Flowers For Breakfast
Baron Samedi Conducts The Onion Philharmonique

The first album by Flowers For Breakfast is from 1996. And I listened to it in 2005. A matter of a few weeks.

If I had gotten that album a few weeks earlier, I wouldn’t have limited myself, when talking to good Tom Pintens that October evening, to a few customary compliments for his guitar notes in Zita Swoon.

If I had known Flowers For Breakfast a bit earlier, I would have asked him why that quirky little band of his lasted so little (from 1995 to 2001, with only two albums released). And why now, instead, he has formed those 2000 Monkeys with a sound... nice, sure, but not as distinctive - not in the 'belgen alternative' scene, at least.

I would have asked him if the singer from that quirky little band of his, Tine Reymer, was perhaps Beth Gibbons' secret sister, and what has become of her now - where she went off to, with her velvet whispers; and where Benjamin Boutreur went with his foam saxophone.

I would have asked him how one goes about conceiving songs like Tukepooh. I would have asked if he was drunk or just happy when he wrote Cactus Tree (a pianist equilibrium between schizophrenia and innocence), if he’d lend me Vieux Dieux to explain to someone what inspiration is, if Tom Barman was ever jealous of him for The Knight.

And above all, I would have asked him how the hell it is possible that in Antwerp they are all bloody geniuses (someone will say: “Oh sure, but you’re a fan, we don’t believe you”; I’ll say: “Seeing is believing”).

...Instead, that October evening, I hadn’t listened to "Baron Samedi Conducts The Onion Philharmonique" yet, and so I overlooked him, the good Tom Pintens, guitarist in pajamas and with a foolish face.