THE BONZO DOG DOO-DAH BAND: WRESTLE POODLES ...AND WIN! (2006)
1) Rule Britannia; 2) Hunting
Tigers; 3) My Brother Makes The Noises; 4) Doorstep; 5) Little Sir Echo; 6) Ali
Baba's Camel; 7) Falling In Love Again; 8) Watermelon; 9) Look Out, There's A
Monster Coming; 10) Whispering; 11) By A Waterfall; 12) Sheik Of Araby; 13)
Hello Mabel; 14) Jollity Farm; 15) The Equestrian Statue; 16) Cool Britannia;
17) We Are Normal; 18) The Strain; 19) The Sound Of Music; 20) Exodus; 21) The
Trouser Press; 22) My Pink Half Of The Drainpipe; 23) I'm Bored; 24) Sport (The
Odd Boy); 25) Mr. Apollo; 26) Humanoid Boogie; 27) Tent; 28) Can Blue Men Sing The
Whites; 29) Look At Me, I'm Wonderful; 30) San Francisco; 31) Rhinocratic Oaths;
32) Mr. Slater's Parrot; 33) Monster Mash; 34) Urban Spaceman; 35) Canyons Of
Your Mind.
There is nothing too surprising about a Bonzo
Dog Band reunion — in fact, what is more surprising is that, since the band's
ultimate breakup, they have only had one minor attempt at getting back together
in thirty years (recording one «political» single in 1988). However, old age
nostalgia, as well as increased popular interest in all things retro,
eventually did its thing, and so, in early 2006, in order to celebrate the
band's 40th anniversary, the «proper» reunion finally took place at the London
Astoria — in the form of a sprawling celebratory show, a representative retrospective
of all things that originally made The Bonzo Dog Band the real and uncontested champions
of The Doo-Dah.
By this time, Stanshall was already deceased,
making the reunion look a little like a Lennon-less posthumous Beatles show: no
less than four different guest stars from the «alt-comedy» routine have been
invited to fill in for the dead legend, with varying (but always incomplete)
degrees of success. Original bass player Dennis Cowan was also no longer in
this world; everybody else seems to be there, and trying to enjoy the whole
thing as much as possible.
Although, apparently, there is a DVD version of
this album, and much of the show was centered around theatrical comic
performance, I am ever so slightly happy that I have not seen it — it makes
much more sense to seek out old videos of their TV show instead, rather than
watch the old geezers re-promote their legend in an age in which they so
painfully do not belong (and the same goes for Monty Python, by the way, whose
recurrent reunions compare quite pitifully to the original show). Just listening to whatever they're doing out
there, though, almost completely erases the chronological context — and since
they are doing it so well, Wrestle
Poodles could almost pass for an
original, old-school live album, minus the guest stars and the inevitable old
crackle here and there in one of the singer's voices.
Indeed, these here are one hundred minutes of
prime Bonzo stuff, delivered with all the authentic merriment, sarcasm, and
energy as could and should be expected, and strung together with little staged
vignettes and stage banter as one grand vaudevillian celebration. The setlist
mostly consists of comic classics, going heavier on Gorilla/Tadpoles-style material
than on the more experimental stuff, for obvious reasons (to please the
audience, and also because much of that original tape-splicing experimentation
would be hard, and useless, to reproduce on stage) — but since they play all
their super-melodic ditties like ʽEquestrian Statueʼ and ʽUrban Spacemanʼ,
who'd want to complain?
Of all the guest stars, Stephen Fry probably
does the best job, but that is because he is Stephen Fry, and unlike everybody
else, he does not even try to be Viv Stanshall — he just gives a typically Fry
take on a couple of tunes, most notably ʽRhinocratic Oathsʼ where the complex surrealist
monolog is delivered without a single hitch or glitch. On the other hand, Ade
Edmondson tries way too hard to
emulate Stanshall's personality on ʽThe Strainʼ, and overcooks the toilet humor
side of the song so much that... well, it stinks,
frankly speaking; and Paul Merton, according to reports, had to recite the
words to ʽMonster Mashʼ from cue cards — how un-Bonzo is that? Not to mention that he just doesn't seem to get into the
mock-ghouly spirit of the song at all: if you are trying to perform something
of that level of silliness, you can really only allow yourself to do it if you
are willing to go all the way, otherwise it's just... silly. Or even stupid.
Still, despite these minor nitpickings, on the
whole the show seems to have been a success. The audience, probably largely
consisting of the band's 50-60-year old fans, plays along with everything that
requires audience participation (such as the "hello! – hello!"'s of
ʽMr. Slater's Parrotʼ, or the "do you like soul music? — NO!!!!" bit
on ʽTrouser Pressʼ), the musical side is faithfully and loyally well-rehearsed,
and ultimately, it is just a cool thing to have so much of the Bonzos' comic
greatness stuffed together in one such lovingly prepared package. A thumbs up,
then, although, unlike the original albums, this one's value will probably
fizzle out together with the passing of the Bonzos' last original fan.
Monty Python reunited in 2014 for a few shows in London and that's about it. Hardly enough to talk about "recurrent reunions", I think.
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