Founded in the early 80’s by frontman Bill Manspeaker it seemed unlikely that Green
Jello would ever achieve any sort of success. Even though they were dubbed the “world’s worst band”,
by the early 90’s Green Jello would get airplay on MTV, sign a production deal with the network,
have a gold record, and be in the guinness book of world records for most band members
with around 770. Today let’s explore the history of green jello and whatever happened to the band.
A combination of punk and metal, The Washington Post perfectly summed up Green Jello’s music
saying They play nondescript hard rock music unencumbered by weighty lyrics,
dress up in costumes that look like mutant Saturday morning cartoon characters created
with the budget of a third-grade pageant, and saturate the whole
package with a sense of humor straight out of a junior high school bathroom."
Green Jello was the brain child of one man, Buffalo native Bill Manspeaker who grew up under
difficult circumstances. Six weeks after he was born, his father would die in an auto accident.
His mother Louise would tell the buffalo news "It was tough; it was just me and Bill," "I always
worried about him. You raise a child alone, and you wonder if he will stay out of trouble.
Billy was always a good kid with a great imagination" she'd say.
But by Manspeaker’s own admission he was a bully in school, He would reveal in the same article “I
was always the bully in school. I took karate lessons so I could learn how to beat up little
kids better. I learned how to do this karate move called the Dance of Death. I earned my next belt
for knowing this, then I thought, 'Wait a minute. I'm being rewarded because I can snap somebody's
back in two and ruin their life? This is stupid.' After that I put all my energy into the band."
Manspeaker would name his band after what he thought was the worst menu at
his high school cafeteria and it also served as a characterization of the band’s musical abilities.
Manspeaker was and still is pretty self deprecating about the band’s musical abilities.
Green Jello’s motto was "we suck” & it was pretty common for him to get audiences who attended their
shows to yell “green jello sucks”. A big musical influence in Manspeaker’s life was his uncle who
was Elvis impersonator in his hometown of Buffalo using the stage name Big Wheelie. Manspeaker
wold tell the washington post "I thought he was Elvis for my whole childhood, and one day I saw
Elvis Presley on TV and I said, 'Look, Mom, some guy's imitating Uncle Chuck!' It was like, 'Uh,
no, Billy.' I was devastated. It was worse than finding out my mom was Santa Claus."
Unlike a lot of bands who cut their teeth first playing covers, Manspeaker was honest about his
band’s musical talent admitting they couldn’t do other people’s songs justice telling the Post
“we had instruments, but we didn't know how to play them" --, "we decided to make up our own
songs so no one would know if we screwed 'em up,". "Then we thought we'd dress up
in costumes so people would just look at them and not pay attention to the songs,
but that still didn't work. Finally we thought, let's just say we're the world's worst band,
then everyone will just come and laugh at us. That worked” he’d say. That’s not to say all
the musicians who played in the group were bad as future Tool members Danny Carney and Maynard James
Keenan spent time in green jello and they both even played on some of the group's studio albums.
Green Jello’s shows would became synonymous with just having a good time as the band
donned costumes, sprayed the audience with liquids while they in turn would throw jello at the band.
Of course their onstage antics got the group banned from quite a few clubs,
but one of the band’s first big backers would be Bud Burke
who owned the buffalo establishment the Continental Club. He booked Green Jello
when other clubs said no and supported them financially during their lean years.
One of their first big breaks came in the mid 80’s when Green Jello opened for the Ramones
at Buffalo State college, a show which you can actually watch on YouTube. Joey Ramone
called them the worst and messiest band to ever open for The Ramones.
And in 1984 Green Jello released the EP Let it be which would be limited to 500
pressings and got an endorsement from Kiss’ Paul Stanley in the liner notes.
Many of the songs on the EP were later rerecorded for later the group’s subsequent albums.
