Customer Reviews

Tadpoles

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This was the third album by The Bonzo Dog Band. The subtitle on the cover says: Tackle the toons you tapped your tootsies to on Thames TV's "Do Not Adjust Your Set". That was a children's television show on which The Bonzos were the house band. Basically, the album is a thrown together compilation of songs from the TV show, singles and a few actual new recordings. Despite the rather haphazard way the album was assembled, it's still quite good. It has a number of songs that fans of the band would consider "classics". There are five bonus tracks on the CD, the real gem of which is "Boo!", a great song that for some reason was previously unreleased.

First time I heard these Doo Dah dudes, decades ago, it was just what I was looking for and totally out of left field. They still make me smile today as I sing/belch along, leading to an eternal love of their music. This 3rd release was magical from the moment it hit my turntable (after playing with the slide out cover that moved the eyes) and never left it for for months (as much a comment on me as them, I guess). The great thing about being a Bonzoid then was no one in NYC had any inkling of who or what they were. Now look at them, their discs have even been remastered with "extra tracks" just like the big boys. They're even doing a reunion thing without Sir Viv just like the Dead cavorting minus Jerry, kicking sand right in all our faces. With or without the Doo Dah, they're supersonic guys.

There is no perfect Bonzo Dog Band album: they are each distinct, curious and flawed things that only now and again survive their period -- though a rather more interesting period it was. Defined by an odd amalgam of post World War One art movements like Dada and Surrealism lightly emulsified with a critical eye against the post World War Two vapidity of baby-boom fueled capitalism/consumerism it's all suffused with the comedic nihilism particular to early 1960s England and its emergence from "class". Hearing this stuff in context is the best approach and, sadly enough, there abounds more than adequate cultural stupidity in Century 21 to make the stylish puncturing of vanity in a track like "Mr. Apollo" easily and readily applicable today and tomorrow: look out, there's a monster coming.

Of their too-few releases, "Tadpoles" probably best typifies the Bonzo Dog brand. Somewhere amid the hilarious send-ups (Monster Mash), the subverted nostalgia (Tubas in the Moonlight) and pop parody (Canyons of your Mind), Stanshall and Innes would now and again come out with some genuine and sometimes quite moving little ditties. Perhaps the most honest thing Stanshall ever committed to tape was his first-person confessional "Strange Tongues" on his still-not-reissued (why I cannot say) and uniformly outstanding (I can say why) "Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead".

Clamped onto the end of this give-the-dog-a-bonus version of "Tadpoles" is the Innes hommage aux Duchamp "Readymades", which is very sly and very funny in the best tragicomic sense. "Readymades", in addition to its acute and melancholy observations of bourgeois mannerisms, is built on a curiously melodic bass line. Around the same time McCartney did a lot of that style of bass for the Beatles, (an approach later made deliriously perfect by Chris Squire) and a melodic vs rhythmic bass part often imparts a more finished, less pop sensibility to the music. It's something the Bonzos did with fair regularity, and always struck me as an incongruous detail of -- or stylistic quirk for -- such a generally off-hand aesthetic. That sort of interior polish to their recorded work seems often under-appreciated, so pay attention while laughing. And for the best "Tadpoles" experience, seek out the Japanese mini-lp edition: you can watch Legs Larry's eyes spin around inside his empty head again... unless of course there's an "R" in the month.

I have been collecting all of Neil Innes' work over his 40-year career, so I have the CD and vinyl to Tadpoles. A must-have if you are a Neil Innes freak as I am. Everyone should give Neil Innes a listen; he is one of the greatest songwriters of the 20th century.

Just buy this album! Better yet, buy 'CORNOLOGY' --- This whole record is included in that 3 CD set. The BONZO DOG BAND were/are PRICELESS!!!

This is more entertaining than anything should be allowed to be. Avoid operating heavy machinery while listening.

And don't listen to it while asleep or you'll wake up on the floor wondering how you came to be so elevated.