Biography
John Kongos assembled Floribunda Rose in 1967. Earlier, Kongos had logged two British Top Five hits during the early 1970s through the songs “He’s Gonna Step on You Again” and “Tokoloshe Man.” He had already cut records in South Africa as a teenager throughout the early 1960s before settling in England during 1966 and releasing a lone solo single on Piccadilly. Fronting Floribunda Rose, Kongos supplied guitar and vocals while the roster featured singer-guitarist Pete Clifford, once a member of Dusty Springfield’s backing band, organist Chris Dee, drummer Nick “Doc” Doktor, and singer-bassist Jack Russell. The quartet’s lone 1967 Pye single, “One Way Street” backed with “Linda Loves Linda,” favored lighthearted period pop/rock laced with faint psychedelic touches instead of outright acid experimentation; “One Way Street” occasionally recalled Monkees-influenced British freakbeat, while “Linda Loves Linda” offered a gentler tribute to a self-absorbed flower child. The record made no commercial impact. Retaining the Pye affiliation, the musicians adopted the name Scrugg in 1968 and issued three further singles that drew scant notice, the most striking being the more overtly psychedelic coupling “Everyone Can See”/“I Wish I Was Five.” Both sides of the original Floribunda Rose single, both sides of Kongos’ 1966 Piccadilly single, the complete contents of the three Scrugg singles, the whole of Kongos’ 1969 album Confusions About a Goldfish, and several previously unreleased Kongos and Scrugg recordings from the same era appear on the anthology Lavender Popcorn.