The History of the Bonzos [Import, Original recording remastered]

Bonzo Dog Band | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 8, 1999)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import, Original recording remastered
• Label: Bgo - Beat Goes on
• ASIN: B0000011PI
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #131,568 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

Disc: 1

1. The Intro & The Outro

2. Rockaliser Baby

3. Sport (The Odd Boy)

4. Noises For The Leg

5. King Of Scurf

6. Labio Dental Fricative

7. Hello Mabel

8. Canyons Of your Mind

9. Jollity Farm

10. You Done My Brain In

See all 14 tracks on this disc

Disc: 2

1. I'm The Urban Spaceman

2. Bad Blood

3. I Left My Heart In San Francisco

4. Tent

5. Can Blue Men Sing The Whites?

6. 9-5 Pollution Blues

7. Big Shot

8. Release Me

9. We Are Normal

10. The Sound Of Music

See all 17 tracks on this disc

Editorial Reviews

Digitally remastered disc that incorporates the original double album on a single compact disc. The Bonzo Dog Band were the foremost comedy rock group of England, giving the world the likes the Viv Stanshall (who also introduced the instruments on the original "Tubular Bells" by Mike Oldfield), Neil Innes (who was part of The Rutles) and Roger Ruskin Spear. This collection has long been praised as a definitive collection of the best of the group, assembled shortly after their final agreement to part ways forever.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Your best Bonzo value May 1, 2002

By woburnmusicfan

Format:Audio CD

The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band was to music what the Firesign Theater was to the spoken word, using a bizarro sensibility to produce comedy recordings unlike anything ever done before. They used every instrument they could lay their hands on, without regard to whether they could actually PLAY it, and played anything from rock to 20s-style vaudeville music. The Bonzos toiled from 1966 to 1970 in obscurity, except for the Beatles collaboration "You Know My Name, Look Up the Number" (the B-side of the "Let It Be" single). Pianist Neil Innes later did a lot of work with Monty Python.

This two-CD set is a strong collection of their best, including a few post-Bonzo gems from individual members, like Viv Stanshall's infectious "Labio Dental Fricative." "The Intro and the Outro" introduces the band members to a repeated two-bar riff, and when they run out of band members, it's "Big hello to big John Wayne on xylophone", and on to Adolf Hitler, General de Gaulle, Brainiac, etc. "Canyons of Your Mind" is an Elvis impersonation with a purposely awful guitar solo. The 20s-style pieces include the delightful "Mickey's Son and Daughter" and "Jollity Farm". At the opposite extreme, "Slush" sets a mournful dirge to a tape loop of a laughing bag (remember those?). There's rock ("I'm the Urban Spaceman"), blues ("Can Blue Men Sing the Whites?"), teen pop (the dandruff ode "King of Scurf"), film noir ("Big Shot"), self-reverence ("Look at Me, I'm Wonderful"), and more. Instruments come and go without warning. The indescribable "My Pink Half of the Drainpipe" stops dead in the middle for Stanshall to present "Rodney's bass saxophone solo, as promised". Stanshall promotes the bodybuilding regimen of "Mr. Apollo": "Before I was a poor stone apology, today I am two separate gorillas"....

If you're going to own one Bonzo album, this should be the one. It'll give you the most Bonzo for your money. The only reason I don't give this five stars is that it's SO weird that there's a limit to how much you can listen to in one sitting. It's just too much of a good thing. If you're lucky, the CD will include the liner notes and pictures that were on the LP (such as Roger "Ruskin" Spear taking a sax solo while holding a cartoon thought balloon over his head that says "Wow! I'm really expressing myself!") Read more ›

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars interesting 2 disc introduction November 1, 2004

By Musicalia

Format:Audio CD

This 1974 compilation has been eclipsed in more recent years by more in-depth CDs such as 'Cornology', so why would you want this? Because it is (I'm pretty sure) the only CD which has Vivian's singles 'Suspicion' (excellent send-up of the Elvis classic) and 'Blind Date' (in which two odd 'people' meet at Waterloo Station ...), alongside a different mix of 'Labio Dental Fractive' than you get on Cornology *and* the original version of 'Canyons of Your Mind' (with the sequins! hooray!). You also get another Neil single uncollected elsewhere and Roger Spear's version of 'Release Me'. Otherwise it is more of the same although I'll never quibble with a CD which includes 'Hunting Tigers', 'My Pink Half of the Drainpipe', 'Tent', 'Jollity Farm' and (if you must) 'Urban Spaceman'. I do miss 'Death Can for Cutie' but you can't have everything.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars AND A FINE HISTORY IT IS! January 21, 2000

