The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band: The Complete BBC Recordings

THE BONZO DOG DOO-DAH BAND: THE COMPLETE BBC RECORDINGS (1967-1986/2002)

1) Do The Trouser Press; 2) Canyons Of Your Mind; 3) I'm The Urban Spaceman; 4) Hello Mabel; 5) Mr. Apollo; 6) Tent; 7) Monster Mash; 8) Give Booze A Chance; 9) We Were Wrong; 10) Keynsham; 11) I Want To Be With You; 12) Mickey's Son And Daughter; 13) Craig Torso Show; 14) Can Blue Men Sing The Whites; 15) Look At Me I'm Wonderful; 16) Quiet Talks And Summer Walks; 17) We're Going To Bring It On Home; 18) Sofa Head; 19) Can­yons Of Your Mind; 20) I'm The Urban Spaceman.

And another one for completists only — released on the semi-official Strange Fruit label that, among other things, specializes on disclosing radio archives (such as the various John Peel sessions, etc.). I have no idea whether this is really «complete» (most probably not, since there are too few track repetitions for a «complete» package), but it does combine tracks from a variety of performances, mostly recorded for «Top Gear» in 1968 and 1969, and ending with a very brief snippet of ʽUrban Spacemanʼ, performed solo by Neil Innes on vocals and acoustic guitar for «Late Night Lineup» as late, indeed, as 1986.

Even the true completist might be disappointed, though, because the collection offers no genuine­ly new material. The few songs that had not been included on the original LPs are available these days as bonus tracks (e. g. the mini-spoof of ʽThe Craig Torso Showʼ), and others have been included on Anthropology (ʽSofa Headʼ, ʽGive Booze A Chanceʼ). If I am not mistaken, the only exception is ʽWe're Going To Bring It On Homeʼ, a quirky mix of a flute-led art pop song and a barroom-style roots-rocker that is neither too funny nor too touching (in the same way as quite a few songs on Keynsham) — Strange Fruit have a monopoly on this one, having originally re­leased it in 1990 as part of a small Peel Sessions EP.

Everything else is just the same old stuff, treasurable only for the fact that these are the original young Bonzos playing their material live in the studio, showing off their accomplishment as genuine musicians and offering a rare occasional twist on the studio version. (Actually, I think that the first live version of ʽCanyonsʼ here might predate the studio version, because instead of the rather incoherent "to the ventricles of your heart / I'm in love with you again", Stanshall sings "through the ventricles of your heart / I am pumping you again" — what looks like the probable original lyrics, later censored by the band themselves in order to avoid extreme ambiguity by inadvertently introducing a new meaning of the verb "to pump" in the English language.)

It should probably be added that Stanshall's vocal style on ʽThe Monster Mashʼ leans here to­wards the «comically crazy» rather than the «ironically croony», and that the «trouser pressing» guitar imitation on ʽDo The Trouser Pressʼ, done without the benefit of additional studio effects, is still inventive and funny (the freshly demented Syd Barrett would have probably appreciated it). Other than that, there is nothing to add — except that I am still a little disappointed to learn once more that there are indeed no hidden wonders in the vaults for Britain's greatest comic band of rock music's finest era. Oh well — at the very least, it's not as if the album, loaded with all these wonderful tunes in solid renditions and stable sound quality, were an unpleasant listen or any­thing. Completists won't be disappointed.

The Bonzo Dog Band: Anthropology: The Beast Within

THE BONZO DOG BAND: ANTHROPOLOGY: THE BEAST WITHIN (1967-69/1998)

1) Tent; 2) Busted; 3) I'm The Urban Spaceman I; 4) Mr. Slater's Parrot; 5) Canyons Of Your Mind (intro); 6) Can­yons Of Your Mind; 7) Canyons Of Your Mind I; 8) The Equestrian Statue; 9) Tragic Magic; 10) Quiet Talks And Summer Walks; 11) What Do You Do?; 12) Give Booze A Chance; 13) And 3/4; 14) National Beer; 15) Canyons Of Your Mind II; 16) Joke Shop Man; 17) A Wonderful Day Like Today; 18) Mr. Hyde In Me; 19) Look At Me, I'm Wonderful; 20) We Were Wrong; 21) Sofa Head; 22) By A Waterfall; 23) Boiled Ham Rhumba; 24) Intro; 25) The Monster Mash; 26) Humanoid Boogie; 27) I'm The Urban Spaceman II; 28) The Sound Of Music; 29) Little Sir Echo; 30) You Done My Brain In.

Save yourself the trouble, I guess. There is a rather disproportionate amount of various Bonzo Dog Band compilations on the market, some lightly peppered with otherwise unavailable goodies and some not at all — but there is no such thing as «a magic vault» for these guys, as this parti­cular collection of outtakes and rarities clearly shows. Released in 1998 and proclaiming to re­present «rehearsal material» from around 1967-68, Anthropology, out of its 30 tracks, has maybe 4 or 5 «true surprises» in stock for the casual Bonzo Dog fan (that is, if the word «casual» is at all applicable to any Bonzo Dog fan), and not all of them nice surprises at that.

