From: Brian Curtis (193_UIS_IL@smtplink.fcs.follett.com) KEYBOARD - JUNE 1993 JELLYFISH - ROGER MANNING RIDES THE RETRO WAVE by Robert L. Doerschuk Actually, the more we hear from groups like Jellyfish, the more guilty we feel about shackling them with the "retro" label. Within reason, labels are helpful; without them, curious fans might thumb for hours through the Classical or Ethnic bins in search of "Spilt Milk," the second Charisma release by this San Francisco-based trio. But there's a trade-off in that "retro" implies a mindset - specifically, a fear of innovation - that has nothing to do with how this group actually operates. "We do what we do," explains Roger Manning, at 26 far too wet behind the ears to have hopped up and down at Beatles concerts or blown bubbles at love-ins. "Our influences obviously pop out, but I'm not going to lose sleep over attempting to mask them." These influences don't just pop out; they splash across six full pages in the "Spilt Milk" CD jacket. Here, before even hearing the muffled thump of Manning's Wurlitzer electric piano or his voice joining those of drummer Andy Sturmer and bassist Tim Smith in Beach Boysian euphony, we confront a sweeping view of the group at Oceanway Studios. Everything in the picture broadcasts the Jellyfish musical creed: bell-bottoms, Indian carpets, a floppy brown dog, and enough old keyboards to keep Mark Vail busy with a year's worth of Vintage Synths columns. Except for the Polyfusion modular beast in the background - rented from Steve Porcaro for the photo shoot - this looks exactly like an Electric Prunes session. Yet none of this has to do with fear of change. One listen to "Spilt Milk" confirms that Jellyfish is a band for our times. Echoes of George Harrison's guitar, Ringo's plodding bass drum, Paul's plucked Hofner sound, and Brian Wilson's ecstatic harmonies do abound. Still, the album is a celebration of their relevance to modern musical temperaments, not a necrophyliac exhumination of dead licks and decomposing riffs. In its assembly of contrasting fragments and superficially non-repetitive linear structures, the Manning and Sturmer method cannot avoid comparison to Lennon's and McCartney's approach on "Abbey Road," but for all their greatness, the Beatles never integrated touches of jazz (the flute section on "Russian Hill") or hints of the macabre (the quick chaos of ringing phones, cafe accordion, harp swirls, and other mismatched bits at the end of "Brighter Day") quite as smoothly as these guys. There's enough here to restore the faith of '60s flashback casualties and pique the curiosity of post-boomer nihilists. Whether it's done tongue-in-cheek or with genuine affection for the forebears of '90s rock, "Spilt Milk" is good. That, of course, is what matters in the end. Manning happily admits to being inspired by relics of psychedelia. "Sure, I grew up staring at album jackets, pulling my pants down in sexual ecstacy over Keith Emerson's systems," he laughs. "Andy and I both like timeless musical styles. We're influenced by all kinds of stuff that ends up standing the test of time." The roots of Jellyfish stretch back to Pleasanton, California, a Bay Area bedroom sprawl where Manning and Sturmer met as high school students. "He was an amazing drummer even as a freshman," Manning remembers. "Already he was playing with people twice his age. We became jazz fanatics together; we entered and won all these Downbeat contests. But even though I was hanging around with a lot of musicians, and we were all getting good on our instruments, none of us ever thought about writing. We lived in our fake books, learned all the songs and solos, and fueled each other's egos. It was a great learning environment, but it seems really bizarre to me now that nobody was interested in writing his own music." By the time Manning headed south to study music at the University of Southern California, he was ready to expand his range as a player by challenging himself to compose. He plunged headfirst into both the classroom regimen and the busy L.A. club scene. Yet his friendship with Sturmer, who remained 300 miles to the north in San Francisco, was the critical element in his growth as a songwriter. They kept in touch by phone, and repeatedly surprised each other with news that they had simultaneously discovered some new inspiration - the Monkees, to name one telling example. By the time he got out of USC, Manning was ready to head back up the coast and do some serious work with his friend. "Our rule was that the song was first and foremost," Manning explains. "We wanted to affect people emotionally through the lyrics, the harmonies, and the melodies by applying everything we've learned about music through the years." That meant, often, putting a lid on all the hot-shot playing they had enjoyed in their fake book period, and sticking to written parts. "Sometimes that's the hardest thing in the world to do," Manning admits. "We're constantly checking each other on that. But