was quite quick.
Did you guys get any reactions from religious organizations because of the title and the lyrics?
I was really hoping that we've got more
pushback
than we actually did.
Because I'm a Buddhist. I was brought up as a Christian,
but I'm a Buddhists now and
I have been for 20 odd years.
And I did.. I wanted to kind of start a debate about what do you...
can see it got to be in that case. If you're so upset about what I'm saying
what do you can see it got to be? Could God not be a DJ? Would DJing exist if there wasn't a God?
What are you saying? But yeah, essentially I wanted to start that conversation and
I got stopped in the street in Ireland;
"What do you mean by this; God Is A DJ?!?"
And he was properly upset with me and I had to
think a little bit about what I said to him because he was upset.
And I managed to calm him down.
I'm not trying to say that you know, what you believe in
you shouldn't; I'm just looking it from this perspective rather than this perspective.
That was the only real argument I got out of the whole song.
And that was on the street in Dublin at 2 o'clock in the morning, haha!
So when the track was finished did you already have a feeling that this one was gonna be big?
No, no...
We had put out the "Reverence" album and "Salva Mea" and "Insomnia" prior and
"Insomnia" and "Salva Mea" kind of disappeared
after we put them out.
And then a year later "Insomnia" became a hit.
And as a result the album "Reverence" started to sell quite well!
And so we went on tour for about a year and a half
and then we came back and we said, right we're going to make another album, but listen;
Keep your feet on the ground!
Lightning does not strike twice in the same place. We're not going to have another hit!
Let's just make the best album we can and...
Boom! "God Is A DJ" is this massive hit and we are like wow, how did that happen?
You guys performed live all around the world. What would be your favorite memory from all the live shows? I
I have so many and
little moments like
The first time walking onto the stage at Glastonbury in 2010 and seeing like a 110.000 people
Yeah, goosebumps, like crazy and then
we played our very last gig in
"Passing The Baton" show in Brixton.
And walking out to do the encore
and somebody's thrown their bra onto the stage. I was so grateful!
Right? Tom Jones is one of my favorite heroes ever and you just get so many stories of him;
So knickers thrown on the stage and bras and all kinds of stuff.
Must be great to be Tom Jones!
And that was my first moment where I felt a little bit like Tom Jones, so that was really cool!
Well, I've so many I couldn't even begin!
In 2015 you went back to your roots when you started Maxi Jazz & the E-Type boys.
What can you tell us about this project?
Well see, the E-Type Boys, this was something that
just came out of the blue, because I kind of decided to stop with Faithless in 2011, because it's been
15 to 20 years.
And I'm a Gemini we get bored very quick. So 20 years is a long time and
I kind of stopped for a bit
and I've always had a guitar in my house since I was 17, but I never really took it very seriously.
But about three, four years before that, I had written my first ever song on a guitar.
And then three years later in 2008, I wrote another one.
So it wasn't like this was something that I was really
really fired up about.
It just kind of happened over like three, four, five years. And then when I stopped with Faithless, I realize I had
six or seven songs
I've been playing on guitar that I really liked still!
And like I said, I'm a Gemini, I get bored very quickly.
Especially with music! See, if I've written it and I still like it four years later, I'm thinking hmmm...
something must be alright and
so I decided well, I need to see if I can write some more and I did, so I got ten, twelve songs together and
I have a studio in my house in Jamaica, at my mum's house in Jamaica, a little studio.
So I'd put all these demos together
and then I went back to England and I called up my old keyboard player Chris Jerome.
He's a musical genius!
He's a boffin.
And I said, I've got some songs, I wanna play them to you!
And I played them to him and he said; Maxi this is a really good one. And I said, really???
Let's get a band together!
So I have this band now and
we play a mixture of rock, blues
jazz, funk and reggae.
Yeah, all of the stuff that I really, really, really like.
And it all comes out... and I'm not
a really good
classically trained musician,
so I'll sort of mess around until I hear something that I like.
