Search - Bonzo Dog Band :: Gorilla

Their First - And Best

BluesDuke | Las Vegas, Nevada | 01/09/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"If you aren't afraid to plunge head first into the cheerful insanity that was the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (they were the unquestioned musical bridge from Peter Sellers' Goon Squad routines to the hydradimensional Monty Python), their first album is also their best. Generously endowed with horn players as brassy as they were witty (leader/trumpeter/tubist Vivian Stanshall and saxophonists Rodney Slater and Roger Ruksin Spear, both of whom doubled on assorted madcap sound devices), the Bonzos mashed old-time radio music and British music hall verve into a modern pop casserole that was so far ahead of its time - partly because, unlike other music satirists, the Bonzos never suggested they held their sources in contempt; they genuinely loved those sources and weren't ashamed to let it show - you wonder whether anyone even thinking of musical satire these days could possibly catch up. The sleeper of the set: "Death Cab for Cutie," which millions have heard without knowing it for what it was: that was Stanshall warbling the slow grinder in the tent, behind the stripper, as the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band played for the Beatles' amusement in "Magical Mystery Tour". (Imagine Raymond Chandler having written "All Shook Up" for Elvis Presley, and that's "Death Cab For Cutie," Stanshall's basso warble, Neil Innes's loping, ether-boogie piano, and all.) And if you can listen to "The Intro and the Outro" and not appreciate that the Bonzos accomplished in barely over two minutes what Frank Zappa couldn't in most of a career (the Bonzos, unlike Zappa and the Mothers, knew when the in-jokes and the topicalities had hit their limits), sounding just as fresh now as in 1967-68, more is the pity. This troupe was a gift to contemporary music. And though you'll never see them reunite for even a one-off shot anymore (Stanshall's tragic death almost a decade ago - he died in a fire - makes it impossible for it to be anything close to the same, anyway), this and damn near the entire Bonzo catalogue need no reunion gigs to affirm its significance or its entertainment. Or, its art."

"Doo Dah, not DADA"

David Perry | the road to the next big thing | 09/22/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I was listening to a very unformatted FM radio station in the Los Angeles of 1970. (what a time! never to be seen again) With my friend, avant garde artist SKOT ARMSTRONG. They played a song called "Here Comes the Equestrian Statue" by a band called the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. I ended up buying this record down at the local rekkid stow, Jeremiah McCains. It had bought one of the great works of modern art because of it's lamest song. I think the song in question had been produced or even secretly written by Lennon and McCartney. the rest of the record is so good it's almost unbelievable. (and I LOVE the Beatles, but my art belongs to DADA)



The Bonzos have a kind of Trad Jazz gone sour sound and an art school sensibility. They are marcel duchamps meets mickey mouse. The Trad Jazz is devoted, this time around, to a couple of precious (but sincereley bent) kids tunes from the 1920's (by the sound of it--here's the opening lyric of one.)



OH THERE'S A PLACE CALLED MISERY, BUT OF THAT WE'LL HAVE NONE

BECAUSE WE KNOW OF ONE, THAT'S ALWAYS LOTS OF FUN (HA! HA!)

AND THIS ONE'S NAME IS JOLLITY, BELIEVE US FOLKS IT'S GREAT

FOR EVERYONE SINGS OUT TO US AS WE GO THROUGH THE GATE...



Now where are you going to get lyrics like that? This record goes on to songs that stay funny through a hundred or more playings. And the songs are in so many different styles.



SKOT and I became rabid fans. He collected the whole set available back then--I probably scratched more than a few of them up (SKOT--I can get you new copies any time if you like) I waited twenty years to get serious about collecting them and have paid a lot to get the original pressings.



Buy this record, play it with the lights down low. Pay attention.



We are priveleged to live in the time of such genius. The time of the Bonzos is almost over. Listen now while you still can.



persevere"