Fun Lovin' Criminals come back swinging with a 100% Colombian show as they prepare to play The Wedgewood Rooms - and respond to ex-singer Huey Morgan's jibes

Fun Lovin’ Criminals are about to hit the road to mark 25 years of their second album, the top three, platinum-selling 100% Colombian. The trio will be playing it in full, including the hit singles Big Night Out, Love Unlimited and Korean Bodega.

However, it is two years since original frontman Huey Morgan left the band under a cloud. Co-founder, multi-instrumentalist Brian ‘Fast’ Leiser and long-term drummer Frank Benbini are now joined by guitarist Naim Cortazzi.

Since it was announced that Morgan had left the band, he had remained silent until recently when, via X/Twitter, he began branding the band as “a corny tribute act” and accusing them of “defrauding” fans.

Over a Zoom call with Fast and Frank, The News brings up Huey’s attacks on his former bandmates.

Fast initially expresses mock astonishment: “Is he coming out of the woodwork after two years of not saying anything?” But he is equally bullish in defending his band.

“We don't air our dirty laundry in public. Any claims he makes, if he wants to come after us, maybe it's not best to do it on social media.

“The true fans of the band, like we've posted over and over again, they know what the facts are. All I would say is thanks for the free press! All press is good press….

“Frank and I have stayed positive. Over the past few years Frank and I have been busting our ass for the love of the music. Whatever someone wants to accuse us of, that means nothing to us. We don't have enough time to deal with it, we're staying focused on the job, which is to play the music we wrote, which we love performing, that the overwhelming majority of the fans love to hear regardless of if I'm in the band, Huey's in the band or Frank's in the band.”

Frank adds: “The whole things a bit bizarre. His claim that we're defrauding the audience, I find it quite funny when two years ago the NME put it on their front cover that Huey decided to quit the band. And from the band, all we've screamed about, whether it's been Q&As on Facebook Lives, Instagram, we've been very upfront about it.

"To be honest with you, it's a massive relief, and all we've ever done since then is champion one of my oldest friends, Naim, who took this up. It's not easy for him to be reading all this stuff either. We've said from day one, that Huey's no longer in the band, so I find it all very funny when he's trying to say this to all the people who buy into the nonsense – just go back two years and look at the press release, we've never hidden from our fans or tried to let any of our fans think that Huey is still in the band.”

In reference to the situation in the band at the time of the split, Frank adds: “If Huey was still in the band, Frank Benbini wouldn't be in the band,” as Fast chips in: “And neither would I.”

Fast continues: “We had a post up for six months that was pinned everywhere, and then we did an Instagram Live for about 45 minutes where we explained our side of the story in a way that was respectful – that wasn't lawyer talk, because that's a whole other element that the public don't need to know.

"Really it comes down to the fans to decide – if you want to come to our shows, we'll be excited to see you. If you don't want to come to our shows, for whatever reason, no problem.

“As long as people want to see Frank and I and Naim perform, because we are Fun Lovin’ Criminals now, we're there, we're going to be booking shows.”

Hitting the road

One of the bones of contention in the band had apparently been that although they continued to play live Morgan was unwilling to record new material, wanting instead to focus on his radio and presenting career.

“We've been very lucky in the last two years to be able to play places we haven't played for 10-15 years for various reasons,” says Fast, “but the main one being that Huey didn't want to do it. It came down to money – Frank and I will go and do a show for 5-600 people, or 1,000 people like we did in Prague the other day because we haven't played there in so long.

“Frank and I aren't Linda Evangelista – we WILL get out of bed for less than 10 grand!” he says referencing the supermodel’s famous boast.

“It's strange that it's been two years and then suddenly there's this diatribe on the cesspit that it is X,” adds Frank. “But we are Fun Lovin’ Criminals, we play to our fans and the fans love it. The shows are selling out and we just want to play the music. I've been here 20 years now, these songs are my songs too – I've played them for 20 years. For Fast it's 30 years, and that's a long time.

“Reading keyboard warriors on the cesspit that is Twitter is not why I joined a band, so they can all go screw themselves as far as I'm concerned.”

To back-track a little, our conversation had begun with happier talk about how the 100% Colombian tour had been going thus far.

“It's been going great, we've just started this 100% Colombian tour about 10 days ago,” says Fast. “We've done shows in Greece and the Czech Republic and Holland and the fans are loving it. It's a cool thing when a band plays an album start to finish, at least we think – we did it years ago with Come Find Yourself and it's a good challenge."

Come Find Yourself was the band’s 1996 debut which featured the massive single Scooby Snacks. With it’s blend of Tarantino-film sampling blend of hip-hop, rock and some smoother sounds, the then-New York-based band scored a bigger hit in the UK than back in their home country.

Revisiting their back catalogue

As Fast talks about touring, it sounds like the past couple of years have given the band a revived love for the neglected corners of their back catalogue.