In fact, only Stanshall's ʽMr. Hyde In Meʼ could probably pass for a valuable addition — a pretty hilarious impersonation of a guy's «sexual transformation», unfortunately a bit spoiled by some of those annoying high-pitched mock-doo-wop backing harmonies. The demented waltz of ʽLittle Sir Echoʼ is also silly-funny, although its major hook (the "hello! — hello!" echo in question) would eventually be borrowed for ʽMr. Slater's Parrotʼ and the rest discarded. And those who respect the Bonzos for their musical experimentation will probably want to be exposed to ʽSofa Headʼ, a fairly wild free-style romp through the world of jungle jazz, cosmic rock, and chime-led nursery rhymes, well in line with any typical bit of Doughnut-era material.

On the other hand, off-the-cuff novelty material like ʽGive Booze A Chanceʼ (yes, a very straight­forward parody of ʽGive Peace A Chanceʼ) is simply not funny, and only exists as a symbolic showcase for the Bonzos' already well-known «irreverence»; nor is it easy to get won over by half-baked piano exercises such as ʽBoiled Ham Rhumbaʼ, which honestly sounds like Neil Innes sitting down at the piano and nonsensically improvising for a couple of minutes. (On the AMG side, somebody supposed that this could be a parody on John Lennon — really? Does the re­viewer know something we don't know?).

Even so, all of these «new» songs are swept away by the ocean waves of all-too-familiar material, presented in alternative versions — as a rule, inferior ones either in arrangement, or in sound quality, or both. You do get to see how songs like ʽBustedʼ or ʽMr. Slater's Parrotʼ evolved, and no number of different versions of ʽUrban Spacemanʼ can be too huge for such a jolly tune, but on the whole, there is little to discuss unless one has really, truly, loyally worn out his faithful copies of the original studio albums. Which, not coincidentally, could also be said about the Beatles' Anthologies — which, not coincidentally, must have served as the obvious model for this CD. Indeed — back in 1967-69, the Bonzos were like the Beatles' comic twins (no wonder the two had a bit of a symbiotic relationship at the height of the flower power era), so it comes as no surprise that they would choose this particular timing, just two years since the wrapping-up of the Anthology project, to review the raw edges of their own career. However, that is the fate of all comical twins — their sketches and leftovers inevitably pale in comparison with their more serious brethren. Besides, these are not even sketches, more like «rehearsal versions» indeed: too close to the final variants to become interesting — too different from the final variants to become «alternatively perfect». In other words, for completists only.

The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band: Pour L'Amour Des Chiens

THE BONZO DOG DOO-DAH BAND: POUR L'AMOUR DES CHIENS (2007)

1) Pour L'Amour Des Chiens; 2) Let's All Go To Mary's House; 3) Hawkeye The Gnu; 4) Making Faces At The Man In The Moon; 5) Fiasco; 6) Purple Sprouting Broccoli; 7) Old Tige; 8) Wire People; 9) Salmon Proust; 10) Demo­cracy; 11) I Predict A Riot; 12) Scarlet Ribbons; 13) Paws; 14) And We're Back; 15) Stadium Love; 16) Mornington Crescent; 17) L'Essence D'Hooligan; 18) Early Morning Train; 19) My Friends Outside; 20) For The Benefit Of Mankind; 21) Beautiful People; 22) Ego Warriors; 23) Cockadoodle Tato; 24) Tiptoe Through The Tulips; 25) Sweet Memories; 26) Sudoku Forecast; 27) Now You're Asleep; 28) Jean Baudrillard.

A proper reunion of the (mostly) original Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. In 2007. No Viv Stanshall to come down from the sky, even if only for a moment, but most of the rest somehow cuddled together. Do you really want to hear that? A relic so inextricably associated with the Sixties. It is certainly one thing to see a brief glimpse of them in a nostalgia-oriented show, but to actually subject ourselves to new material from these guys, in the iPhone and YouTube age and all? Who in his right mind would want to do that, unless out of some twisted understanding of «pity»?

Apparently, nobody did: the album was barely noted upon release, and you can count the online-available reactions to it on the fingers of both hands, be it professional critical reviews or average music fan assessments — and the reaction, mostly, was as expected: «kinda fun, but why should this ever exist in this age?» And from a purely logical standpoint, this is absolutely correct: it should not. Fortunately, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band never operated on Aristotelian logic, or else they wouldn't have any right to the title of «Doo-Dah».

Once logic has been politely asked out the door, Pour L'Amour Des Chiens is an excellent album — nostalgic, futuristic, whatever, it is bursting with all sorts of ideas, some good, some bad, some exquisitely tasteful, some disgustingly (or delightfully) distasteful, and all of them sounding as if The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band never really went away. Well, they might have climbed into a refrigerator for a while, but it's not even as if they were frozen unconscious all that time: at the very least, they know who Gary Numan is.

For the most part, the record relies on musical (and comical) structures and gimmicks that do not, indeed, transgress the human experience accumulated by around 1969. For the most part, yes — but that does not prevent them from certain intentional anachronisms. For instance, around the middle of the album there is a track called ʽPawsʼ, in which you are advocated to press the pause button on your player and go have a snack or something, since this is the way LP records were designed in the 1960s. However, what they do not warn you about is that back in the 1960s, few, if any, record sides could run for about 32-35 minutes — whereas Pour L'Amour Des Chiens makes full use of the CD format, running for over 70 minutes, almost enough for a double LP, come to think of it, and certainly the most sprawling record in the entire life of the Bonzos.

