{"id":1743,"date":"2005-10-19T22:25:53","date_gmt":"2005-10-19T22:25:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sunpig.com\/mt-entry-1743.html"},"modified":"2006-09-23T19:30:11","modified_gmt":"2006-09-23T19:30:11","slug":"shocked-by-jellyfish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/2005\/10\/19\/shocked-by-jellyfish\/","title":{"rendered":"Shocked by Jellyfish"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had a profoundly strange musical experience the other day. For a month or so, I’ve been feeling tired of my music collection, and I haven’t known what to try next. Nothing has reached out and grabbed me by the ears, but at the weekend I remembered that I’ve been meaning to check out some Jellyfish<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The reason for that is that a lot of musical threads I’ve picked up recently can be traced back to this band. To start with, there was Bleu<\/a>, who I saw in support of Toad The Wet Sprocket back in 2003. I absolutely loved his album Redhead<\/i><\/a>. One of the songs on the album, “Could be worse”, was co-written by Andy Sturmer, and I think that Bleu has co-operated with Sturmer on a few other projects as well. Andy Sturmer was the drummer and lead singer for Jellyfish.<\/p>\n

Bleu has also worked with Puffy AmiYumi<\/a>, who also work closely with Sturmer, and whose album Nice<\/i><\/a> has been recommended to me at various points.<\/p>\n

Back in February, Keith<\/a> passed me Jason Falkner’s CD, Presents Author Unknown<\/i><\/a>, which I liked quite a bit. Jason Falkner was Jellyfish’s guitarist.<\/p>\n

Then, in April, Glen Phillips<\/a> (formerly of Toad The Wet Sprocket, see above) released his excellent new CD Winter Pays For Summer<\/i><\/a>, on which he is supported on several tracks by–guess who–Andy Sturmer.<\/p>\n

So, hoping that they would break me out of my musical ennui<\/i>, on Monday evening I finally<\/em> downloaded their album Bellybutton<\/i> from 1990. (They only put out two albums, the other one is Spilt Milk<\/i> from 1993)<\/p>\n

I skipped through the first two tracks, thinking, hmm, yeah, that’s okay<\/i>. But I pulled up short on the third song: “The King Is Half Undressed”. The opening guitar riff sent a shiver up my spine. I recognized it. Then the drums came in, and the vocals, and the sense of familiarity grew even stronger. When the chorus burst out, I was in full-body goosebumps mode. Not only did I know the song, but it a favourite from many years ago. In fact, I’m almost certain I have it sitting on an old cassette tape in a box in our garage.<\/p>\n

And yet I’d completely failed to recognize the band name “Jellyfish”. Weird<\/em>. I’m usually pretty good about remembering music and artists, and around 1990 I was at a very impressionable age (first\/second year of Uni) and a lot of the music I was listening to was laying down strong permanent associations. But also: from what I can find by looking around the web, Jellyfish made virtually no imact on the British music scene. So how did I know that song?<\/p>\n

It gets even more interesting. It turns out that “The King Is Half Undressed” is not the only song I know from the album. I didn’t have time to listen to any more of it on Monday evening, but when I was in the car with Scott on Tuesday, we listening to the whole thing, and I knew three other tracks<\/em>: “That Is Why”, “I Wanna Stay Home”, and “Baby’s Coming Back”.<\/p>\n

But…how? Without any transatlantic success on their part, the only thing I can think of is that they must have been getting a lot of airplay when I spent the summer of 1991 in California. The station I listened to most was KFOG<\/a>, and I reckon that Jellyfish’s music would have been right up their street at that time. But on the other hand, I bought a lot of (second-hand) CDs that summer (yay Amoeba<\/a>!), and if I’d heard four tracks I really liked by an artist I hadn’t come across before, I’m sure I would have picked up their CD. But I didn’t.<\/p>\n

I’m confused and disoriented. The music is tapping into a deep visceral pool of recognition, but I can’t make any conscious, intellectual connection with even actually hearing it or being aware of it before. It’s like a kind of amnesia. I’m feeling the same kind of cognitive dissonance as I did when I temporarily lost all muscle memory of how to tie a necktie. There’s just something wrong<\/em> in my head.<\/p>\n

(As for whether I like the rest of the album, well, it’s so-so. Apart from the four songs I noted above, I don’t think there’s anything on there that is likely to make my permanent playlist.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had a profoundly strange musical experience the other day. For a month or so, I’ve been feeling tired of my music collection, and I haven’t known what to try next. Nothing has reached out and grabbed me by the ears, but at the weekend I remembered that I’ve been meaning to check out some … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Shocked by Jellyfish”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1743\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}