performance is still important. A lot of the stuff we learned playing jazz does apply, whether you're playing with a jazz trio or the Hendrix trio. It all boils down to listening. I wouldn't say that playing 'Best Friend' live is difficult, but it's very easy to rush that song or play it too slow. It excels at a certain tempo. Luckily, we're all tuned in to what elements are going to make a song feel good, both in writing and playing." By the time they cut their debut album, "Bellybutton," Jellyfish had expanded to four pieces, with Jason Falkner on guitar and Chris Manning, Roger's brother, on bass. That was three years ago; now, stripped down to a three-piece, they boot those old Badfinger beats and Left Banke harpsichord tinkles smack into MTV rotation with more enthusiasm than ever. It gets a bit cute every now and then, but when you're thrashing a frenzied 6/8, as on "All Is Forgiven," jamming on the brakes and segueing instantly to acoustic guitar at the end, for example, is, well, forgivable. Not surprisingly, Manning contributes to the sound more in terms of arrangement than execution. His playing integrates seamlessly into the group's sound, and emerges only where some hoary synth buzz or tack piano noise enhances the effect of the ensemble. Only once, on "He's My Best Friend," does he stretch out a bit, with some fills that borrow from the Dr. John school of New Orleans piano doodling. Casual as it sounds, these parts caused him some anxiety once the tape began rolling. "I used to feel quite confident about my chops, but they've gone out the window because I don't make an issue about practicing every day," he points out. "It took me a while to lay back on that part of the song, whereas five years agao I could have whipped it out in a matter of minutes. The real joy for me on that song was more in helping to put the keyboard parts together. We stacked the piano with a Wurlitzer and a Farfisa organ in a full stereo spectrum, so you've got this really wide sound, with the piano as the main harmony component." Doing "Spilt Milk" only increased Manning's respect for older keyboards. "I'm learning more about a lot of the antiques that have been blown off as corny or unnecessary," he says. "And I'm really appreciating what they can do. If you know how to utilize the older gear in your arranging, whether it's a totally goofy Moog sound or a Clavinet with a wah-wah on it, you can get tons of mileage from stuff that hasn't been used for so long because we've all been listening to [Roland] D-50s for the past five years. In fact, it's these more organic instruments that end up standing the test of time. How many times have we heard samples become hack? You hear the [Korg] M1 piano sample in everything from commercials to Whitney Houston albums. It's already dated. I remember the day I first heard about the [Yamaha] DX7, and only 12 months later I never wanted to hear that electric piano sound again. So not only do we love the real instruments of the orchestra and the older keyboard gear; there's a classicism about them that we felt best complemented our tunes." Indeed, some of what we've been conditioned to hear as samples turns out to be the real thing on "Spilt Milk." When Sturmer and Manning wrote an accordion part for "Bye Bye Bye," they went the extra mile and brought a real accordion into the session. "Even the greatestaccordion sample wouldn't have cut it," Manning insists. "Some of them come incredibly close, but it all comes down to nuance. Our co-producer, Albhy Galuten, keeps reminding us about how sensitive the human ear is. Even the most untrained person can tell the difference between a tight room reverb, a sterile environment, or a hall. They may not be able to put it into words, but it's quite clear to them. That's why we needed the real thing." Not to mention a real accordionist to play it. "I don't have accordion chops, so we brought in a gentleman named Frank Marocco, this great jazz accordionist who loks like he came straight out of 'The Godfather.' In between takes, he was playing all these Nelson Riddle parts and blowing us away. He was able to put into the song all the nuances that would set it apart from someone who just sequenced up an accordion track." Needless to say, the electric piano parts on "Spilt Milk" are certified, genuine, hands-on Wurlitzer and Rhodes. Though Manning and Sturmer used an M1 piano sample when writing "New Mistake," it was understood that nothing short of a slightly chorused Wurlitzer would do when it came time to cut the song. "Albhy had one of the early wood Wurlitzers, from the early '60s," Manning recalls. "The bass register on it is phenomenal. It filters so great; the pitch changes constantly from the moment you strike it through the next 15 seconds of sustain. But the upper register is horrendous. So to get that true Supertramp feel, I did the left hand on Albhy's piano and a lot of the right hand on a Rhodes. Working with the older instruments has a big impact on how the