A brief but long history by Mr. HCI:
Happy Flowers started out as a spinoff band. Both of us were members of The Landlords, one of Charlottesville, Virginia's early hardcore bands. The Landlords formed around October of 1983. All four of us were students at The University of Virginia .
A month or so after The Landlords formed we started breaking off into smaller units (King Crimson totally stole our idea with their ProjecKts 15 years later). I don't remember which came first but the first two were Happy Flowers (you know who we are) and Bigfoot (Mr. HCI and Eddie Jetlag, Landlords bassist). These two were followed by The Rock and Roll Brothers (Mr. Anus and Eddie Jetlag), The Jazz Deacons (Mr. Anus, Eddie Jetlag and Tristan Puckett, Landlords drummer), The Mel Cooley Fusion Project (Eddie Jetlag and Tristan Puckett), Lawndoctor (all four of us) and Trinity (again, all four of us). Happy Flowers started out with one song, "Mom, I Gave the Cat Some Acid," which was a holdover from one of Mr. Anus' many high school bands (I'm not sure which one, though). We recorded Mom in the production studio at WTJU (our university's radio station) late one night (3 a.m.?) and forced people to listen to it. Around that time a cassette compilation "company" called Bad Compilation Tapes advertised in Maximum Rock and Roll that they would release music by any band that sent a tape. We decided to put them to the test and sent in "Mom." Well, they lived up to their promise and put it on a tape called Brain of Stone.
After this we were stoked to play live, so we asked the local punk rock promoter (Andy Lillston (sp?)) if we could open up for The Landlords' next show. He said yes (he was drunk and later did not remember our conversation at all). Here's the flyer I made for the show (1984 is the year):
We opened with Mom and then played whatever songs the audience wanted to hear, whether we knew them or not. We probably were on stage for 10 minutes. After this, anytime a band was late for a gig at Muldowney's (a local lesbian bar that decided that it would be OK for hardcore bands to play every once in a while) we would play, though Mr. Anus would often have to be dragged to the stage ("I don't want to play! We're the worst band in the world!" he would usually scream).
Summer of 1984 found Mr. Anus and I both in nothern Virginia (all four Landlords were from NoVA) with time on our hands, so we went into an actual studio (Inner Ear Studios, run by Don Zientara, one of the coolest humans on the planet) and spent $50 recording the Songs for Children EP, which was released on Catch Trout Records (my label) in early 1985. We pressed 500 copies, figuring that we would have 450 left when we died. I tried selling it to lots of distributors. Most would not take it. Rough Trade gave us a BS answer as to why (we weren't cool enough, apparently). They are now out of business. Serves 'em right! Dutch East India and Joe Pope (of the wonderful band Angst) at Systematic did take some and a few actually sold. We also sent promo copies to some magazines and radio stations. Pat Duncan at WFMU was the first to play us, I think. We even scored a handful of favorable reviews!
Somehow, a copy of our record made it into the hands of Terry Tolkin, who was working with Touch & Go Records at the time. He wanted us to be on a compilation album with Big Black, Butthole Surfers, Hose, Killdozer and Scratch Acid! We went back to Inner Ear Studios and spent another $100 bucks or so and came out with enough songs for the compilation, Gods Favorite Dog , and our second EP, Now We Are Six . Prior to the compilation coming out, Terry got us a gig opening up for the Butthole Surfers at Danceteria in Manhattan. He said it wasn't much money, only $300! We were scared to death as we drove through the snow in my mother's station wagon to New York (seven hours or so from C'ville). We had never played longer than 10 minutes before and certainly never for money! That show started our tradition of only playing 30 minutes and that was plenty. People either loved us or spit beer on us. We did four encores and discovered our equipment was covered with sticky, dried beer when we got home. For the record, in the next seven years only one other show garnered us more $$ than this one (opening for Dinosaur Jr at Maxwell's in Hoboken, New Jersey)!