And it might be a bit bluesy or it might be reggae or it might be a bit funky or a bit
jazzy, but it just comes out the way it comes out. So that's what the E-Type Boys is. It is like a platform for
My own musicality and I'm a child of the 70s. We had bands like Pink Floyd,
Traffic,
Jimi Hendrix.
All of these guys, and they used to make like 10 minute songs.
They take you over here and then bring you over here
and then take you over here and then bring you back to the beginning.
so the E-Type Boys is a lot about...
Almost like music for its own sake.
It's not three and a half minutes of stomp, stomp, stomp and it sounds great.
It makes you do that. It takes you somewhere and
I've had the most fun in my life
on stage with the E-Type Boys other than anything else.
Because it's... because it's new and it's
And it's mine
And you're playing it to people who have never heard it before,
so when you get a good response from that it's just like, ahhhh...
This is what I want to do!
Besides that, you're a DJ as well. What can people expect when they will see you as a DJ?
What people have to remember is I'm a challenge of the 70s and the 80s and the 90s.
So all of the music I play kind of comes from those times.
So you might hear
"Fly Like An Eagle" by Steve Miller or "Body Heat" by James Brown along with "Genesis" by Justice or
you know anything from the last 30 or 40 years that's funky
and exciting
I'm likely to play, you know, even tunes like "Silly Games"
by Janet Kay, which was a
massive tune!
Massive in England and everybody knows those tunes!
"Butterfly" by Crazy Town. Nobody hears that anymore, right?
Every time I drop that tune the whole place goes "aaaaaah!"
Because these are tunes that people know, but nobody plays them anymore.
So when you get on and you stick them on along with some stuff that they might know from quite recently
it makes a really nice vibe, but I am I'm always kind of a bit upset when
people make great music from 10, 20,
30 years ago and they get like a year window or two years and then people stop playing it.
Why?
What are your future plans?
Music
Music and sex! That's that's pretty much it.
So we can expect more stuff from Maxi Jazz & The E-Type Boys?
Absolutely yes!
I love playing with the band. It's one of my favorite things.
What I'm trying to do now because
Faithless being
kind of strictly electronically. Let's say Faithless is over here. And the E-Type Boys is as analog as it gets.
So the E-Type Boys is way over here, right? Way over here! So what I'm trying to do now is make a little
middle ground, so you can come and kind of guide people from Faithless to the E-Type Boys
without having to make them work
musically as hard as it is, so
having done the band thing, made the album,
got the band ready. I mean we're ready to go at any time now. So right now I'm working with
I'd love to be able to tell you who I'm working with.
I'd really like to!
But I can't, because it's still a bit like this. It's a bit like a transfer window, right?
So we're not quite signed yet, but I'm working with a bunch of different people and hopefully in 2019
you'll hear something very different stuff!
Excuse me, I just got...
Yeah, there's a fly!
Fuck off!
Hahaha!
So in 2019, more Maxi Jazz & The E-Type Boys?
Oh absolutely, more E-Type Boys,
I'm gonna be doing a lot of stuff just coming up with my own name featuring or
somebody else featuring Maxi Jazz. There's a bunch of stuff happening. There's a lot of stuff happening.
I've been I've been quite busy
And what about any new stuff from Faithless?
Not really, because
I had a conversation with Sister Bliss the other day.
Because they're making another Faithless album right now.
But I'm not...
As a Gemini, when you've done the same thing for 20 years....
You know, there's a lot of stuff that you might have done that you
haven't, because you were doing that. And so I'm kind of going back into my soul now I call it soul mining.
I'm digging into my own soul to find out what's in there.
And it's surprising me and it's exciting me. And so I want to keep digging.
I don't want to go back to where I was. I wanna go forward to where I should be now.
Thank you very much for your time and good luck in the future.
It's a pleasure, thank you very much!
Thank you.
Cheers brother!
All right, that was it. This week's vlog, my interview with Maxi Jazz.
Maxi, thank you very much for your time, much appreciated! And thank you for watching
I hope you enjoyed the vlog.
If you did, make sure to give this video a like; leave a comment in the comment section below and
make sure to hit the subscribe button, if you didn't already!
Once again, thank you for watching and until next time. Bye bye!
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