Fortunately, with not a single track running over five minutes, and lots of small spoken-word, faux-commercial, and general-goofy interludes, the album does not truly seem overlong — not to mention that, in solid Bonzo tradition, the amount of different styles is truly staggering. Only twice do they seriously venture outside the comfy zone of «the Sixties and everything beyond that back in time»: ʽMy Friends Outsideʼ is a rather sneery send-up of artsy synth-pop (the one with the explicit Gary Numan references and a hilarious discussion on the emotional implications of various electronic effects at the end), and the ʽLegsʼ Larry Smith spotlight number ʽSweet Memo­riesʼ, despite being one of the album's most explicit nostalgia-oriented song, is «perversely» arranged as a late Seventies disco dance number — indeed, it would be too boring for these guys to set their memories to a soundtrack from the same time as those memories, wouldn't it?

Wait, actually, I'm wrong: another all-too obvious piece of evidence for the Bonzos knowing what time of day it is is their cover of the Kaiser Chiefs' ʽI Predict A Riotʼ; it's just that the Kaiser Chiefs themselves are such a blatantly retro-looking band that, in a way, it is not quite clear who exactly is covering who. Well, so the Bonzos, if my memory serves me right, did not actually try their hand at straightforward garage rock back in 1967-69, but they do now, and do it in their expected manner, taking the word «riot» a little too literally and then taking a look at what fol­lows (no spoilers). In any case, a good choice and yet another bit of success.

Highlights on the whole are too numerous to mention everything. Just a few random quick notes, then. ʽLet's All Go To Mary's Houseʼ is a piece of crackling vaudeville that belongs equally well in 1925 and on Gorilla. ʽPurple Sprouting Broccoliʼ gives us a merry banjo-led country spoof; additionally, ʽOld Tigeʼ then kicks the bucket even further by covering an old Jim Reeves tune (one of those sentimental «me and my dog» narratives) and winding its spoken narrative up to truly absurdist highs. ʽWire Peopleʼ should be read "why are people..." and included in a Sesame Street episode. On ʽDemocracyʼ, Neil Innes fumbles around with a little reggae and offers a little bit of supposedly-serious insight in the issue of human rights. And my personal favorite at the moment is probably ʽEgo Warriorsʼ, which not only rocks harder than everything else, but also probably makes the most biting — nay, the most annihilating — lyrical point of all (which point can be already well seen from the title, but do check it out for the rest of the words).

The album seems to be dedicated to the memory of the recently deceased Jean Baudrillard, who gets namechecked in a French version of the opening ditty — appropriately so, considering the Bonzos' post-structuralist pedigree: whatever nasty counter-arguments one might fling at the theoretical skeleton of post-modernism, The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band is one of its happy side effects, and Pour L'Amour Des Chiens, with its boatload of catchy, funny, inventive tunes, is quite a happy side effect of the Bonzos. A comeback? As far as eternity is concerned, the mighty Doo-Dah has never really gone away, so the term hardly applies. In fact, new guests like Stephen Fry (who plays a fully appropriate Jeeves-type role on ʽHawkeye The Gnuʼ) carry on the old spirit in full understanding, so, apparently, as long as Great Britain, humor, intellect, and a lack of fear of offending too many people still exist, The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band still has a future. Try to find the album if you can — a timeless delight, really. Thumbs up.

The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band: Wrestle Poodles ...And Win!

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.

Bonzo Dog Band: Let's Make Up And Be Friendly

THE BONZO DOG BAND: LET'S MAKE UP AND BE FRIENDLY (1972)

1) The Strain; 2) Turkeys; 3) King Of Scurf; 4) Waiting For The Wardrobe; 5) Straight From My Heart; 6) Rusty; 7) Rawlinson End; 8) Don't Get Me Wrong; 9) Fresh Wound; 10) Bad Blood; 11) Slush; 12*) Suspicion; 13*) Trouser Freak.

For one of those «contractual obligation» albums that usually turn out to be predictably disap­pointing, the sardonically-titled Let's Make Up And Be Friendly actually isn't half-bad. Not only is it the longest Bonzo Dog Band record up to date (although that is mostly the result of two intentionally drawn-out and overlong tracks), but it is clear that quite a bit of imagination and work was involved in its production — even despite the fact that Stanshall, Innes, and bassist Dennis Cowan were the only regular Bonzos to oversee all of the recording (ʽLegsʼ Larry Smith and Roger Ruskin Spear make guest appearances on a few tracks). In spirit, Let's Make Up is closer to a «comedy» product than an «experimental» release, but it has its parallels with just about every single other Bonzo Dog Band release, so, as a career wrap-up, it is fairly adequate, and, in my opinion, quite unjustly maligned by fans.

Arguably the major miscalculation was to open the album with ʽThe Strainʼ — a comic blues-rock ode to constipation that many people logically consider way too crude and unworthy of these guys' reputation. I mean, toilet humor? Come on now! But on second thought, there is really nothing that wrong with toilet humor if it is done well (the major mistake of 99% of toilet humor being in that people somehow think that the subject is always funny per se, and does not need any special intellectual input), and ʽThe Strainʼ is done well to the point of genuine hilariousness — with Stanshall singing it in a Captain Beefheart voice and, of course, ʽThe Strainʼ itself being a mock-analogy with a popular dance ("Hey hey human gonna do The Strain / I'm gonna grip the seat I'm gonna pull the chain"). Throw in a kick-ass guitar solo, the most authentic «straining noises» possible in a human being, and you really get the best song about constipation issues the other side of Screamin' Jay Hawkins' ʽConstipation Bluesʼ (which may have very well served as the basic inspiration for the Bonzos' polite British answer).

