Flowered Up - Weekender

Just heard this track (the FULL version) for the first time in ages on Lauren Laverne's 6 Music show and it seems pretty appropriate for a Friday. I actually saw the band play live during the Madstock festival waaaaaaay back in 1992. I can't remember much about it unfortunately but that's middle age / cider for you. I can't pretend I was ever off my face every weekend either, in reality I spent most Saturday nights working in a convenience store in Hove which was, in its own way, a pretty trippy experience back in the early 90s I guess. There certainly seemed to be a bit of a musical / cultural buzz around back then. The whole Madchester / baggy thing was in full flow although one Welsh guy in my halls of residence kept banging on about some new group from America called Nirvana. Wonder whatever happened to them?

Anyway, Weekender is something of a forgotten classic, a hugely ambitious piece of work (especially by the standards of the day) that lasted almost as long as some albums and which came with a suitably zeitgeist surfing vid. Sadly it didn't do the band much good. They split in 1994 in a drugged up haze with lead singer Liam overdosing on heroin in 2009 and his brother and fellow band member Joe doing likewise (at least that appears to have been the cause). Even their dancer (one or two bands had 'dancers' back then, most famously Bez from the Happy Mondays), Barry Mooncult, ended up doing time for drug offences.