Background:
There is a manifest destiny to discover all obscure DIY recordings of the punk/post-punk era and an exhaustive crate-digging quest by the current crop of DJ’s to find unexpected dance songs – at the intersection of the two lies a band called…The Jellies. The perfect marriage of homemade oft-kilter pop and an ultra minimal post-punk groove, the Jellies had remained a mystery. Dating from 1981, little was known about the band from Cambridge, UK, other than the 99 Records-style 7" inch released on their own Jelly Records ("Jive Baby on a Saturday Night" and "The Conversation both featured on my 2004 Marathon Premium, “Yet Another Piece of Future Landfill.”) Recorded at the legendary Spaceward Studios in Cambridge, of the four names that appear on the record, two go merely by Frances and Justine, and the two others, Mark Tomblin and Richard Lewis, produced no search results. Message boards devoted to old Cambridge bands revealed more head scratching and no memories about the era. “Could you mean the Wobbly Jellies? I think I have a record by them,” one person mentioned. Even that was more substantial than the response from Spaceward Studios. They provided tales of the Users and Dolly Mixture, but no recollections of the Jellies, nor knowledge that the recordings had occurred.
The record itself popped up only in the oddest of places. Thurston Moore used “Jive Baby On A Saturday Night," as the soundtrack for a solo performance at the Roulette in 1997, and John Allen found his copy at the dearly departed East Village mostly-vinyl shop, Shrine. I found mine cheaply on e-bay in 2001: it’s not a sexy story (like any story from e-bay), but it’s the unfortunate truth. Some Israeli/UK friends found a copy on another e-bay listing last year, in an uncredited lot with the ever elusive Loverboy’s “Working for the Weekend.”
“Jive Baby On A Saturday Night” was also featured prominently in Optimo’s Essential mix for BBC, and on the new Betty Botox mix for Endless Sleep. Yet neither of these recent releases coaxed out further Jellies information, nor commentary from the band members.
About three weeks ago I decided to start the search again. Making some headway this time, I emailed a Mark Tomblin I found from a completely non-musical c.v. on the web. A few days later I received a response: Yes, he was in fact the Mark Tomblin from the Jellies, and he was shocked and delighted that anyone would want to talk about them...