Nor does the album sound particularly out of time or out of touch — even for these contractual purposes, the Bonzos still keep their eyes and ears open, so that the inspiration, production, and mood-setting touches are very much reminiscent of the early 1970s or, at least, very late 1969. ʽRustyʼ, a tragicomic spoken monologue about a homosexual couple breaking up, is set to a slow soulful arrangement, with deep gospel harmonies and a blazing wah-wah lead part all the way through, as though it were influenced by Funkadelic's ʽMaggot Brainʼ. Roger's ʽWaiting For The Ward­robeʼ begins as a somber avantgarde number, all electronic noise and percussion, before turning into a schizophrenic electric blues-rocker. And ʽDon't Get Me Wrongʼ is naturally re­miniscent of ʽDon't Let Me Downʼ, although the melody is a bit more Otis Redding.

On the «serious» side of things, there's ʽTurkeysʼ, a curious instrumental that shows traces of interest in avantgarde jazz and not-too-modern classical (of the Bartók and/or Shostakovich variety, I'd say), and ʽRawlinson's Endʼ, mostly resting on a series of piano improvisations, from ragtime to impressionistic to completely free-form — although the track essentially functions as a musical introduction to the character of Sir Henry Rawlinson, a favorite character of Viv Stan­shall's whom he would later explore in greater detail in his solo career. The spoken-word mono­log, very much in the vein of the nonsensical ʽBig Shotʼ from Gorilla, may be freely ignored, but the accompaniment is not without its merits.

As a matter of fact, there is not a single track on here that I could just call «plain bad». Where they are saddling old warhorses like Elvis-style balladry (ʽStraight From My Heartʼ) or write very straightforward parodies on specific genres (the country-western ʽBad Bloodʼ), the results are at least mildly fun, and ʽKing Of Scurfʼ is one of their best stabs at old-fashioned teen-pop, though, admittedly, this one is a bit outdated by the standards of 1972 (and it was probably way beneath their contempt to try a stab at The Osmonds). One really strange thing, though — why write and perform a song that intentionally sounds like mediocre John Lennon circa 1963 (ʽFresh Woundʼ)? (There is also an explicit Beatles reference in the song, when Neil says "come on George, snap out of it" — apparently, a «hidden message» to a then-currently depressed Harrison).

Finally, the two-minute coda of ʽSlushʼ is probably the sweetest-funniest way of saying goodbye to the fans imaginable — leave it to the Bonzos to «spoil» a sweet, innocent, pastoral soundscape, written as if specially for a romantic movie soundtrack, with their zany looped overdub: a ridicu­lous and symbolic gesture. Or you could go even farther and say that the echoey looped laughter is the voice of Pan, The Great Satyr himself, always happy to conjugate beauty with mischief at the most improper moment in time.

It is said that, when pressed into their «contractual obligation», their first bitter move was to go into the studio, set a timer for 45 minutes, and make a record out of anything and everything they recorded in the meantime — but then the next day, they relented, repented, and decided that they couldn't be that cruel to their remaining loyal fans. Maybe it was all for the better, because that way, they were able to let off steam, then sleep on it and gather some inspiration and good sense by the morning. That way, from ʽThe Strainʼ and all the way through to ʽSlushʼ and the farewell message of "...dada for now!" on the back cover, Let's Make Up And Be Friendly is consistently busy tying up loose ends and, occasionally, maybe even indicating new ways of development for the future. Not that it really is the Bonzos' Abbey Road or anything, but it is quite a graceful way to go out all the same, well worth a thumbs up and a get-it recommendation — particularly if you are not afraid of a little bit of high-quality toilet humor. 

The Bonzo Dog Band: Keynsham

THE BONZO DOG BAND: KEYNSHAM (1969)

1) You Done My Brain In; 2) Keynsham; 3) Quiet Talks And Summer Walks; 4) Tent; 5) We Were Wrong; 6) Joke Shop Man; 7) The Bride Stripped Bare By 'Bachelors'; 8) Look At Me, I'm Wonderful; 9) What Do You Do?; 10) Mr. Slater's Parrot; 11) Sport (The Odd Boy); 12) I Want To Be With You; 13) Noises For The Leg; 14) Busted.

You can use Wikipedia or a million other sources to learn why the album was called Keynsham, and it might even help you to form a more informative, complete, and systematic picture of the universe, but it will probably not provide you with an extra key to enjoying, admiring, or even «understanding» the fourth LP by The Bonzo Dog Band, so we will not dwell too long on the trivia and instead, will skip right on to the generalization — Keynsham is their second most com­plex record after Doughnut, but still a little less complex, sort of a partial compromise be­tween the experimentation of Doughnut and the accessible silliness of Tadpoles. Let it not be said that the Bonzos made even two albums that sounded completely alike — their menu items all share the same core, but are varied enough to fit quite a plethora of different tastes.

