Maybe it's not so great a jump after all. "ZOOMA" -- amazingly, Jones' first-ever solo album -- echoes the trusted Harris/Meehan format, not only because Jones seldom deviates from the trio lineup, but also because, from the moment the opening title track kicks in, you know he's not taking any prisoners.

It's heavier than a concrete balloon, this "ZOOMA". Songs are cast in sandblasted granite blocks.

"I walk a lot, that's where a lot of the riffs and ideas come from," said Jones, and listeners can see that. Skyscrapes and seashapes emerge unhidden from the noise, and he's pleased that the album is taking people by suprise.

"I think people think of me as quiet. Maybe they expected an album of orchestral music and long synthesizer pieces. But I wanted an album I could take on the road and wave in people's faces." With a band that is definitely going to wave something at you - guitarist Nick Beggs is best known from Kajagoogoo - that's a promise one can't take too lightly.

Beggs would seem an odd choice for a musical partnership like this, even if Jones has had his fair share of working with teenybop idols in the past - Herman's Hermits for one, his own good self for another. (He cut a solo single for Andrew Oldham in 1964; it was the Loog who gave him his distinctive surname and contemplated launching the fresh-faced young Capricorn at a weeny screamy audience).

But the once too-shy guitarist came with the highest recommendations. "I didn't want any conventional guitars on the record, but I did want guitar sounds and feels, so I used Trey Gunn on touch guitar, and I was hoping he'd be able to come on the road with me. But his King Crimson committments came first, so I asked Robert Fripp if there was anyone else who'd work, and he suggested Nick."

It's a combination that is going to be spreading itself all over America this fall, and Jones promised, it's going to be an intense evening.

"I haven't toured since I went out with Diamanda Galas a couple years back, but I definitely learned a lot there"-- a lot about confrontation, Jones said, a lot about shattering expectations and a lot about not always being precisely who your audience thinks you are. "ZOOMA", he proudly noted, has already taken the first steps toward shaking his audience's perceptions. The tour will do the rest.

"We will probably play some old songs, the ones people want to hear." But, not, he insisted, necessarily, the ones that people shout out for.

"One night on the Diamanda tour, there was somebody in the audience called for "Kashmir" or something. And Diamanda just fixed them with a stare, shot something back at them, a 'fuck you' or something, and you could see the whole crowd just parting around this poor guy, leaving him standing on his own in the middle of the floor."

Jones chuckled. But, when you've been in the best band in the world, you can probably afford to.

Play "Scarlett O'Hara," you devils!