The Inessential Uncle Bonsai

Uncle Bonsai | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 11, 1994)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Yellow Tail Records
• ASIN: B000003Y0V
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #204,089 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Send My Body Home

2. Isaac's Lament

3. In It for the Children

4. Suzy

5. I Want a Man

6. Fat Boys

7. One in a Million

8. Heartache

9. Johnny, It's Downhill from Here

10. He Must Have Been a Genius

11. A Lonely Grain of Corn

12. Boys Want Sex in the Morning

13. Lois Lane

14. Silent Night

15. Enterprising Young Man

16. Billboard Love

17. Cheerleaders on Drugs

18. Penis Envy

19. Charlie and Me

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Most of the best of Bonsai, October 25, 2001

By 

Bradford Daniels (Redmond, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Inessential Uncle Bonsai (Audio CD)

This CD includes most of the songs from "Boys Want Sex in the Morning", which was my absolute favorite album for many years. There are also some songs from "Lonely Grain of Corn", and I believe these represent the only live recordings of those songs available. It is good to find these songs finally available live, since the original "Lonely Grain of Corn" was really overproduced, with extraneous French horns and the like.

The renditions of the songs from "Boys Want Sex in the Morning" are almost-but-not-quite as good as the originals. There are a few places where the lyrics are not the same as in the original (niggling things like the wrong pronoun or verb tense - yes, I know I'm way too picky) which detracted somewhat from otherwise flawless performances. It's easy to look past that, though, because the music and the voices are just so beautiful.

Songs like "Isaac's Lament" manage to be extremely funny while retaining a poignant quality that is rare in modern music. The shatteringly beautiful "Silent Night", (the story of a woman going home after her father died), never fails to bring tears to my eyes (and both my parents are still alive). Both the lyrics and the simple melodies of Uncle Bonsai's music always manage to touch me on a deep level I rarely experience in music.

Apart from the outstanding songwriting, one of the key elements to Uncle Bonsai's sound is the voice of Andrew Ratshin. For a while, I thought the group consisted of 3 women (and wondered why there was a picture of a man and two women on the cover of "Boys"). Then I realized that the guitar player (Ratshin) was a man with a very high voice (he goes beyond tenor and into the soprano range). Once you realize that fact, their sound becomes even more remarkable.

The best solo example of Ratshin's voice on this album (or perhaps on any of their albums) is the song "Heartache", which is a wonderful Blues solo that just couldn't be sung as well by anyone else.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best of "groups that never made it big but should have", February 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Inessential Uncle Bonsai (Audio CD)

This CD doesn't do them justice...to really appreciate Uncle Bonsai, you would need to get the vinyl of "A Lonely Grain of Corn", but this is better than nothing. Great melodies/harmonies and incredibly clever lyrics make their music stand out...a cross between They Might Have Been Giants and The Roches with a little bit of a twist. A very unique group.

4.0 out of 5 stars These guys are terrific, September 19, 2008

By 

Richard Johnson "santarick" (Northville, Mich) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Inessential Uncle Bonsai (Audio CD)

First heard PENIS ENVY on the radio the day before Thanksgiving and I thought I'd bust a gut laughing. I don't much care for MYN and WYMYN, but A LONELY GRAIN OF CORN is certainly worth a listen. The song, SUZY found here and on GRAIN of CORN is another one very much worth listening to more than once.