One thing that is hard not to notice is how quite a few tracks here either parody or deconstruct the «art pop» thing — where Doughnut was more obsessed with fooling around with blues-rock and rock'n'roll, Keynsham seems to take note of the increase in popularity of such bands as the Bee Gees or the Moody Blues or any of their other competitors: songs like ʽQuiet Talks And Summer Walksʼ and ʽWhat Do You Do?ʼ combine elements of vocal crooning, pastoral flutes, swooping strings, heavenly harmonies, etc., and end up sounding like authentic «artsy» compositions of their age — until you start concentrating on the lyrics: ʽWhat Do You Do?ʼ parodies the «Serious Philosophical Question Song» movement, and ʽQuiet Talks And Summer Walksʼ depicts a couple's romantic relations as seen through the somewhat bleek perspective of the protagonist, only to become suddenly deflated by the sound of a dentist's drill.

At the same time, the boys are not at all past their usual «slap-schtick»: ʽTentʼ is brassy Sha-Na-Na style pop with a brawny caveman angle, ʽWe Were Wrongʼ is romantic Zombies-style pop with a corny joke angle (ʽThis Will Be Our Yearʼ may have served as the musical inspiration, provided the Bonzos actually did have access to the not-so-popular Odessey And Oracle), and then there's material like ʽMr. Slater's Parrotʼ that sounds as if it were taken straight from the Benny Hill Show soundtrack. Naturally, there is no coherence whatsoever between the «serious-sounding» stuff and the directly comedic numbers, but that is something you either have to take or leave: the Bonzos declared war on coherence before they were born.

In terms of sheer inventiveness, we should tip our hats as usual: the mix of melodies, hilarious lyrics, recitatives, mini-stories, and sound effects is as dazzling and delirious as ever — speaking of sound effects, ʽBustedʼ probably has the single best example of a cow's mooing sampled in the history of all cow moo samples, and ʽNoises For The Legʼ probably has the most irritating ever example of the use of a Theremin on record (one that was actually installed inside the leg of a mannequin, which explains the song's title).

On the other hand, somehow you can tell that, by intentionally avoiding all elements of «formula», the band has driven itself into a rut — now that they know they can handle it all, and now that they have already handled it all on Doughnut, Keynsham feels a little bit... predictable. Like their TV brothers Monty Python, who only lasted a few years before their romance with intellectualized absurdity became boring, the Bonzos were unable to settle their awesome initial explosion into a pleasantly useful routine.

As an incidental introduction to the band's sound, Keynsham is as good as any other Bonzo album — but if taken in chronological order, it does not seem to fulfill its assigned task to stick a wise-cracking knife under the ribs of 1969 the same way that Doughnut did for 1968. The simple pop parodies are a little late, and the art pop exercises do not work very well as «serious» Lieder for the masses (the Bonzos could mime to the Moodies and the Bee Gees, but their songwriting relative to these guys was more or less like the Rutles / Beatles relationship) and do not properly fulfill the task of desecrating these temples of romanticism, either. They're a little bit pretty and a little bit funny, but sort of «midway» in both categories.

The record deserves a strong thumbs up in any case — these criticisms are relative, not absolute, and repeated listens do bring out both the melodic hooks and the pockets of intellectual depth in the material. But the decision to split, which the band took around the same time the LP was issued, was utterly wise: in their current incarnation, they found it hard to keep up with the rapidly changing times — as a 1969 album, Keynsham is simply nowhere near as impressive as Doughnut was for a 1968 album. Perhaps if they had a real Frank Zappa in their ranks, things would turn out different, but neither Stanshall nor Innes could lay claim to anything like that.

The Bonzo Dog Band: Tadpoles

THE BONZO DOG BAND: TADPOLES (1969)

1) Hunting Tigers Out In Indiah; 2) Shirt; 3) Tubas In The Moonlight; 4) Dr. Jazz; 5) The Monster Mash; 6) I'm The Urban Spaceman; 7) Ali Baba's Camel; 8) Laughing Blues; 9) By A Waterfall; 10) Mr. Apollo; 11) Canyons Of Your Mind; 12*) Boo!; 13*) Readymades; 14*) Look At Me I'm Wonderful; 15*) We Were Wrong; 16*) The Craig Torso Christmas Show.

The Bonzos' third album is much closer in spirit and form to Gorilla — a creative retread, some might say, but only depending on whether you revere these guys more in their «surrealist-kiddie-comic» mood or their «surrealist-Zappa-like» mood. The heart of the matter is that most of these particular songs were culled from Do Not Adjust Your Set, the proto-Python TV show that re­gularly featured the Bonzos and was originally intended for kids, before Eric Idle, Michael Palin, and others decided they'd still target it towards mixed audiences and see what happens. So, naturally, the proper-accurate way to enjoy these tunes is to see them in the context of the show (something that can be easily done these days with a little help from Youtube), especially consi­dering that many of the tracks feature integrated bits of dialog (ʽShirtʼ) or implied theatrical per­formance (ʽAli Baba's Camelʼ).