keyboard parts develop. There's a certain register where chords sing best; beyond it, the sound thins out. That determined where we put the counter-melody in the right hand on that song." The harpsichord and celeste sounds were also played on the original instruments. "The harpsichord especially blew my mind," Manning says. "I've heard some good harpsichord samples. We played a Baldwin electric harpsichord on the first album. But as soon as I sat down to a real one, one that resonates, I realized that I would never go back. I had a lot of classical teachers at USC who played harpsichord, and they always warned me about how different harpsichord and piano techniques were. This was the first time I could really discover that for myself, by sitting down and really figuring out how to exploit what the instrument could do." All of the piano parts on "Spilt Milk" were authentic as well, though on some songs the instrument was meticulously manhandled. To get that "Rocky Raccoon" effect on "Sebrina Paste and Plato," Manning and his co-horts got hold of an upright piano, detuned it, put tacks in the strings, then played it through a reverb unit and a Leslie speaker. Elsewhere, they built rich hybrid keyboard textures from combinations of piano and synth, all without MIDI. "We do a lot of stacking," Manning points out. "One of the most educational records I've listened to over the past two years has been the Beach Boys' 'Stacks and Tracks,' because it lets you hear all of Brian Wilson's amazing arrangements minus the thick vocals, which masked a lot of the instrumental parts. Not only do you get to hear false entrances and instruments that were completely out of tune; you also get to see how he stacked things. We've all listened to 'California Girls' since we were children, but until 'Stacks and Tracks' I never heard the way he stacked the vibraphone and various instruments to create the 'chug-chug' effect of the rhythm track." Some of the most resourceful stacking on the album takes place in the intro to the closing cut, "Brighter Day." Here, a wheezing textural episode brings to mind some of Devo's Optigon escapades. In fact, the Optigon was the inspiration behind this sound, although Manning was unable to bring one in for the "Spilt Milk" sessions. "One of the guitar players on the record, who happens to own a lot of vintage keyboards, actually brought an Optigon to the studio, and I went absolutely bonkers. All its loops are little chunks of history, because they're rhythm sections that were captured on these discs back in '69 or '70. We tried desperately to find a way to play the thing, but we couldn't." So the experiments began. "I'm very proud of what we wound up doing for the front of 'Brighter Day,'" Manning says. "We originally played the basic chords on a pump organ. Then, when Frank Marocco was there, Albhy had the idea of having him overdub a pentatonic part on accordion in the background. The chords were Eb minor to Db to B, all in the key of B, so Frankie played tone clusters in B. We balanced the parts in the mix and got this third entity that's hard to pinpoint." A little authenticity goes a long way on disc, but poses problems when playing live. Before launching their springtime tour earlier this year, Manning put some long hours into sampling the album's keyboard sounds into his E-mu Emulator Three and assembling appropriate patches on a Korg M1; for piano, he relies on the Roland D-70, in part because of the instrument's player-friendliness as an onstage controller. Obviously it's not a perfect setup by purist standards, but it's good enough given the realities of life on the road. "You have to settle for what you can get," Manning shrugs. "But I did spend a lot of time on the Wurlitzer sound, doing cross-samples on the EIII to capture how much the timbre changes when you hit the keys hard. I spent a hellish two weeks on that. It was an intricate job, with each sample spread over about five notes and all the hard and soft attack sounds overlapping each other. I'm a complete novice at this, so I'm sure there's an easier way of doing it. Really, I'm just winging it. But I think the experiment succeeded, because I have yet to come across an independent Wurlitzer sample that pleases me as much." Manning laughs self-consciously at his seat-of-the-pants process, perhaps also at his band's move toward that crossroads confronted by all successful groups at one time or another. "At some point I'll be able to afford someone who can help me with this sort of thing. But," he is quick to add, "I dread the day when my system gets so out of hand that I'll have to have people underneath the stage pushing buttons for me." Doesn't seem likely - unless they need to get that Optigon up and running for the next tour. (Article includes photos by Jay Blakesberg - #1: Close-up of Roger leaning on Wurlitzer electric piano [the one from the videos with the swirl paint job]; #2: Inset of Roger seated at same piano in a parking lot at twilight.)