While still in Buffalo and working on Green Jello, Manspeaker was also working at a
grocery store in the Deli Department telling the Post how things changed for him in 1987 saying
"I was tired of being cold and slicing deli meat in Buffalo;
I thought, if I'm going to slice deli meat I might as well be warm," He would move from Buffalo to
Los Angeles and take a chance on hitting it big. But unlike a lot of people who found
LA to be a culture shock that wasn’t the case for Manspeaker who admitted to the buffalo news
"Hollywood isn't so great. To me it's just a glorified version of Grant Street."Soon
enough other members of Green Jello made the trek from buffalo to Los Angeles. One
of the band’s first high profile appearances would be on the gong show, a goal manspeaker
had for ages with him recalling to the Post " "It was one of the great moments of my life.”
To make ends meet while in LA Manspeaker would work as a cameraman for cable network E, The
band also soon found themselves hooking up with a like minded band in GWAR who they toured with.
Byt 1989 the band released Triple Hits Live at the Budokan & Contrary to what
the titled suggests it was recorded in a garage and was not a live album.
Again some of these tracks would be re-released on subsequent albums from the group.
It would be a friend of manspeaker who was looking for a job with a record label
who promised to get the band signed someday. That friend would be named Kevin Coogan who would
eventually come to manage the band. Coogan would eventually land a job with Zoo Entertainment.
Coogan would take his new boss, label president Lou Maglia to a Green Jelly show
trying to convince him to sign the band with Maglia telling the Post
"Coogan took me to see them at like 2 o'clock on a Monday morning,". "Someone threw a beer bottle
at the wall above my head and I got covered in glass and beer. I took it as an omen;
if I'm standing here at 2 o'clock in the morning this must mean something. The kids were in a
frenzy. I said, 'This is entertainment.' " Not too long after that, Manspeaker found
himself in Maglia's office who told him "Go home, figure out what you want to do
and how much it'll cost and come back to me," Manspeaker offered to do a vhs only release
featuring 11 music videos, which based on several sources I’ve read varied in cost from $50-$75K.
Maglia agreed and funded the project, but little did he know that the members
of Green Jello used some of that money to throw a huge party while using the training
funds to buy some used film equipment and a pile of lumber to shoot their 11 videos.
The product of this work would be the 1992 VHS release called Cereal Killer.
The release would be noted for Green Jello’s over the top costumes, claymation and music clips.
Zoo entertainment loved the finished product and included comment postcards with the release. And
according to the label, over 6,000 postcards were mailed back to the label with Maglia
recalling to the Washington Post"These kids get {the band's} sense of humor.
They write to them: 'You guys suck, you're the worst band ever, you made me puke on my shoes.
Send me a merchandise catalogue.' This kid {Manspeaker} is brilliant.
The same year the band garnered attention at the CMJ music marathon which used to be a convention
and music festival that’s typically held in the fall each year from 1980-2015. At the
1992 version of the music Marathon Green Jello’s set put the entire event in jeopardy
when according to billboard the new york port authority threatened to shut down the marathon
because and i quote “the band was accused of annoying wall street commerce and area business
with what the authority called visual and vocal obscenities.”
Rock radio stations soon started to take notice of the band. One DJ in Seattle at radio station KXRX
ripped the song Three little pigs from their VHS and playeing it on the air as a joke and it soon
caught on. Oher stations started playing it and it became a huge hit and later appeared
on the late night pay per view channel the box before invading MTV in the spring 1993.
It would soon became one of the most requested videos on the network.
And also appearing on the track was Tool’s maynard james keenan as well as Danny Carey
Soon enough the Cereal Killer VHS tape took the number one spot on the billboard video
sales charts in May of 1993. To capitalize on the group’s popularity, their label scrambled
to put out a CD version of cereal killer’s 11-song video release. The move would surprise Manspeaker.