By Harvey J.Satan

Format:Audio CD

Whether you are a long time Bonzo fan,or a "new to Bonzo" fan....this is an excellant starting point. This collection features not only the members works as a group,but a sampling of some hard to find,on CD,solo efforts as well.Here are the Bonzos most well known tunes,and a number of obscure,and offbeat one's as well! (With some lovely pictures,to look at in wonderment). They're all here: VIVIAN STANSHALL! RODNEY SLATER! ROGER RUSKIN-SPEAR! LEGS LARRY SMITH! DENNIS COWAN! JOEL DRUCKMAN! SAM SPOONS! VERNON DUDLEY BOHAY~NOWELL! DAVE CLAGUE! Oh.....and Neil Innes. Hear the band,that The Beatles,once called,"Their Fave Band!" (Don't believe it? Get out your "Magical Mystery Tour" video....they are in it!)(So are The Beatles.).The Bonzo's lunacy might also have inspired Monty Python's muscial silliness,as they performed weekly with Eric Idle,Terry Jones,Michael Palin,and Terry Gilliam on "Do Not Adjust Your Set" (1967). So what more need you know? George Harrison loves 'em! Elton John loves 'em! Eric Clapton played with them! Led Zepplin loved 'em! SO WILL YOU!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Hello... and how did you find yourself this morning? November 22, 2005

By nicjaytee

Format:Audio CD

Bonzo Dog fans may argue over whether this really is "the best" but for the rest of us it's as good an introduction to their erratically and often brilliantly bizarre world as anything else that's on offer - you want the genuinely funny tracks they're here... you want the tuneful tracks they're here as well... you want the darker, out on the edge tracks, well more money's required in the slot.

Careering through the late 60's like an uncontrollable pinball between the inspired, the endearingly quaint, the weirdly avant-garde and the manically deranged the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band were a completely "English" one off. Totally left-field but underpinned by superb comic perception and (thanks to Neil Innes & Viv Stanshall in particular) excellent song-writing skills they were disarmingly "nuts" and seriously "cool" at the same time. But, like all such things, best not to analyse it too much... suffice to say that this excellent compilation contains around 10 tracks that are timelessly funny, another 10 or so that will raise a smile, and around 10 that will leave you totally bemused. Which ones will depend, of course, on your particular predilections, but unless you've had some form of comic bypass operation enough will hit the mark to make the cost worthwhile. You just roll back the sheets and there you are... as they say.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Musical Bridge Between The Goons and Monty Python January 9, 2004

By BluesDuke

Format:Audio CD

With a taste for both ancient radio music and classic British music hall pastiche bent to an absurdist contemporary pop sensibility, this troupe of music satirists soundtracked the bridge between Peter Sellers' legendary Goon Squad routines and the freewheeling, hydradimensional Monty Python (in more ways than one; co-founding pianist/guitarist Neil Innes would be a Python adjunct/support player for most of that troupe's prime existence). Unlike most pop and rock satirists, however, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (they shortened it to the Bonzo Dog Band after their first two albums) were sensible enough to know the limits of both topical humour and private in-joking (Frank Zappa, with and without the Mothers of Invention, never did quite get it, which explains why most of the Mothers' music post 1967 seemed dated within a week of its issue). And the fact that they were unashamed to let show their genuine affection for the sources of their zany attack somehow makes the Bonzos accessible in ways their actual and would-be contemporaries (as few as there were) could never have been. (Which may explain why, when Geoff Stephens and John Carter - the brains behind the New Vaudeville Band's surprise 1966 hit, "Winchester Cathederal" - needed a touring band fast to ride the wave of that shocker, having cut the song with studio regulars only, the pair first approached the Bonzos to be that band; the Bonzos as a band turned them down, but original sax/trombonist Bob Kerr threw in with the New Vaudeville Band for its brief touring life....)

This 1974 anthology is still the best way to introduce yourself to this troupe of the cheerfully insane, led as always by the sensitive Vivian Stanshall and his nucleus - saxophonists Rodney Slater and Roger Ruskin Spear (who also became renowned for his sound and visual devices, especially his exploding devices and his cartoon speech balloons); drummer Legs Larry Smith; bassist Vernon Dudley Bohay; Innes (vocals, guitar and keyboards). The odd hits (they had a few, mostly in England, especially "I'm The Urban Spaceman") and cult favourites (the clever "The Intro and the Outro," the charming pop of "King of Scurf," the Cream-parodying "9 to 5 Pollution Blues," the needling of British blues in "Can The Blue Men Sing The Whites," among others) blend neatly into a package that, contrary to others' alarm, actually doesn't drive you out of your mind to hear it through in a single sitting.

And if this set does strike a craving for more, hunt down copies of (especially) such classic albums as "Gorilla" and "Tadpoles." Even now, thirty years after the group called it a day, the Bonzos - who were well enough ahead of their own time - seem quite beyond the reach of much now passing for genuine humour. Read more ›