Let's file this one under kismet.* But first, the beginning.

I've loved Jellyfish since I first saw the video for "The King Is Half-Undressed" and then staked my record store for the cassette tape of their debut, Bellybutton. This being the pre-Internet days, I had no idea when the album would be released so I stalked my local record store(s) for weeks until it finally hit the shelves.** Then I continued to stalk stores for subsequent singles and tracked down everything I could read about the band, which wasn't much at the time. I was also lucky enough to see them play with The Black Crowes (a show that at the time felt like watching The Beatles and The Stones play together), and that was a religious experiences for l'il Tankboy—the dummer was the singer and he played standing up? What was happening?!

I continued to now very little about the band—again, aside from TV promos and scarce articles that focused more on the band's clothes than their music or background this wasn't that unusual in the early '90s. When they finally released their sophomore album, Spilt Milk, the band had grown into an ornately intricate songwriting machine that left me out of breath and a little confused. It'd actually take me a few years to truly appreciate the depth and complexity—both musical and lyrical—of that album.

Years passed, the group disbanded, and I only heard snippets of what the former members were up to. I saw Roger Manning Jr. battle with The Flaming Lips as Beck's backing band on one tour, I heard whispers Andy Sturmer was writing music for cartoons, and Jason Falkner graced the world with new solo albums at an excruciatingly slow pace. And over the years I ran into other deep fans who slowly and surely educated me about the areas of the band magazines and radio interviews never uncovered.

Just last week the folks that own the rehearsal space I rent posted a long YouTube interview with Manning Jr., and just a few days later I stumbled across a podcast (that appears to be now defunct) from 2013 that spent over 3 hours on Jellyfish's history, with a primary focus on exploring the depths of what was behind Spilt Milk's creation.*** In a single chunk of content, this recording does the best job of summarizing the band's entire career and catches you up to what each member is up to now, along with the aforementioned musical deep dive. If you're a fan you will love this. If you're not, this is by far the best introduction to Jellyfish I've encountered and will probably have you digging out everything they ever recorded after you're done listening.

So, without further ado, let's get deep into it, shall we?

DOWNLOAD: The Hollywood Gauntlet - ArenA II: Still Crying Over SPILT MILK

(You can also find it on all your podcast platforms with a little search action on your part.)


* Starting in paragraph 5, I suppose. But read the whole thing, eh?

**For all I know, the album had already long been out and just wasn't a priority on the shops' ordering schedules.

**What's even crazier is that this podcast—The Hollywood Guantlet—actually usually covered film and not music, with the Jellyfish episode being an incredibly out of character outlier!