Andy Sturmer - Holding Out for Something Better (1999)

I recently posted two stray tracks albums from the early 1990s band Jellyfish. They're great. Andy Sturmer was the main singer for Jellyfish, as well as one of the two main songwriters. Since Jellyfish broke up in 1994, he's kept an extremely low profile. He hasn't joined any other bands since then, and he's never released a solo album, or even a solo single. But... there's this. If you're a Jellyfish fan, you definitely need to hear this. It's the closest thing to another Jellyfish album after the band broke up.

So what is this, exactly? That's complicated. Let me explain. I found these recordings from an Internet page that has ceased to exist. I went looking around for more information, and came up with very little. So what I'm writing now is based on what I remember from when I found this material years ago, plus, what little I could find out in a recent search.

Andy Sturmer was a great singer-songwriter in Jellyfish, as well as being the band's drummer, but apparently he's an introverted person who didn't like being a star. So, while he continued a music career, he chose a behind the scenes role. Apparently, in the years since Jellyfish broke up, he's had a successful career writing catchy songs for other bands (especially the Japanese duo Puffy AmiYumi) and TV shows and movies. I plan on posting another album just of his TV show and movie songs after 2000, when that aspect of his career started to take off.

But he hadn't had much success with that at the time of these recordings, which I think is around 1999 (though I could be off by a year or two). The last two songs were done for "Gregory and Me" a children's TV show that came out in 1996. But the others are demos for a solo album he was working on. He's kept such a low profile that he almost never gives interviews. But in 2002, a Jellyfish archival release mentioned he was working on a solo album that was due to be released soon. It's over twenty years later, and there's still no sign of it. 

I could be wrong, but I think what happened was he sent out a tape of these demos around 1999 to people in the TV and movie industries to show his continued ability to write excellent songs years after Jellyfish broke up. Somehow, the recording got to the wider public, although these are still very obscure. I hope by posting this album here, they'll get more attention, because this is very good stuff. There are two obvious covers: "We Are the Champions" by Queen, and "Turn, Turn, Turn (To Everything There Is a Season)," made famous by the Byrds. Other than that, I believe all the songs are originals, and this shows he still had the same songwriting talent he had in Jellyfish (not to mention the same singing talent).

As far as I know, everything here is still technically officially unreleased in the sense that it's never been for sale. However, it all sounds as good as you'd expect a studio album to sound. One song, "Liquid Casanova," was performed with the band Sugarbomb, which put out a few albums in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but I believe that song remains unreleased as well. 

There's never been any name to this album. I picked the title "Holding Out for Something Better" after the first song here. I thought that was fitting with the fact that he's never released his solo album after so many years. Also, the song order is basically the same as the order I got them. But I don't know if that was random or if it was done intentionally by Sturmer or anyone else.

Again, if you like Jellyfish, you need to hear this. It's in a very similar style, with very similar quality.

This album is 37 minutes long.

01 Holding Out for Something Better (Andy Sturmer)
02 The Angel Made Me Do It (Andy Sturmer)
03 Widowers Song (Andy Sturmer)
04 Turn, Turn, Turn [To Everything There Is a Season] (Andy Sturmer)
05 I Built Me a Bridge (Andy Sturmer)
06 Sweet Wingless Angel (Andy Sturmer)
07 Love So Pure (Andy Sturmer)
08 We Are the Champions (Andy Sturmer)
09 The Beginning of the End (Andy Sturmer)
10 Liquid Casanova (Andy Sturmer & Sugarbomb)
11 Commercial Spot (Andy Sturmer)
12 Gregory and Me (Andy Sturmer)
13 Underneath the Sea (Andy Sturmer)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/hvnfkYnP

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/user/files/ZwtJxspUTBs6M6N/file

Because Sturmer has kept such a low profile after Jellyfish, I couldn't find any photos of him that are definitely from after his Jellyfish years. This one is probably from his Jellyfish time. But I picked a dark and moody photo out of many more options because it seemed fitting to his reclusive behavior.

In February 2025, the cover image was upgraded with the help of the Krea AI program.

Jellyfish - Ignorance Is Bliss - Non-Album Tracks (1992-1994)

The American band Jellyfish only released two studio albums in the short time they were together. I've released an album of stray tracks from the time period of the band's first album, "Bellybutton." This is an album of stray tracks from the time period of the band's second album, 1993's "Spilt Milk."

This album is possible due to the official box set "Fan Club." Nine of the 12 songs here were first released on that. A couple more - "Ignorance Is Bliss" and "Think about Your Troubles" - came out at the time on a movie soundtrack and tribute album respectively. That just leaves the cover of "I Can Hear the Grass Grow," originally by the Move. That's from a concert bootleg.

