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Green Jelly began life as Green Jello in 1981 in Kenmore, New York. The name was chosen due to the band's poor opinion of that flavor, and they decided that it also appropriately reflected the quality of their music. The band never attempted to be good, deciding instead to "disguise their lack of ability with stupid props," as their liner notes put it. The group appeared on The Gong Show touting themselves as the world's worst band, but the real turning point came when they met Gwar in 1988 and learned how to sculpt props and costumes with latex, papier-mache, chicken wire, and couch cushions. They attracted a small, curious following with their bizarre, cartoonish look and wound up signing with Zoo Records as a video-only band. They released a video album called Cereal Killer, using simple, bubblegum metal songs as an excuse to dance around in silly costumes, and the clay-animation video for "Three Little Pigs" became an MTV hit, spawning the release of an EP and later the full soundtrack to the video album. With success came lawsuits for trademark infringement; the band was forced to change their name to Green Jelly and also had to put an edited version of "Cereal Killer" on their audio release, as the cereal companies whose mascots were murdered in the video did not take kindly to it. Band members, who have exceeded 74 in number over the years, perform under aliases such as Marshall Staxx and Jesus Quisp. The band was able to sell records based on their visual weirdness for several years, doing fine up through the mid-'90s. ~ Steve Huey, All Music Guide |
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