The Flower Kings: Scanning the Greenhouse & Alive on Planet Earth

Scanning the Greenhouse (1998) & Alive on Planet Earth (2000)

Two albums this week! I want to talk about the live album, but we haven't discussed the compilation album yet. I'll do that one real quick.

Scanning the Greenhouse came out in 1998, just before the band's first North Amercian tour; it was meant to attract new fans stateside. It's a single-disk compilation of songs from their first three albums and The Flower King; it interestingly includes the opening tracks to all four of them. The arrengements for most of the songs are the same as they are on the original albums. As for the song choices, I think it's a solid selection (“Pipes of Peace” being the odd one out, there), and the new listener will come away with a pretty good idea of what The Flower Kings are all about. That was clearly the intent, so in that aspect, the album succeeds. I have no idea if it sold well in North America, so I don't know if it was sucessful in that respect as well.

Blurry footage taken in the woods. These may be all stunt doubles.

There's three things here that are of interest to the collector. First, there is a re-recording of “The Flower King”, that classic tune from what was at the time Roine's solo project. It's played quite differently from the original; it feels more grand and bombastic, while the original has a kind of matter-of-fact jauntiness about it. I do like the fuller vocal harmonies in the chorus but I have to say I like the original better, mostly because the instrumental section in that version is tighter.

Second, there's a re-recorded version of the finale to “Stardust We Are”. An unusual move, as the original was barely a year old when they recorded this version. This is the version that was most commonly played live. It goes without saying that it's a fantastic tune. It also goes without saying that I greatly prefer the 25-minute original, although this sparser, slower version has its own charm. If you're used to this version, it almost seems like the original blows its wad too early. Fröberg's vocals are, as always, a great draw.

Third, and most controversially, there's a studio cover of a Genesis classic: “The Cinema Show”. I love Genesis. I love The Flower Kings. I don't necessarily love The Flower Kings playing Genesis. “The Cinema Show” happens to be my favourite Genesis song, and this version doesn't do it justice at all. The way Bodin messes up the timing in that legendary keyboard solo just ruins it for me. It's too bad, because I'm theoretically open to a more rocking version of the song. Some versions of the album leave out this song and have “Compassion” on it instead.

So, in conclusion, Scanning the Greenhouse is a perfectly fine compilation album, but it's still a compilation album. It has no added value for the fan other than the three novelties, but all three of these are a step down from their respective originals. It is also worth mentioning that all three of these songs also appear on 2007's compilation The Road Back Home, which is a much more interesting document. Scanning The Greenhouse is for completionists only, especially if you own The Road Back Home.

With that out of the way, let's get to the real meat of today's feature: the live album.

I have to tell you something uncomfortable. I've avoided talking about it until now, but now I really can't escape it. I think The Flower Kings are not the best live band in the world. Sorry. In the studio, they play with such a manic creative energy and add lots of subtle touches that make the songs great. More often than not, a lot of this is lost live. Also: Roine Stolt, bless his heart, just isn't much of a showman. He can dress up in all the flamboyantly glittery suits he likes, he's still a somewhat awkward Scandinavian introvert. Even now, with all his experience, he still seems to treat the microphone as if he is afraid of it. It becomes especially obvious when he's put next to consummate showmen Neal Morse and Mike Portnoy on the Transatlantic stage.

A Flower Kings liveshow mostly consists of a group of Swedish nerds concentrating fully on their instruments. Of course they do, they're playing really complicated music. Hasse Fröberg, for his part, tries to make up for it by playing the rock star, but sometimes overcompensates so much that he becomes more of a rock star parody. On top of that, The Flower Kings often feel the need to play extended improvised jams, killing the show's momentum.

Hasse Fröberg and Roine Stolt in 1997, showing off their groovy wardrobes. They've since switched haircuts.

The flipside of this is that The Flower Kings sound very good, which is all that matters for a live CD anyway. Roine always makes sure the sound quality is top-notch and the band is well-rehearsed. If you listen with your eyes closed, and the band are having a good chemistry, they can be sublime. Sometimes, you almost have to wonder if they aren't miming and just playing along to studio recordings. I've witnessed it happen before my eyes a few times, and let me tell you, when it comes to music, The Flower Kings are the real deal.

So, with all that in mind… Here's Alive on Planet Earth, the first of The Flower King's live albums. I've actually lost track of just how many live albums they have, with all those fanclub albums and “official bootlegs” going around. I believe there's three “official” live albums, but I'll probably discuss a few more. At least we know for sure this is the first.

