BETCHAWANNADANCESTOOPID!!

Well, this is certainly not dancemusic; but definitely irritating. A complete disc packed with improvised livemusic by the Flower Kings. Is this what the world waited for? Definitely not! Nevertheless this 'album' was (and still is) fun listening to because the band seems to enjoy this kind of music a lot. Taken from the 'Official Bootleg Archives', Roine Stolt offers 5 recordings of surprisingly good quality, recorded at the Tribecca Grand Hotel NYC in 2003. As well as 2 bonus tracks of inferior quality recorded at the Hamilton Street Café NJ, also in 2003. Everybody who has ever seen them live knows what a great liveband the Flower Kings are, this disc certainly confirms this point.

The featured improvisations vary from Flower Kings typical Retroprog to Rock'n'Roll, Jazzrock/Fusion and even some coversongs, mainly instrumental. Roine Stolt offers awesome soloing. His best one in "This is the Night", my favorite song. "Betchawanna" features "Daytripper" by the Beatles, it fits quite good I think. The band seems to love Beatles songs for "I am the Walrus" was an inherent part of their last tour. Jonas and Zoltan show their talent in "Bellydancers from Hell", a 10 minute long collaboration of bass, drums and percussion. Jonas includes a Hendrix riff (at least that's what it seems to be) in his solo just before Zoltan and Daniel Gildenlöw attach a duett for the second half of the song, very interesting. The last song of the first set, called "Don't forget to Flush" is a very funny bridgeover. Roine's interjection "Even rockstars like Zoltan need to go to the restroom" says it all. The quality of the bonus tracks declines weighty, now you can hear that it's a just bootleg and no elaborate live-recording. The songs are similar to the ones of the first set, maybe a bit more powerful (apart from the sound quality).

Well, the statement on the back of the album draws a good conclusion: "For the completist and improlover". Nevertheless, I think that the album deserves more than two stars because of the listening pleasure. I really liked the improvised music, I think similar songs would be a good alternative for the filler material featured on the studio albums. An interesting and sometimes quite weird disc, I really liked it although it's nothing important. Don't take it too serious, just have some fun listening...

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