The compilation came out and Terry put together a show at CBGB in Manhattan to celebrate. We played with Big Black, Killdozer and Pussy Galore, who I hated at the time. I thought it was really funny that they had to play before us! Well, I guess they won 'cause they got a lot more popular than us and I eventually became a big fan.
Gerard Cosloy from Homestead Records was at the show and as I walked past him he said "Good set." I shot back, "Thanks! Wanna sign us?" He said "Send me a tape," which I took to mean "no." Well, three weeks or so later he called me at home. We sent a tape; he sent a contract; we signed it and started releasing albums and playing sporadic shows along the eastern coast of the USA.
We also played many shows in our home town of Charlottesville, including a bizarre show at a fraternity with a primarily Deadhead constituency. Our friend, The Happy Nihilist, played with us (on Mr. Broken Clarinet). We were also joined on stage by two of his friends going under the name Cognitive Dissonance. He drew a lovely picture of the evening's activities and here it is (I'm on the far left, needing a shave):
The farthest west we ever made it was Pittsburgh, PA where we played with Weird Paul and His Band Ed-a-Go-Go, who were totally cool. They even played one of our songs. I watched Paul's hands to get the chords on one of their songs and we came out and played "My Head's on Fire," which we later recorded. The farthest north we ever got was Boston, where we played two shows, one with Hullabaloo and two other bands (one of whom really sucked) and another with The Frogs, House of Large Sizes and a local band celebrating their tenth anniversary (of sucking, apparently). The woman running the show kept cutting our set time back until we got on stage. Twenty minutes into our set she told us one more song. I let into her with some of the worst profanity of my life ("You *&^*&ing &*..$*, we didn't drive 500 &*@!..ing miles to play 20 &^*&^ing minutes!"). We then played "Loser City" by one of Mr. Anus' old high school bands, followed by "1970" and "LA Blues." Mr. Surrogate Roadie, James McNew (now of Yo La Tengo), joined us on drums and we made a heck of a racket. I turned off our amps at precisely 30 minutes (our normal stage time--but I saw no reason to tell her that). She tried to get up on stage and announce the next band but she had to wait several minutes for the crowd to stop screaming. A version of "Loser City" by The Charlie-Cramer Band is available on Flowers on 45 .
About the time our third album, Oof , was due to come out, Homestead Records got a call from I.B.D. in Germany. They wanted to book a summer 1988 tour with three Homestead Bands: Bastro, My Dad Is Dead and Happy Flowers! We couldn't believe it, tour Europe??? We hadn't even toured our own country! We decided to go for it. We played in the Netherlands, West Germany, Yugoslavia, Belgium, Switzerland and Austria. We had a blast, though we were ready to go home by the time it was over. Mostly it was just the three of us but we did a couple of shows with Naked Raygun. One night, the Flowers were added to the bill last minute (we were originally supposed to have the night off) and had just 15 minutes to play. We made up a setlist (a first for us) and just blasted through everything as fast as we could. We went completely bonkers. My guitar broke. We were on fire. We sold more t-shirts than Naked Raygun that night. Ha!
We got back to the USA and a few months later recorded our fourth and final album, Lasterday I Was Been Bad (something I said to one of my parents when I was learning to speak and had apparently been naughty). For this album we decided to try a new environment (previous recordings had all been done at Inner Ear or WTJU ) and we headed to Cleveland where we recorded at Beat Farm Studios with Chris Burgess (of the mighty Prisonshake) at the controls. For the first time ever, we had guest musicians record with us. Scott Pickering from Prisonshake played drums on a few songs and Chris played bass on our cover of "A Pox on You" by Silver Apples.
Unfortunately, Gerard (and Craig Marks) decided to leave Homestead Records around the time the album was scheduled to come out. Luckily, the new guy, Ken Katkin, was a really nice guy and did a great job. He was later fired by Homestead Records under strange circumstances (he told me about it and it sounded as though they did some major nasty stuff to him). He went on to run Safe House Records and last I knew was a lawyer in DC.
