Five kids from a Camden council estate, hailed as the London branch of the Madchester mafia, three short years and a handful of awe inspiring singles. With hindsight, it,s a pretty huge leap that Flowered Up made in such a short space of time. The band formed early in 1990, a bunch of eight-nights-a-week club kids who thought that they could do it as well as The Mondays or The Roses and set out to prove it. Media interest kicked off immediately, peaking when the band played a low key gig at the Africa Centre in Covent Garden. A&R men offering to sell their souls for tickets were told to fuck off while kids from the band,s estate were given the red carpet treatment. Heavenly’s Jeff Barrett had been a key part in the band’s inception and went about putting out a couple of singles by the band in the summer of 1990. They also forged legendary status for them via the press. Within weeks, they had graced the covers of both the Melody Maker and the NME, before they had released a note of music.
The band were a frenetic funked-out mashed up mix of shouting/dancing music banged out by angelic barrow boy Liam Maher and four demented cohorts. Flowered Up gigs were augmented by Barry Mooncult, a bald double glazier who would appear on stage dressed in a Lycra bodysuit with a giant flower around his neck. His dancing, best described as spastic, would usually push the crowd headlong into full on insanity party mode.
Flowered Up’s first single, “It’s On”, was a call to arms for drug addled clubbers the nation over, a song which was probably about pills but Liam, front man and singer, barked the lyrics in such demented fashion that it was hard to make out more than three words in a row. A tour of tiny venues in a blisteringly hot summer was the first time more than a select few in London had ever seen the band scenes of chaos the country over were witnessed. Autumn ,90 saw one more single for Heavenly (the paranoid comedown shuffle of “Phobia”) before the band signed to London to record their first album. The moment the contract was signed in the London offices, the band’s manager produced a huge bag of cocaine, stabbed a hole in it and wrote a giant “F U” on the table top in giant white powder letters, passing a rolled up note to anyone who wanted to partake.
The debut album, “A Life With Brian” was a disappointingly under-realised, a swampy sounding record where songs that had burst into life in dive clubs and on dancefloors the country over sounded flat and over produced. Gigs around the record’s release were suitably crazed, no one, neither fans nor band really giving a toss how the record sounded, just pummelling the songs into submission night after night. A couple of months after the release of “A Life With Brian”, Flowered Up delivered an un-editable 13 minute single to London and were promptly dropped from the label.
Re-entering the Heavenly fold was the natural mood. The 13-minute single, “Weekender”, was picked up for release immediately, becoming the most lauded record Flowered Up ever made. The song ran through styles like kids escaping from a break in, sprinting from guitar heavy mooching shuffle to stoned ambient middle to final insanity race to the end, all the while Liam railing against weekend clubbers, promoting a fatalistic 24-7 party lifestyle. The record was accompanied by a 17 minute film which still stands as the best filmed account of acid house club culture fuck your Human Traffic’s, this was the real deal. The record achieved the kind of respect that the band had always promised and often deserved.
The peak point of Flowered Up’s notoriety was the legendary “Debauchery” party in South London, held around the release of “Weekender”. Barry Mooncult had been doing double-glazing at a mansion house south of the river. The owner of the place had to flee the country double quick in mysterious circumstances, so sensing an opportunity for insanity, Barry, still in possession of the keys, invited the band & friends, their friends and then anyone they knew. The party lasted a week, saw appearances from the likes of Kylie and Hanif Kureshi (who based a section in his novel “The Black Album” on it) and saw the band and management sat stark bollock naked apart from borrowed top hats in a Jacuzzi. Suitably wrecked, the band left the aftermath, a mansion house, also suitably wrecked, for someone else to worry about. After this, a couple more gigs and some aborted recording sessions, the core of the band succumbed to the toil of excessive drug abuse and imploded.
Since their career was cut so short by drugs, little or nothing has been heard of the members of Flowered Up. Keyboard player Tim Dorney formed Republica and took America by storm. Singer Liam surfaced for a bit around the time of the Social at Turnmills. The band’s mascot, Barry Mooncult, went back to double-glazing with a side line importing pornography from Europe. The others are still residing in the where are they now file (one of them might be driving a cab in North London). The end came as such a waste -- Flowered Up had hit their stride just as things went tits up.
However, Flowered Up are back, and you can see them in Brighton, Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, or London this October, brought to you by Albanak Management and SJM Concerts.
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