Floribunda Rose were the group formed by John Kongos -- who scored two British Top Five hits in the early 1970s, with He's Gonna Step on You Again and Tokoloshe Man -- in 1967. Kongos had been a recording artist in South Africa since he was a teenager in the early '60s, and in 1966 moved to England, where he recorded a solo single for Piccadilly. Soon after that he was at the head of Floribunda Rose on guitar and vocals, the lineup fleshed out by singer-guitarist Pete Clifford (who at one time had been in Dusty Springfield's backing band), organist Chris Dee, drummer Nick Doc Doktor, and singer-bassist Jack Russell. Despite the weird group name, Floribunda Rose's sole single, the 1967 Pye release One Way Street/Linda Loves Linda, wasn't out-and-out psychedelia. It was rather twee period pop/rock with a whiff of psychedelic influence, One Way Street sounding, at times, like Monkees-influenced British freakbeat, Linda Loves Linda being a tamer ode for a self-absorbed flower child. The single flopped, and by 1968 the group, still recording for Pye, changed their name to Scrugg and made three more little-noticed singles, highlighted by the more convincingly psychedelic 45 Everyone Can See/I Wish I Was Five. Both sides of the Floribunda Rose single -- as well as both sides of Kongos' 1966 Piccadilly single, everything from the three Scrugg singles, the entirety of Kongos' 1969 LP Confusions About a Goldfish, and a few unreleased songs by Kongos and Scrugg from the same era -- are on the anthology Lavender Popcorn. ~ Richie Unterberger, Rovi