That said, there is nothing like Tadpoles, really, when it comes to averaging out the number of tightly composed, insanely catchy, delightfully funny Bonzo Dog Band songs per record. This is their one UK album, for starters, that's got ʽUrban Spacemanʼ on it — produced by good friend Paul McCartney, it's a piece of genius vaudeville and an amusing assault on the concept of the fantasy superhero at the same time (the final «twist» is simple, predictable, and unforgettable), so unbeatable that it became the band's highest charting single ever: I have to guess that even some of the seri­ously-minded people, generally well above the Bonzos' level of humor (or so they thought), had no power to resist.

Equally sharp and up to the point are such songs as ʽMr. Apolloʼ (jubilant folk-pop that describes the «wonders» of body-building exactly the way somebody else would be describing the «won­ders» of turning on and tuning in) and ʽCanyons Of Your Mindʼ (yet another Vegas-Elvis imper­sonation, crossed with a ridiculously «inept», out-of-tune guitar solo and some of the grossest misuses of the echo effect in recorded history). Then there's the «Britishness» thing, which pops out at the very beginning (ʽHunting Tigers Out In Indiahʼ, with the band members impersonating old-school British army officers, even if the song as a whole sounds as it belongs more with the Soviet than the British army) but is not too abused on the whole — most of the time, they are too busy professing their sarcastic admiration for old-timey jazz (Jelly Roll Morton's ʽDr. Jazzʼ gets covered), blues (ʽLaughing Bluesʼ is «authentically» lo-fi, croaky and creeky, like something from Louis Armstrong's ʽSt. Louis Bluesʼ days), and pop standards (ʽTubas In The Moonlightʼ is... Bing Crosby? Whatever).

Some of the inventions are less inventive than others, or, at least, less appropriate — I could do without the proto-Python conversations on ʽShirtʼ, and their cover of the old comic tune ʽMonster Mashʼ is expendable when you know that they are capable of much better writing on their own (I'm perfectly happy with the old performance from the Beach Boys' Concert), but one cannot expect even a genius comedy act to act with 100% accuracy, and besides, these nuances reflect personal tastes more than anything else. Plus, the reissue throws on a bunch of satisfactory bonus tracks, almost any of which can be used to replace any perceivable flaw.

Strong thumbs up here, but the warning has to be repeated: Tadpoles is mostly about comic ditties, and not recommended to anyone who finds himself disgusted with the likes of ʽMaxwell's Silver Hammerʼ and suchlike. At the same time, I cannot qualify it as a «letdown»: the Bonzos were simply pursuing different activities and trying on different faces, like many other people at the time — Manfred Mann, for instance, who could be seriouz jazzmen one minute and teenybop propagandists the other. Count Tadpoles as just another high point in the Bonzos' «teenybop» service book, then, but do not put down the idiom as such — not before you are able to write a song as maddeningly catchy as ʽUrban Spacemanʼ, at least. 

The Bonzo Dog Band: The Doughnut In Granny's Greenhouse

THE BONZO DOG BAND: THE DOUGHNUT IN GRANNY'S GREENHOUSE (1968)

1) We Are Normal; 2) Postcard; 3) Beautiful Zelda; 4) Can Blue Men Sing The Whites; 5) Hello Mabel; 6) Kama Sutra; 7) Humanoid Boogie; 8) The Trouser Press; 9) My Pink Half Of The Drainpipe; 10) Rockaliser Baby; 11) Rhinocratic Oaths; 12) Eleven Mustachioed Daughters.

The biggest shift from the «adolescent» stage of Gorilla to the «(anti-)maturity» stage of Dough­nut, I think, is that the Bonzos' second album shows a very strong Zappa influence — in parti­cular, lots of parallels can be drawn between it and We're Only In It For The Money, released about a half year earlier. For instance, just like Zappa's parodic masterpiece, this one, too, begins with a weird, «mucky» intro section, foreboding some bizarre hallucinogenic experience before suddenly shifting gears without a warning and leaping head first into whacky uptempo merriment and an endless pool of musical sarcasm. If the earlier Bonzos still retained some sense of restraint, this time they are truly «unleashed» — ideas come and go with the speed of a McDonalds atten­dant on a particularly busy day, and most of the ideas play out at top volume, energy, and crazi­ness. Here, they are no longer a band — they're the big bright green absurd-generation machine, to paraphrase an astute New Yorker of the times.

In a way, this produces a detrimental effect: The Doughnut is so diffused, distracting, and dis­concerting most of the time, that once it's over, all that remains in your head is a woozy, fuzzy feeling, as if you have just emerged out of a forty-minute experimental slideshow where your eyes had to react to colorful images at the speed of one image per half-second. Almost every «song» here is spliced together from several distinct sections that often have next to no connec­tion with each other — you have all sorts of combinations and deconstructions where old school foxtrots can walk hand in hand with free-form avantgarde, piano-based music hall can rapidly metamorphose into modal jazz, and somber Latin grooves can make a transition into a mock-solo piano recital. In this house, nothing is impossible.

