Green Jelly

The early nineties were high school days for me. That meant MTV had music videos and trailer trash like myself still bought tapes instead of CDs. When thinking about obscure bands of the 90’s my memory somehow stumbled upon the less than famous, Green Jelly. If you know them, it is probably because of the one video that got a fair amount of MTV airplay. I remember watching when the "Three Little Pigs" song came on. I laughed my ass off at the part where a claymation Rambo comes in to take out the Big Bad Wolf with a 50 cal. Now that’s good TV. As I think about it, Rambo was no stranger to claymation. I believe he even had a clay-camio in Genisis’ "Land of Confusion" song. (Also a classic, but not really obscure….and they may have been puppets if not clay) I digress.

With songs like "Three Little Pigs", "Cereal Killer", and "The Bear Song" they kind of had the - take a kids theme, book, or character; rock it up with some kick-ass bass and shreddin’ guitar; mock the theme with some Dave Mustane-esque narration on top; and create a psychedelic puppet video – gimmick down pat. The cool thing was, they knew it was a gimmick and made fun of that fact, which made their music all the better.

They sold albums by making jokes. Ok, not many, but the music underneath was pretty good. I especially like the bass work. Some lyrics include "I’ve got poo poo on my shoe", always a crowd pleaser and "His daddy was a rock star named Pig Nugent". Come on, that is lyrical genius.

I also found out on my little tour down memory lane that their real band name was originally Green Jello but apparently Mr. Cosby and the Jell-o Corporation had a trademark or something, so after an initial printing of the first album, they had to change the name to Green Jelly and do a reprint with the new name. Just a little Green Jelly fun fact for you.

I like puppets and I love claymation so these guys are instant favs in my book. There was no musical fusion or revolution started by their antics, but to put it simply, they amuse me. If only I had a tape to MP3 convertor, I could get these classics uploaded to my Ipod. Until then, I’ll have to stick with YouTube for my nostalgic jelly. I think they summed up their work best by putting a banner up on the screen at the end of their video. It read:

" And the moral of the story is that bands with no talent can easily amuse idiots with a stupid puppet show."

I’m just that kind of idiot.