He would tell the times “For some reason people wanted to buy the music and we couldn’t figure
it out. We’re one bunch of confused people,” In a separate interview he would tell the LATimes
When Zoo first suggested we release a soundtrack CD, we were like, ‘The music is worthless. Who’s
gonna buy it?’ ” he said. “But they said, ‘We can put you guys on a monthly salary if you
release it.’ We went, ‘Sure! Do whatever you want. Just don’t make us go back to our day jobs.’ ”
Their album would end up going gold selling over half a million
copies and peaking at number 23 on the billboard album charts while producing a
hit with three little pigs which peaked at number 17 on the top 40 charts in America.
While the band had a lot to celebrate they also had a lot of headaches to deal with. Their raised
profile soon drew the attention of Kellogs which owned the food Jello-O trademark & reportedly sued
the band. Green Jello soon changed the spelling of their name to Green Jelly with an umlaut above the
Y while still pronouncing their name green jello. In addition it was reported that Kellogg sued the
band for trademark infringement of their Toucan Sam character, in addition to other characters.
The cover of their record ) depicted "Toucan Son of Sam" the "Cereal Killer" that kills other
Kellog characters, including Snap, Crackle and Pop, the Trix Rabbit, and Lucky the Leprechaun &
the band had to change the cover art and had to remove the title track from their VHS release.
Their legal headaches though, didn’t end there as the song. “Electric Harley House (Of Love)”
caught the attention of Metallica’s management who filed a lawsuit against the band.
Their management claimed the bass and rhythm guitars in the solo section of the song
resembled "Enter Sandman", and the band even mentions the track using some of the
same lyrics. The legal battle would cost the band about $10,000 and they soon had
to pull the song from their CD releases of the album and the music video had to come off MTV.
A year after having commercial success Green Jelly put their earnings into
opening a production studio called Ooz Jelly. At this studio they would be capable of producing
music videos, video games and TV shows. According to Billboard the studio would be a joint venture
between their label Zoo Entertainment and the band with their label ponying up $1 million
buying state of the art video production equipment and building a facility. The ooz
jelly office would occupy the same studio space that was once owned by Frank Zappa.
By the time the studio opened it’s doors in 1994 it was reported Ooz was working on a pilot for MTV
called stupidheads that would mix music clips with animation The idea, apparently, was to incorporate
Green Jello’s cast of wacky characters into a program that someone close to the band describes
as and i quote “a cross between ‘Beavis and Butt-head’ and ‘The Banana Splits,’ ” The
band also helped write the soundtrack for the classic spider man video game maximum carnage.
Green Jello’s band members who at that point in time varied between 12 to 15 members were
multi-talented also doing shifts at the ooz jelly office with one guitarist working as a production
manager while a drummer is a video editor while one of the vocalists was a 3-d artist.
The band also found some time for other business opportunities, some articles i
found claimed they signed a deal with marvel, while others claimed it was DC
to put out their own line of green jelly comics. According to the buffalo news
manspeaker also signed a $75,000 contract with a clothing company to sell Green Jello T-shirts.
The band also used that new studio space to record their follow up album at their new studio 333, but
it failed to chart. The band was however nominated for a Grammy for “The Bear Song,” from the
“Dumb & Dumber” soundtrack, and covered “Born to be Wild” for the 1995 movie of the same name. But
record label issues shelved the band’s follow up material, which wouldn’t be released years later.
By the middle of the 90’s the band was finished and the members would go their separate ways.
Manspeaker would continue to work with ooz entertainment and started a rave club on
Hollywood Boulevard called “The Quest,” In 2008 the band announced their comeback
going out on tour and reissuing their debut album Cereal Killer. In 2009 the band released finally
released their shelved material from the mid 90’s in their follow up record Music to Insult
Your Intelligence By. The band once again was in the news for a reason they didn’t expect.
In november of 2019 the band would be screwed out of money by a canadian promoter who refused
to pay the group for a show they played in Toronto. Manspeaker would film himself
confronting the promoter and it would result in the band getting half of what they were owed.
This month the band's planning on releasing their latest record Garbage Band Kids.
That does it for today's video guys thanks for watching. Be sure to hit the like button
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