As a result, the songs on this album, unlike most of the songs on Gorilla, simply do not exist on their own, but only function properly as part of a single package; at the very least, in order to disentangle them, you'd have to separate the melodies from the surrounding studio trickery, and filter out some of the noisy overdubs. In particular, I cannot speak of highlights or lowlights — as in Zappa's case, it makes more sense to regard the whole thing as part of a single, (dis)integrated, (in)­coherent musical show. Of course, the Bonzos do not have, nor do they really intend or claim to have, Frank's musical vision — where Zappa, even at his most humorous and/or offensive, still tended to pay attention to the «boundary-pushing» factor, Innes and Stanshall concentrate first and foremost on pushing the boundaries of humor, satire, and absurdity, rather than those of the music. But at the same time, the very «kaleidoscopic» nature of The Doughnut does not allow to classify it as «just» a parody album: on the overall greatness scale, I would certainly place this album seriously higher than, say, any given Weird Al record.

For instance, ʽBeautiful Zeldaʼ may be seen as just a parody on the «space-pop» thing of the times (like ʽMr. Spacemanʼ by The Byrds, etc.), but with its moody psychedelic intro, its old-fashioned doo-wop harmonies, and its jazzy brass section, it is clear that the band was aiming for more than just parody — in a way, it simply builds up on the «join pop music with sci-fi ele­ments» trend of the mid-Sixties, perhaps with a little more verve than the basic rules of adequacy would require, but that's the Bonzos for you: they want to bring out the ridiculousness and the excitement and the innovation of certain ideas at the same time.

And then there's the issue of these guys being sharp. ʽCan Blue Men Sing The Whites?ʼ, for instance, takes on the problem stated in the title (in reverse, that is) and dresses it up in the guise of a ridiculously over-distorted blues-rocker which has very little redeeming musical value, per se, but even that may be intentional, because the point of the song is, well, that blue men cannot sing the whites, whichever way in particular you'd like to explain that statement. ʽKama Sutraʼ paro­dies simplistic early Sixties teen-pop for about forty seconds, substituting the usual boy-meets-girl lyrics with something a little more up to the point ("we tried position thirty-one, it was ter­rific fun; in position seventy-two, you was me, and I was you") — imagine Jan and Dean circa '61 supplying their horny audiences with those kinds of words. ʽThe Trouser Pressʼ ridicules the «new dance craze» ideas on the soul/R&B circuit, inventing its own little dance in the process, punctuated by actual «trouser-pressing» noises and featuring a really bold call-and-response opening section exchange ("do you like soul music?..." — dead silence — quietly, but decisively: "no"). Further examples are unnecessary.

Of course, like everything else the Bonzos did, Doughnut is inextricably linked to its epoch, and with each passing year, its humor and wit gets more difficult to warm up to without a serious introductory course to all the main players on the music and entertainment scene not just of 1968, but of the entire decade. (Bonus tracks on the CD edition throw on parodic performances of ʽBlue Suede Shoesʼ, ʽBang Bangʼ, and ʽAlley Oopʼ, among other things). Comedy records tend to date easier than tragedy records, in general, for being more dependent on the particular realities of their own time and place. However, the «kaleidoscope of sound» effect that blurs the boundaries between songs ultimately becomes the album's saving grace — even on an alien, of the kind that gets addressed so often on the record itself (ʽBeautiful Zeldaʼ, ʽHumanoid Boogieʼ, etc.), Dough­nut will most likely produce a dazzling effect.

What I am trying to say is that, in order to enjoy Doughnut, you do not necessarily have to «get» all of its parodic elements, much like you do not really have to take a crash course in the history and customs of the Irish people to get a jolt out of Ulysses. With the band's professional musi­cian­ship (nothing extraordinary, but all the grooves are honed to perfection), technological savvi­ness (all the overdubs are laid on with enough care and precision to rival the production team of Sgt. Pepper), and understanding of all the basic attractions of all the musical forms that they tackle, Doughnut can, after all, work as just a happy old celebration of music — fun in its since­rest and most inspired variant. And, what with it being «dated» and all, 1968 was a really great year to be having fun, wouldn't you agree? Thumbs up, of course.

Technical notes: the band had dropped the «Doo-Dah» from its name for this album (perhaps re­flecting the transition to a slightly more «serious» routine, although I'd rather prefer it if they'd dropped the «Bonzo Dog» part instead). Also, in the States this was released as Urban Space­man, incorporating a concurrent non-LP single — the usual practice for those times, but also, they probably thought that the title would be too inscrutable for thickheaded American audiences (legend has it that the title refers to a lavatory and was acquired by the band from an anecdote by Monty Python friend Michael Palin — which would make this the second lavatory-themed inci­dent of the year that I know of, right beside the story of the front sleeve of Beggar's Banquet; a piss-rich year indeed!).

 

Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band: Gorilla

BONZO DOG DOO-DAH BAND: GORILLA (1967)

1) Cool Britannia; 2) The Equestrian Statue; 3) Jollity Farm; 4) I Left My Heart In San Francisco; 5) Look Out, There's A Monster Coming; 6) Jazz (Delicious Hot, Disgusting Cold); 7) Death Cab For Cutie; 8) Narcissus; 9) The Intro And The Outro; 10) Mickey's Son And Daughter; 11) Big Shot; 12) Music For The Head Ballet; 13) Piggy Bank Love; 14) I'm Bored; 15) The Sound Of Music.

Long before there was Monty Python, there was the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (originally Dada band, which makes things more comprehensible — not that this particular outfit ever hunted for comprehensibility). They began by playing absurdist jazz and vaudeville, then got bored with it and started moving into other genres — all sorts of genres, actually: of the fifteen tracks, cram­med into 35 minutes on their debut album, not two sound alike. And what's that thing ought to be called? Why, Gorilla, of course. Less predictable than Chicken, which might have been the first and most obvious option.

