Flower Kings Appreciation Thread

darkshade wrote: I like DT a lot, they're one of my favorite bands, and an important one in my explorations in prog rock. They were the band that helped me get acquainted with prog as a genre back in 04/05, and they are the band that got me back into prog rock back in 09 after a 2 year hiatus away from almost all forms of rock music, particularly prog. I go back and forth between DT and TFK as my overall favorite prog bands, right now I'm kind of back into DT, mostly 90s DT (Listening to FII right now, probably my least favorite DT album besides the debut, but I'm really enjoying FII right now). I like all their albums to a certain extent, as I do with TFK. I have my favs of course. I think Systematic Chaos is a great, though flawed, album. DT - It's hard, but I think SDOIT, BC&SL, and ADTOE are my 3 favorite albums; but I love them all (except the debut, which I think is only ok sometimes.). Before ADTOE came out, the 3rd album would have probably been SFAM. Octavarium is their best composition, imo. TFK - It's hard, but I think UTF, SR, and TSONE are my 3 favorite albums; but I love them all. GoD is the best TFK composition, imo.

How do you guys rank the 4 main TFK live albums? I only have Meet the Flower Kings, but am interested in checking out another one soon.

These are the 4 main live albums, as I understand it:

Alive On Planet Earth
Meet The Flower Kings
Instant Delivery
Tour Kaputt

Meet the Flower Kings has absolutely terrific performances, but as a live DVD, falls flat thanks to the fact that it looks like they are on sound stage playing in front of no one.  It does not look like a live performance by any stretch of the imagination.  I actually prefer Instant Delivery over it. 

You guys should rank them twice: once for the audio, and once for the visual (except AOPE, which has no video?)

I don't want to admit it, but I guess I will. The real reason I got MTFK was for the live version of Garden of Dreams. I heard a preview of it on Youtube, and it was the segment showing when they're jamming on the "Did I tell you?" part, with Jonas playing that funky bass line with Roine soloing. Having Jonas and Zoltan playing that epic made my mind go nuts. I immediately ordered it online.

I know GoD on MTFK is very edited down, and with added improv, but I love it, just as much as the studio version. Both versions are excellent, and I don't know which one I prefer. I love both.

Harry Hood wrote: darkshade wrote: AOPE has a great set list, but isn't one show, and doesn't even have Tomas on the first disc, yes? It looks worth getting just for the second disc anyway, but how is that other guy on disc 1? It does however feature Robert Engstrund, who was the original keyboardist for Karmakanic Also, when they played in Japan they were actually billed as ROINE STOLT & The Flower Kings. He was something of a big name in that country at the time. Shame that they never played there again.

Oh, right I knew that name looked familiar. Although, I thought the first Karmakanic album didn't have a full-time keyboardist, and had 3 of them on there, including Jonas himself.

Speaking of the first Karmakanic album, am I the only one who hates The Spirit Remains The Same? Between Karmakanic, TFK, The Tangent, Transatlantic, AoM, and any other related band, that is the only song I hate; not a word I use for pretty much any song from those bands, if anything, I just am neutral about them, their weaker songs are not usually bad, but I skip that song so quickly after the title track ends. It's such a stain on an otherwise excellent debut album. Being so early in the album, it kept me from really enjoying that album like I did with their other 3 albums. Once I learned to skip it (which I hate to do), I eventually realized how awesome the rest of the album is.

So yea, anyway, Alive On Planet Earth sounds cool, how is the sound quality?


Edited by darkshade - May 06 2012 at 10:59

I think it's time, bring on the Flower King survivor series . . . (I'm just sayin')

darkshade wrote: How do you guys rank the 4 main TFK live albums? I only have Meet the Flower Kings, but am interested in checking out another one soon. These are the 4 main live albums, as I understand it: Alive On Planet Earth Meet The Flower Kings Instant Delivery Tour Kaputt

Personally, I love Meet the Flower Kings, as it has practically my dream set list of the band.  I saw them do very similar sets twice (though both featured a song from Rainmaker, and neither had Silent Inferno.  The second time had the full 7 piece lineup.

However, it's not a true live DVD, as I've outlined here before.  They spent 7 or 8 hours making it, doing retakes of songs and parts of songs that they weren't happy with the first time.  They also overdubbed ALL of Hasse Froberg's vocals days later, because he had the flu the day of shooting and wasn't happy with his performance.  They invited 50 people to come witness the filming, in a very small auditorium.  Because of all this, it has a more clinical feel than a real Flower Kings show does.

Instant Delivery, while a "real" performance, for some reason seems almost like a different band to me.  It just seems lite on the prog and improv, and heavy on the "rock show" flash and energy.  I like it a lot, don't get me wrong, it just doesn't FEEL like a normal Flower Kings show to me (based on the ones I have personally seen live).  It's still excellent though, make no mistake.

I think my favorite at this point might be Tour Kaputt.  I don't hear any problem with the sound at all, though I would agree that it's not quite as "perfect" sounding as the other live albums, production wise.  I think it also has a killer set list (unless you don't like the Sum album), and Mastelloto is excellent on it, even though I think Zoltan is the perfect and best Flower Kings drummer.

Alive On Planet Earth has good stuff on it, but I've never really been happy with it.  CD2, with Tomas, always seems kind of lackluster to me, like they don't have any energy or something.  CD1 is better, but features songs that while very good, are not my favorites by any stretch.  Basically, I think all the other live albums blow it away in terms of song selection, recording quality, and performances.  I will say though that the 15 minute Judas Kiss is outstanding and worth getting the album just for that.

Now, to top off this already long post, you forgot The Official Bootleg and Carp Diem.  Both are worth having, though the Official Boot has the worst sound of any FK release I've ever heard, which is still not that bad.  The real problem with that one is that the bass is almost inaudible, which is downright criminal with Jonas playing.

Carpe Diem is great if you want to hear some lesser played live tracks (like Just This Once......another one stretched to 15 minutes with killer Roine and Tomas solos), but it's not full show.  If you want to hear Roine and Hasse sing Vampires View (instead of Daniel, who had decided not to come to America for that tour), then this is the one to get.

Oh yeah, also Brim Stoned in Europe is great too, if you want to hear a totally instrumental Flower Kings (just Tomas, Roine, Jonas, and Marcus).  Some Hydrophonia material gets played on that one too, as well as a COMPLETE version of Circus Brimstone (normally, the band only played the tail end of it).

And for the sake of completion, there is Betchawannadancestoopid!!!  This is pure improv, from two different shows that were focused on improv.  It's a true "fans/collectors only" CD, and really not for the faint of heart.  I've listened to it about 3 times, and that was plenty.  I think the problem is that some of the improvs are taken out of the songs they were played in, so it comes off very strange and noodely  One of the only FK CD's I don't consider essential for a fan of the band.


Edited by infandous - May 07 2012 at 09:14

darkshade wrote:   If I did a TFK Survivor, would I include Roine's "The Flower King"?

See, I would absolutely include "The Flower King", it really was the start of the band.  Also, as I've always said, the person that deals with all of the grief of running a tournament gets to choose the rules.  If you start it Darkshade, you can do what ever You want.

Enjoy,