Weekend-aah
Yay! It's a long weekend (piss up). And have I got just the record for it.
One of the greatest mysteries in the history of popular music is how Flowered Up, a third-rate bunch of Madchester copyists from London managed from out of nowhere to produce the 13 minute epic of trancendental genius that is 'Weekender'.
I mean before this they really were rubbish. They had a bloke in the band - Barry Mooncult - who was basically Bez without the musical talent(!) and with a giant foam flower on his head. And a debut album, 'A Life With Brian' that wasn't close to being in the same league as 'Bummed' or 'Pills, Thrills & Bellyaches'. By all accounts the only way they remotely compared to the Mondays was through their prodigious drug consumption.
But then, just as the band seemed doomed to be deservedly forgotten, came this.
Starting & ending with samples from Quadrophenia, the record obviously set out to update that film for the 90s. And boy does it succeed. I can't think of many 13 minute tracks that fly by quite so quickly. There's not a second that goes on too long, and the record morphs between so many musical forms that (cliched though this sounds) it really does take you on a journey. I mean even the brief cod reggae bit DOESN'T sound shit. Which is some acheivement.
I'd always read the record pretty straight, as just celebrating going out for the weekend. But listening again I seem to detect a hell of a lot more sarcasm coming out, and it sounds to me as if he's denouncing 'weekend ravers'.
Although remarkable in its own right, the record was also accompanied by a fantastic film that for me is still the best representation of 'rave culture' ever laid down on celluloid. (Mind you what's the competition? Human Fucking Traffic? Actually the episode of 'Spaced' when they go clubbing is pretty good.)
So like a sped up version of 'Screamadelica', this film follows a lad over the course of an evening from ironing his shirts ready to go out, to a dizzying comedown on Monday morning. Actually look, I just found this site that describes the film much better than I could...
In my days of regularly frequenting the Heavenly Social the track briefly got a second wind, as the Chemical Brothers often used to finish their sets with it. I emplore you if you do one thing this weekend to crank this up as you're getting ready to rumble.
One of the greatest records ever made, and amazingly, considering there is no way you could edit this for radio use, this managed to get pretty high up in the charts (top 20?). I'm still kicking myself for not buying the Weatherall mixes from Our Price!
Whether it's for the first time or the hundreth, just make sure you listen to this.
FLOWERED UP - WEEKENDER
Be warned.. it starts of pretty quietly and if you crank it up too loud you'll get a real shock as it hits the minute mark!
One of the greatest mysteries in the history of popular music is how Flowered Up, a third-rate bunch of Madchester copyists from London managed from out of nowhere to produce the 13 minute epic of trancendental genius that is 'Weekender'.
I mean before this they really were rubbish. They had a bloke in the band - Barry Mooncult - who was basically Bez without the musical talent(!) and with a giant foam flower on his head. And a debut album, 'A Life With Brian' that wasn't close to being in the same league as 'Bummed' or 'Pills, Thrills & Bellyaches'. By all accounts the only way they remotely compared to the Mondays was through their prodigious drug consumption.
But then, just as the band seemed doomed to be deservedly forgotten, came this.
Starting & ending with samples from Quadrophenia, the record obviously set out to update that film for the 90s. And boy does it succeed. I can't think of many 13 minute tracks that fly by quite so quickly. There's not a second that goes on too long, and the record morphs between so many musical forms that (cliched though this sounds) it really does take you on a journey. I mean even the brief cod reggae bit DOESN'T sound shit. Which is some acheivement.
I'd always read the record pretty straight, as just celebrating going out for the weekend. But listening again I seem to detect a hell of a lot more sarcasm coming out, and it sounds to me as if he's denouncing 'weekend ravers'.
Although remarkable in its own right, the record was also accompanied by a fantastic film that for me is still the best representation of 'rave culture' ever laid down on celluloid. (Mind you what's the competition? Human Fucking Traffic? Actually the episode of 'Spaced' when they go clubbing is pretty good.)
So like a sped up version of 'Screamadelica', this film follows a lad over the course of an evening from ironing his shirts ready to go out, to a dizzying comedown on Monday morning. Actually look, I just found this site that describes the film much better than I could...
It's a great little film... if you still have a video recorder i'd recommend picking it up on ebay.
Directed by the appropriately-named Wiz, the action in "Weekender" the film closely mirrors the pattern of its soundtrack as it takes a wry look as a weekend in the life of a diehard 'raver'. It opens as a stereotypical young lad with a Gazza haircut and a Top Man shirt ironed by his mother snorts at the television-fixated inertia of his family. Pausing only for a quick inhalation of Amyl Nitrate, he slams the front door and steps off into his weekend world of dancing and debauchery. After getting his hands on a couple of dodgy-lloking tablets, our hero hotfoots it to a threadbare and sparsely-attended club, which to his drug-addled eyes looks like the party to end all parties. Paranoid hallucinations of being chased around a record by a giant needle prevent him from pulling the girl of his dreams, and following a clever shot where we see the sordid, drug-fuelled debauchery of the club toilets reflected in a mirror, he runs off into the night in search of somewhere to sleep. As the final weary line "Weekender - whatever you do, just make sure what you do makes you happy" echoes over the soundtrack, his makeshift bed suddenly starts to move upwards, eventually revealing itself to be the high-rise window cleaning hoist that he spends his weekdays working on. "Monday's back, what can you do?". Good question.
In my days of regularly frequenting the Heavenly Social the track briefly got a second wind, as the Chemical Brothers often used to finish their sets with it. I emplore you if you do one thing this weekend to crank this up as you're getting ready to rumble.
One of the greatest records ever made, and amazingly, considering there is no way you could edit this for radio use, this managed to get pretty high up in the charts (top 20?). I'm still kicking myself for not buying the Weatherall mixes from Our Price!
Whether it's for the first time or the hundreth, just make sure you listen to this.
FLOWERED UP - WEEKENDER
Be warned.. it starts of pretty quietly and if you crank it up too loud you'll get a real shock as it hits the minute mark!
posted by headphonesex @ 4:37 PM