The audio is taken from several different shows. CD one is from two different shows during the aforementioned North American tour of 1998 while CD two is taken from several nights of the Japanese tour of 1999. On the fist CD, Tomas Bodin is absent as he couldn't make it to the American tour; the keyboards are played by Robert Engstrand, a session man who played with several Swedish and Finnish rock and metal bands, including Dingo and Turisas. He certainly fits in well enough; you probably wouldn't notice it's a different guy if you didn't know.

So, rather than a full, immersive live show experience (which I always prefer) this album plays more like a “greatest hits live” - which immediately makes Scanning the Greenhouse a bit redundant. There is a lot of overlap between the songs here and those on the compilation album, which came out two years prior.

In any case, the album opens strong as always with an absolutely fantastic version of “There Is More To This World”. Not only are the band playing at their very best, the audience is really into it, too. Their clapping in anticipation of Hasse's section really adds to the goosebumps factor. Next up is “Church of your Heart”, also a great rendition of the song, played at the same high level of band and crowd energy.

Then, things run out of steam quickly. Our main offender is “The Judas Kiss”, an originally seven-minute song that gets a fifteen-minute treatment here. That doesn't bode well, and my biggest fears are confirmed when, after four minutes, the whole thing just kind of… stops… for a few minutes before devolving into pure jazz improvisation. It's quite well done, especially the unexpedted bit of latin in the middle. It just goes on and on. I know this jazz jammin' is a big part of what The Flower Kings do live. It's just not my favourite part.

“Nothing New Under The Sun” is a short, understated instrumental that I couldn't find on any album by TFK, Roine or Tomas. It turns out to be the closing section to an old Kaipa track, originally titled “Inget Nytt Under Solen”. It underlines the continuity between Kaipa and The Flower Kings. The song gets an enthousiastic response from the audience. I wonder how many people in the American crowd would have known this song? During their original run, Kaipa never found much succes outside of their home country, but the success of The Flower Kings was beginning to ignite a renewed interest in Roine's first band.

The concluding song on the first CD is another Genesis cover. This time, of “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway”. Again, I'm not too fond of this band doing Genesis, although this one is nice to hear. The Flower Kings don't make this song groove the way its original wirters did, and Roine's voice isn't up to the task of replacing Peter Gabriel either, but it's capably and originally done and the band obviously rocks the house.

I don't have much to complain about on the second CD, thank you very much. The Japanese half contains wonderful versions of some of TFK's best songs. The opener is, once again, a treat: the fan-favourite 18-minute live version of “Big Puzzle”. Unlike on “The Judas Kiss”, there's no unnecessary noodling here: everything that's been added sounds perfectly organic. In fact, apart from the longer intro, I can barely tell what parts have been stretched out. It remains the definitive version of this great song.

There's more room for solo stuff on the second disc. Two songs from The Flower King get an outing, with a particularly heavy rendition of “The Sounds of Violence” and a pretty laid-back “The Flower King”, proving that these songs belong firmly in the TFK canon. Also, we get a very pretty rendition of Tomas Bodin's “Three Stories”.

Jaime Salazar with The Flower Kings, footage from 1997

The full live version of “In The Eyes Of The World” is another treat, as these days this song is only ever played as part of a medley. But of course, “Stardust We Are” is the real show-stopper, even if it's only the finale rather than the full thing. Hasse Fröberg really is a remarkable singer and nothing proves it quite like this song. It was made for a live setting.

There's just one problem with this second disc: where's the crowd? Seriously. The peeps on the American half were, if not huge in numbers, at least really enthousiastic. Here, it sounds like there's about ten people in attendance. Whenever one of these spectacular songs ends, you'd expect an eruption of crowd approval, but we get nothing but a damp squib. Even when Hasse tries to get them to clap along, they only do so half-heartedly. With attendance this low, how did The Flower Kings and their label not lose massive amounts of money going to all thsese faraway, exotic places? Maybe they did. Oh well. It was the nineties. Everyone had money back then…

All in all, Alive on Planet Earth is a satisfying live document. Whether or not you prefer the live versions over the originals is up to you, but the songs are played very well and the sound quality is crystal clear. It comes from a time when the songs were still played (mostly) in their entirety instead of as part of medleys or only partially. The audience participation on the fist disk is great, on the second one not so much. This is a fitting conclusion to what I think of as the first phase of The Flower Kings' career, the one that went from 1994's The Flower King to 1999's Flower Power. From now on, there wil be a subtle evolution in this band's music and presentation. And the herald of that evolution is a new bass player.

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