A slightly tangential tale this time.

AKA How a random social media post sent me down a wormhole of nostalgia…

Rock a Buy records in Oakham recently posted a video about their love for the Jellyfish album “Spilt Milk” which coincided with me finding my old IPod and hooking it up to my car to find digital versions of both Jellyfish albums I’d made a LONG time ago…

But first we need to go back even further…

When I was a small child I became obsessed with the Monkees TV show and to a lesser extent the Banana Splits. I think both used to be on TV in the slot directly before the six o clock news on weekdays. And if memory serves me well they perhaps switched series for a while then switched back. It was the end of the kids TV section before it switched to boring adult stuff like the news. But being in that slot meant we did watch it as a family sat around the television after tea, and shared the experience.

I loved the madcap antics in the show, the fact that they all lived in a band house, had a band car and seemed to find them selves in crazy situations every episode.

Of course, lots of great Monkees songs were scattered throughout the show. I think as well the show appealed because Davy Jones was English, adding a familiarity to the show which other US shows tended to lack with their all American casts, they felt quite strange and exotic to me back then. America truly was another world compared to my mundane life in small town rural Lincolnshire. Less exotic now I think as more and more we have embraced Americanisms worldwide.

As a result of this obsession my first ever album purchase was (in Alan Partridge style) the BEST of the Monkees. All the hits were there. On cassette. From the International Superstore, Gainsborough’s biggest supermarket at the time.

I knew nearly all of them from the shows and sang along heartily whenever I listened to the album, which was a lot. In between listening to my collection of Military Brass Band cassettes.

As I’ve grown up I’ve realised I don’t have the same musical grounding as most of my friends. My parents didn’t really listen to pop music at all and had no reference points, even to the Monkees, so all the music I discovered I had to learn about myself. Mum listened to classical music and folk dancing music. Dad listened to big band music occasionally and as with mum, folk dance music. So, unlike most of my friends there was no pop, Motown, Soul, Beatles, Stones or Dylan to hand down to me. Pop music was there for me to discover in my own time. Buying the Monkees cassette was the first step in that journey.

As I grew older I discovered more music myself and explored many different artists and genres. The sixties are still a bit of a blank spot for me especially with regard to Motown, Soul etc. I do love what I hear and have watched a few great documentaries but I need to dive in at some point and explore fully. Obviously I am familiar with The Beatles and the Stones, The Doors, Love etc. and a lot of the Psych and Krautrock stuff due to my own hyper fixations and immersion in those areas as I discovered them.

Many years later as a young man I got to live out my own little Monkees fantasy as my band Children of a Lesser Groove had our own base of operations Groove HQ, a three story town house in Gladstone Street, Gainsborough where we all rented rooms and lived together, including Graham/Gribbles for a short period.

It was a wonderful, if chaotic period in my life, and I was constantly reminded of how the Monkees house looked on TV and how similar ours actually felt. We even had our own capers, some of which I can’t write about, others which were just plain surreal! Like the time our contact at the local newspaper rang us to “stay on the line and look out of your upstairs window…” He wanted us to observe what apparently was a bomb scare after a car with Irish plates was parked erratically outside the nationally famous “Gainsborough Old Hall” which we overlooked. Turned out it was a couple of slightly dithery old ladies from Ireland on a tour of the area, who had parked badly, absolutely incredible now that such a fuss was made! Or the time that the legendary Brian Setzer from the Stray Cats rang the house from the US to be interviewed by me for local music paper “Gig Central”, we all crammed round the phone to hear him. A surreal moment. There’s also the time I decided to widen the back door jam with a hand axe as the chisel wasn’t quick enough, but the less said about that the better, you live and learn!

My little family unit of my (then) wife and our toddler daughter Dominique lived on the first floor which was also the level the aforementioned front room was on. With various other band members or friends on other floors over the years.

During this period in the early 90s I did what many other folk did who were in search of cheap CDs (the new wunderkind technology of the day) I joined the Britannia music club.

You used to see adverts for this all the time back then, and the deal was good. You got a pile of CDs for the price of one and then had to order one CD a month with them for a year. If you didn’t order one they sent you the album of the month. This kind of appealed to me too as I figured I’d potentially discover new music. The only one I remember getting as an album of the month thing was Micheal Jackson’s “Dangerous” which I would never have gone out and bought at the time, but secretly enjoyed. My rock credentials would have been in tatters had people found out!

The only cd I definitely remember getting from my opening salvo of cheap CDs was Jellyfish’s “Belly Button”. Whatever else I chose has faded into obscurity in my mind, but that one I DO remember.

Because it’s a perfect album.

Every track is a winner.

All killer no filler as they used to say.

The band were on my radar already, I’d devoured their singles “The King Is Half Undressed” and “Baby’s Coming Back” and bought the special edition CD singles for both, including the excellent “Jellopak” version of “King…” and the slightly more questionable “nappy pack” for “Baby…”

The quirky music marketing machine was clearly hard at work here, and obviously loving the potential of a new format!

As a result of the singles I’d already heard live versions of some of the album tracks, but the studio versions surpassed these significantly. I loved their heady psychedelic blend of pop music from different decades, obvious Beatles and Beach Boys references, but also ELO and Sparks, and a strong hint of XTC. And yes, the Monkees were in there too.

Production wise the album was stunning and full of unexpected twists and turns along with some genuinely witty lyrics too. As I said before every song was strong, no filler here. The album became a constant in my life to this day. I revisit it a few times a year and still sing along heartily. Much to my neighbours dismay.

Jellyfish the band, to my eyes at least, were kind of like a 90s version of the Monkees, quirky and interesting, they wore amazing neo psychedelic outfits and made fan club only records like the Beatles. I bet if they had made a film it would have been as crazy as the Monkees “Head”. They would have made a great TV show too.

Jellyfish went away for a while and came back in 1994 with an even more adventurous album, “Spilt Milk” the one Rock a Buy were singing the praises of in their video that started me on this nostalgia trip. They rated it one of the best 90s albums ever made, which I do agree with.

The amazing single “The Ghost At Number One” preceded it, and in my opinion is their finest single.

Now for me Spilt Milk IS an amazing album and definitely more technically and musically accomplished but Belly Button just pips it, probably because of the memories and nostalgia I have of the album and the time it came out.

By the time “Split Milk” came out my own band had split and Groove HQ was no more, we’d all moved on to separate houses and separate lives, the moment had gone.

Strangely enough Jellyfish imploded themselves soon afterwards.

Which was a shame.

There genuinely wasn’t band like them who could effortlessly take all those influences and make them coherent and most importantly POP music based. They also used a harpsichord, which is never a bad thing.

The individual members all went on to do other things and there have been a few posthumous releases (I’m still after a copy of the Fanclub box set!) and some of the key members reunited a few years ago in a new band The Lickerish Quartet who are also very good and well worth checking out.

It’s been lovely to listen again to both albums via the time capsule that was my old Ipod and I’ve noticed both have been reissued on vinyl now, so will look out for those. I do have an original vinyl copy of “Belly Button” but only bought “Split Milk” on cassette back in the 90s unfortunately.

Nostalgia is a wonderful thing. I love how music is a direct link to memories and feelings and even places. It’s magical.