In my opinion, Jellyfish was a very impressive band. The vast majority of the songs here are originals (with a few exceptions, such as the last three songs), And yet this album of outtakes is better than the best of what most other bands could do at the time.

The band pretty much fell apart due to music and personal differences in 1994, and there were no reunions. All the songs except the last one are from 1992 or 1993. So there's no more Jellyfish after this era.

There is one bonus track, a cover of "Have You Never Been Mellow," originally done by Olivia Newton-John. It's an interesting, surprisingly rocking version, but unfortunately the sound quality is only good enough for bonus track status.

This album is 39 minutes long.

01 I Don't Believe You (Jellyfish)
02 Ignorance Is Bliss (Jellyfish)
03 I Need Love (Jellyfish)
04 Long Time Ago (Jellyfish)
05 Runnin' for Our Lives (Jellyfish)
06 I Can Hear the Grass Grow (Jellyfish)
07 Family Tree (Jellyfish)
08 Watchin' the Rain (Jellyfish)
09 Worthless Heart (Jellyfish)
10 S.O.S. (Jellyfish)
11 Eleanor Rigby (Jellyfish with Unicorn)
12 Think about Your Troubles (Jellyfish)

Have You Never Been Mellow [Edit] (Jellyfish)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15983990/Jellyfh_1992-1994_IgnornceIsBlss_atse.zip.html

The cover photo of the band was taken in 1993. I don't know any details of where or when exactly.

Jellyfish - Music Hall, Frankfurt, Germany, 5-6-1991

Jellyfish are one of my favorite 1990s bands. Their songwriting in particular was excellent, but their style was the opposite of the gloomy grunge trend of the time, so they never got as much success as they deserve. I have some stray tracks compilations and other things to post soon, but I only came across this a few days ago, so it's going to the top of my pile of things to post.

Jellyfish only put out two studio albums, one in 1990 and one in 1993. This is a concert from when they were promoting their 1990 album "Bellybutton." This is an archival live album called "Live at Bogart's" that's from three months earlier in the same tour. The sound quality of that is probably a bit better than this one. But I'm posting it for a couple of reasons. For one, this doesn't seem to have existed as an audio bootleg until now. I found a high quality video file of the concert, and converted it to mp3. Even this remarkable Jellfish fan website while has every bootleg that exists doesn't have it:

AUDIO-ARCHIVE | Jellyfish (jellyfish-archive.de)

So hopefully I can get this circulating around. It definitely is one of the very best concerts in terms of sound quality. But also, this concert is longer that "Live at Bogart's" and they played some different songs, including covers of "Go Your Own Way" by Fleetwood Mac and "Jet" by Paul McCartney.

There were some audio problems, but luckily of the fixable kind. In a couple of spots, there were brief dropouts. For instance, there was about five seconds missing from a middle section of "Go Your Own Way." But again luckily, all those problems occurred in fixable spots. For instance, that problem with "Go Your Own Way" was during one of the choruses, so I patched it up with a bit from another chorus. The songs with such drop outs have "[Edit]" in their titles.

There also were a few other songs where only one of the stereo channels dropped out, often just for a few seconds. Those were even more fixable, by copying the other stereo channel over, so the song didn't lose half of its volume during those spots. 

I sent the whole concert to my musical associate MZ to see if he could improve the sound quality. It's a good thing that he said no, the balance and such was good and there was nothing to fix. However, he helped me find some of the drop out spots.

01 Hold Your Head Up - Hello (Jellyfish)
02 Calling Sarah (Jellyfish)
03 The King Is Half Undressed (Jellyfish)
04 I Wanna Stay Home [Edit] (Jellyfish)
05 talk (Jellyfish)
06 Mr. Late (Jellyfish)
07 Bye Bye Bye (Jellyfish)
08 She Still Loves Him (Jellyfish)
09 talk (Jellyfish)
10 Will You Marry Me (Jellyfish)
11 talk (Jellyfish)
12 Now She Knows She's Wrong (Jellyfish)
13 talk (Jellyfish)
14 Baby's Coming Back (Jellyfish)
15 talk (Jellyfish)
16 Jet (Jellyfish)
17 No Matter What (Jellyfish)
18 All I Want Is Everything (Jellyfish)
19 talk (Jellyfish)
20 The Man I Used to Be (Jellyfish)
21 Let 'Em In - This Is Why (Jellyfish)
22 talk (Jellyfish)
23 Go Your Own Way [Edit] (Jellyfish)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15908778/Jellyfh_1991_MsicHallFrankfurtGermany__5-6-1991_atse.zip.html

I didn't find many high quality cover photos of the band in concert from around 1991 to choose from. This one is from 1990. It shows only the main lead singer Andy Sturmer. As you can see from the photo (with part of the drum kit in the foreground), he had the tricky task of singing lead while playing drums.