We decided to go back to Europe again to promote the album and so I.B.D. put together another tour, this time with just us and Bastro. Unfortunately, the album was not ready by the time the tour started. We had a great time anyway and this time we made it over to England for three shows. Both bands also recorded sessions for the John Peel Show (RIP) on BBC1 and we managed get ours released as a 7" EP on Homestead Records.
When we got home from the tour we decided that it was getting time to close shop. We played a few more local shows (including a show with some local speed metal bands) and then made a farewell tour, playing with Pavement in Washington, DC and then with some local bands at the Firenze Tavern in Philadelphia (my mother is from Upper Darby, a Philadelphia suburb, and went to the same high school as Todd Rundgren!)..
A year later we got a call from Homestead Records that Weird Paul, a new signing, was playing a show with Bastro in Raleigh, NC and would we play. We decided to go for it since we missed playing. We drove down there and played a very metal set with a guest drummer (actually, we had been playing with guest drummers a lot back home (often Tristan from The Landlords), including one show with the two of us and two drummers (James McNew and Bob Hurd)!). We met a nice kid with a mushroom haircut. He no longer has the haircut but we met him again when we did a four-date tenth anniversary of breaking up Happy Flowers Tour 2000 opening up for Yo La Tengo (with James once again handling the drumming for us). By the way, someone asked me at the time (1991) if we did the show 'cause we needed money; we actually lost $16 doing that show, after expenses.
2000: James had said in the past that maybe we could play a show with Yo La Tengo sometime in DC (Mr. Anus lives just outside DC). Well, this became a reality and turned into a four day tour, our longest ever tour of the US! We played in Baltimore, Charlottesville, Chapel Hill and Atlanta (my home since '91). We were stunned at how many people remembered us! People even yelled out requests for songs! Neither of us could speak for a week afterwards; in fact, we both started worrying that we had permanently damaged our vocal chords!
So, you may wonder, what have we been up to in the last ten years? Well, Mr. Anus got his doctorate in Economics (so he really should be referred to as Dr. Anus) and lives outside Washington, DC with the new, improved Mrs. Anus and Baby Anus. He's been in several bands over the years, the most recent of which is For Every Pig, who you'll find in our Friends section.
I live just outside Atlanta with Mr. Horribly-Charred-Husband and our dog, Dagmar ( ). I just have a plain old Batchelor's Degree but I'm a Senior Programmer at a dot-com that hasn't gone under. I've played guitar in two bands since we broke up, Love Killers and Meat. Neither band recorded anything of note, though I think I wrote some decent songs.
Our first roadie, Mr. Roadie, now lives in the Washington, DC, area as well, with his wife, Mrs. Roadie, and their children.
As stated above, Mr. Surrogate Roadie has been playing bass with Yo La Tengosince the early 90s. He also records solo under the moniker Dump. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.
2004: We realized that the 20th anniversary of our first show was nigh so we talked about doing a 20th Anniversary gig. As luck would have it, we got a call from WTJU wanting us to play for the annual fund raising marathon concert! We'd struck up an on-line friendship with a drummer so I drove up to DC from Atlanta, Mr. Mike (of The Goo Goo Dolls) flew out from LA and the three of us plus Mrs. Anus drove down to Charlottesville to ROCK! We had a blast and agreed we'd have to do it again one day. The show was filmed by Mrs. Anus and Greg Perry of Tubevision and released as a limited edition DVD-R by Lost Frog in Japan! You can find Lost Frog in our friends list.
2006: We were invited by SxSW to play the 2006 SxSW Festival! Once again, Mr. Mike flew out from LA, I drove from Atlanta to Austin, TX (that's a long, stinkin' drive!) and Mr. and Mrs. Anus flew down from DC so we could all ROCK once again. We had a total blast. All the other bands on the bill were killer as well, and can now be found in our friends list.
We hope to play again, by the way. You have been warned.