Bellybutton
JELLYFISH
(Virgin)

Bellybutton was lightning in a bottle, the product of an ill-fated band that put out a power-pop classic at precisely the wrong time. While the grunge movement was beginning to make waves in Seattle, San Francisco's Jellyfish delivered a compendium of tunes about as perky and grabby as any pop-o-phile could possibly ask for. And it wasn't just mere confection, either — the irrepressibly sunny tunes ("Baby's Coming Back") were balanced by moments of brooding ("The Man I Used to Be") and stomping vigor ("The King Is Half-Undressed"). The perfection was fleeting; Bellybutton's mediocre sales and the subsequent inner-band squabbles caused Jellyfish to pack it in after 1993's lush but comparatively substandard Spilt Milk.

This article appears in Mar 5-11, 2008.

Eric Snider is the dean of Bay area music critics. He started in the early 1980s as one of the founding members of Music magazine, a free bi-monthly. He was the pop music critic for the then-St. Petersburg...