There are two schools of thought on Viv Stanshall, Neil Innes, and their merry band of sidekicks: one that treats them as serious, responsible, important, and influential musical innovators, lodged in the same camp as Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart, and one that tends to view them more like intelligent, well-educated, tasteful clowns, good for a healthy laugh, but ultimately forget­table in the grand scheme of things. Consequently, Gorilla is generally viewed by adherents of the first point of view as a funny, but very lightweight preview of much grander things to come, whereas the second group might see it as the band's finest (half-)hour, adequately showing their talents without any unsuccessful attempts to overreach their grasp.

Personally, I am stuck in the middle here: on one hand, Gorilla is the most easy-going, immedi­ately enjoyable set of tunes (and/or musical jokes) that these guys put out, but on the other hand, I do not like the idea of Stanshall, Innes & Co. as «musical clowns», either: humor was their chief weapon of choice at all times, but they were also accomplished and disciplined musicians striving to innovate. But it is hard for me to deny that Gorilla finds the band completely at ease with all the goals they are trying to achieve. No matter whether they are dabbling in old-school vaudeville, pop, standards, calypso, rockabilly, or bubblegum, they always nail the essence — and then turn it inside out to create, like, the best parody of the style ever.

Yes, Gorilla is «just» a comedy record, but dammit, what high quality comedy we have here, to the extent that almost each single track brings on some new realization about some peculiarity of the selected genre. For instance, ʽThe Equestrian Statueʼ with its melancholic harpsichord is written in the sub-style of «Britpop» commonly used for songs about loneliness and personal troubles (think ʽTwo Sistersʼ by the Kinks, etc.), but, regarding the lyrics, are we supposed to empathize for the protagonist — the bronzed and polished "famous man" who "on his famous horse would ride through the land"? Nope, it's just that playing the harpsichord that way makes you feel gloomy and melancholic all over, so much so you'd even pity a statue.

Another fabulous highlight is ʽThe Intro And The Outroʼ, on which the band set a boppy jazzy groove, get introduced one by one, and then, as they run out of proper band members but not out of musical instruments, add a host of imaginary players to the roster — including Quasimodo on bells ("representing the flower people"), Adolf Hitler on vibes, Charles de Gaulle on accordion, and lots of contemporary British celebrities and politicians that are today only recognizable through historical textbooks. In a way, it's just a silly, albeit catchy, gag, but it also makes you ponder on the issue of sprawling «big bands» where, sometimes, the function of a single player is reduced to simply «being there» for the sake of providing the illusion of massiveness — play a single lead line, then disappear forever into the background...

ʽDeath Cab For Cutieʼ, which the Bonzos were also given to lip-sync to in Magical Mystery Tour (the scene where everybody watches the hot stripper instead of listening to the music, and you can't really blame 'em) and which later became the name of a proper band in its own rights, parodies «Vegasy» Elvis, but the lyrics tell such a macabre little story, and the arrangement is so delightfully rudimentary (just a boogie piano line and a light brass accompaniment) that it goes beyond parody — an absurdist-minimalist mash-up of Elvis, brutality, and light jazz. It ain't no masterpiece, but somehow, it's cool in its straight-faced smoothness.

The weirdest number on the album (and that makes it truly weird, because all the songs here are weird) is ʽBig Shotʼ, which, technically, parodies a trendy mid-1960s soundtrack to a film noir (of the type where everybody wears sunglasses and walks the streets to the latest hard bop grooves). If you manage to get rid of the «intentionally annoying» voiceover that very quickly descends into schizophasia, the song, however, is a perfectly valid modern jazz composition in its own right — dark, bluesy, and with a frantic free-form sax solo to boot: they are setting the genre up at the same time as they try to make their own serious mark on it.

At the very least, one thing that can be said about Gorilla without reservations is that it ain't boring, not for one single second. With all the diversity and unpredictability floating around, it got more musical ideas, or spin-offs on musical ideas, in 35 minutes than some bands manage to produce over an entire career, and they almost always work. Even the short bits, such as the «flubbed vocal audition» of ʽI Left My Heart In San Franciscoʼ, or the gratuituous, but forgivable, dig at ʽThe Sound Of Musicʼ, are funny — even when they intentionally play out of tune and as uncoordinated as possible (ʽJazz, Delicious Hot, Disgusting Coldʼ), they still manage to be funny, and just a little bit insightful. Of all the musical hooliganry that pervaded Great Britain circa 1967, Gorilla is that one record that is «guaranteed to raise a smile», no matter what the circumstances, and, come to think of it, the Bonzos were the original Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band more than anybody else — their short-lived alliance with the Beatles was no accident.

Thumbs up, of course — oh, and, incidentally, this is also the album that introduced the phrase «Cool Britannia» to the world, wasn't it? For fairness' sake, they should have flooded Neil Innes with royalties in the late 1990s, but guess the real Britannia isn't nearly as cool as they make it out to be. Not that the Bonzos did not know this — they knew, and subsequently deflated expecta­tions by abruptly seguing the melody into a sequence of a lumberjack cutting wood, whatever symbolic meaning that sequence might be attributed.