The Jellies - Jive Baby on a Saturday Night
1981, reissued by Trunk Records in 2010, and again this year. Emotional Rescue reissued the B-side, “The Conversation”, in 2013 (see below). Sounds like an even-more-stripped-down ESG.
Yes, here come the Jellies. They made this single in 1981, self released it and even though it got played by John Peel, no one bought it at all. Well about 30 copies were sold. Most remaining copies went to landfill. Fast forward a few decades and it starts becoming this strange cult thing, thanks to people like Thurston Moore and WFMU. Anyway, it's back, it's out with the original mix, a shorter radio edit, and three mixes from Georges Vert (AKA the Advisory Circle), Fred Deakin (of Lemon Jelly) and Tommy Stupid. IF you've not heard this tune, it's a bit like Tom Tom Club but without all the production. It's also very hooky. PLEASE NOTE: This is the repress of the repress, and it has a white label instead of the black label so you can tell the first repress from the second. I repressed it because my first repress was selling for about £40 and three different labels asked to license it.
With just one 7" release to their name in the form of the 1981 release, Jive Baby On A Saturday Night, the cult of The Jellies was possibly accidentally assured with the long lost song being rediscovered by collectors and championed by Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore no less. Picked up and reissued by the stellar Trunk Records in 2010, the B-side cut, however, was sadly overlooked. Now Emotional Rescue are proud to license The Conversation and remaster it especially for this rerelease. Based around a simple drum and bass rhythm, interspersed with crowd noise, playful female vocal yelps and sprinkled with dub effects thrown in to the mix and you wouldn't probably think too much would be going for a track that the band put together in the last two hours of their studio time after Jive Baby had been completed. However, what you get is a killer gem of pop-punk-dub oddness that gets your head nodding to its infectious, repetitive rhythm laden with effects. With just this one (perfect) track available for license it seemed only right to hand it over to the in-house production team, Apophenia, to do their increasingly trademark dubbed out reworking, this time in the form of a true, but respectful "Version" for the flip. With both members of The Jellies sadly now living overseas this piece of early ‘80s British dub as it were, can now be fully treasured for posterity while also, proving a nice little smokers delight.