"One of the things Frank and I have been trying to do over the past two years now that we can finally rehearse as a band is to work up all of these songs we haven't played in years – or ever.

"So as we keep continuing touring and releasing new music, we can pick and choose from all of these other things. It's something that in the past 20 years, the band never really did. We always went out and played the same songs from Come Find Yourself, the same few.. y'know, and the setlist was the same. As a fan I wouldn't want to go to a show year after year and hear the same songs, albeit in a different order.

“We can pick and choose stuff, and I think the fans are loving that they're hearing songs we've never played live. There's a lot we never played (back in the day). But when you've got six or seven albums and two new EPs, you just have so many songs to choose from.

“Obviously on this tour we're focusing on playing 100% Colombian from start to finish. It's great to revisit that album and have it sounding great – and having Naim on guitar is great because he's playing parts that Huey never played live because when he was doing vocals he wasn't really playing guitar so much. Naim isn't the singer so... it allows us to recreate the album in a way that I – being in the studio with Huey and Steve (Borgovini, then drummer) – making the record, I'm really happy with how everything sounds.”

As with any “play the full album” show, it forces changes into perhaps long-established setlist conventions. For example, this album opens with a pair of distinctly laid-back tracks – Up on The Hill and the single Love Unlimited.

”It is a bit strange because we normally come out of the blocks swinging. We normally kick off the set with our trademark song Fun Lovin’ Criminal, but now it's laid back and mellow.

"That album was more of a sophisticated production than the first album, so I think it's good for the fans who are really into the music and they like the mid-tempo, laid-back lounge vibe that you get, and then as you run through the album you get the ‘bigger’ songs – the more amplified rocks songs, like Korean Bodega and 10th Street. It's a nice mix, it's just getting used to it. Whereas usually we go out and it's balls out craziness, now we're just warming up with the first couple of songs. It's nice to ease into this set rather than go crazy right from the top.”

Following up a hit record

When the band were trying to put together their second album, how easy was it for them off the back of such a big hit?

“When we came back from touring Come Find Yourself, the one thing we wanted to do was to not perform Come Find Yourself for a little while!” recalls Fast.

“We had a lot of ideas we were working on right up until we released Come Find Yourself – you finish recording a record, then it comes out seven or eight months later, so in that time we were writing a lot of new songs.

"It was about 50 per cent done while we were touring Come Find Yourself. Songs like Up on The Hill, Love Unlimited, We are All Very Worried About You, All My Time is Gone, Big Night Out, Sugar – the songs were already written, sampled, pieced together, so it made it easy to get in the studio and actually have time to focus on our production techniques and working on how to record guitar sounds, drum sounds, horn sounds with our engineer friend Tim Latham who's done all our music, including the two new EPs.

"It's got some of my favourite songs that I've written the music for.”

Speaking of the new EPs, last November the band released The Roosevelt Sessions – their first new material since 2010, marking Naim’s recorded debut with the band. And in June they put out another EP of new tracks, The Capistrano Sessions.

Once they started working on the EPs, Benbini says the songs came together quite easily.

”It was important to get it done,” says the drummer. “Me and Fast have been writing stuff on and off for years that's not fully developed into songs. We've got a vault where we can listen to old tracks and beats and start building them up into songs, so that process was relatively quick. Writing lyrics is the tricky part of the process, but once that was done, Bang! We got the Roosevelt EP out, and then we followed it up after coming back from our tour in America with the second one, Capistrano.

“To go back and do an EP was something we'd not done in many years so that was kind of exciting. When the two came out we thought, why don't we stick them together and do a limited edition vinyl? So the exciting thing about this tour is that we've got that vinyl for sale – and they've all been signed by the three of us. It feels like a mini-album, even though it's two EPs that actually had an eight month gap.

“It was really good to work with Tim Latham again and the whole thing sounds super-credible. It’s got all the styles which make FLC. For me and Fast there's no rules, and we love all kinds of music, whether it's classical, jazz, hip-hop, rock, whatever, it's all in those two EPs. There's a big nod on Roosevelt to jazz, and hip-hop and the new one's got that disco-y, great storytelling thing, songs about a couple of our favourite places. We're super-psyched about those two EPs. And the best thing about them is that the fans bloody love it.”

After these two EPs, can the fans expect more?

“First and foremost it's getting through this monstrous tour,” says Frank, “which is going all over the UK and then down to New Zealand and Australia – places we haven't been in 15 years. I'm sure at some point we'll get back in the studio and do another EP.”

And as to any long-term fans who may have reservations about a Huey-less FLC?

“I'm just interested in turning up and playing as well as I can,” says Frank. “If people walk away loving it, and they come back on the second year and we’re still selling out shows, then great.”

They play The Wedgewood Rooms in Southsea on Thursday, December 7. Tickets £25. Go to wedgewood-rooms.co.uk.