Customer Reviews

Urban Spaceman

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The Bonzo Dog Band is probably best known for starting the career of Neil Innes, who wrote songs for Monty Python and co-created (in spite of what Eric Idle may say) the Rutles. But the other talent in the band was the unjustly ignored Vivian Stanshall, a comic genius of the first order. Together with the rest of the Bonzos, Stanshall and Innes created a band that was like no other. "Urban Spaceman" (known in England as "The Doughnut in Granny's Greenhouse,") is their second album. Their first album, "Gorilla," was devoted to recreating hot jazz of the 20s, a bit like a 60s version of Squirrel Nut Zippers. This album is where they branched out and began reinventing - and poking fun at - rock and roll. The title track, "Urban Spaceman," is the most well-known, but there are many satirical jewels here, and some very freaked-out stuff as well. Listen to their take on the British blues boom, the sardonic "Can Blue Men Sing The Whites," and marvel at their recreation/parody of early Pink Floyd in "We Are Normal." (Extra points if you know who Bert Weedon is.) "Humanoid Boogie" and "Beautiful Zelda," are great rock songs, as well as being sly parodies of several different genres of music. And "11 Mustachioed Daughters" is just plain spooky, really, ending the album on a very odd note. The Bonzo Dog Band was one of the most unfairly ignored groups of the 60s, and this is one of their best albums, if not the best. The Beatles were real fans, as were the members of Monty Python, who worked with the Bonzos before they became Monty Python. Paul McCartney produced the single, "Urban Spaceman," and he featured them in "Magical Mystery Tour," as well. This is a forgotten 60s rock classic, and a very funny album to boot. It has stood fantastically well against the ravages of time and has many delights to offer. Long live the Bonzos!

It's hard for me to think how much poorer my life would have been in the sixties and seventies without this inspired creation of the British dada rock combo. The musicianship and humor are both of a very high order - sort of like a blend of the Beatles and Monty Python. Vivian Stanshall was a brilliant dramatic poet, and Neil Innes is probably the world's most underrated living tunesmith. Listen to "Postcard," thematically similar to but, with its swaying interplay of oboe and piano, musically superior to the Who's cut of the same name. Or listen to "My Pink Half of the Drainpipe," a trenchant satire of materialism and alienation of the modern middle class: only the Kinks' "Shangrila" did it better. Above all, musically, the Bonzos are a delight to listen to.

This album, the band's second of five studio albums, was released in the UK with the title "The Doughnut in Granny's Greenhouse" and was then retitled and repressed for the US market (in 1968, I think) with the addition of the title cut, which had charted as a single in the UK. The album is part of disk one in the three-disk set Cornology, which you should buy instead if you have the scratch.

I hope this CD is rereleased with the original booklet, a dozen or so pages of dada art, collages and such that were hysterically funny and an important part of the "album experience" back in the days of vinyl.

The Bonzos are dead, long live the Bonzos.......what a great savvy band. A girl friend of mines mother worked for a record distributor and we recieved a promo copy of this album which I still have to this day. I was blown away, what a bunch of nut cases. I felt at home. From beginning to end this is one of the funniest albums outside of the Kinks and Zappa I have ever heard. But lets not forget Tadpoles with the great "Canyons of your Mind" and Keysham, hell they're all great. I'm glad I had the chance to have the Bonzos enter my musical spectrum, we all need a smile on our faces at sometime or another and these blokes will sure do it for you..............

I used to listen to this album when i was a boy growing up in the seventies. A friend had been given a copy by his older brother, who admonished us to listen carefully to the subtle yet over-the-top nuances contained therein. By chance, I found a decent cd version of this album in 2003: though I had forgotten most of the details, I knew in my heart that I needed to hear the work again. The fantastic music and lyrics of Neil Innes and Vivian Stanshall, as well as their peculiar sense of humour are in full effect here. Beggining with the title track, the band displays a playfulness and formidability that, though initially reminiscent of the Beatles, actually strives to rise above the seriousness and limitations that plagued the fab four in their later years. Musically, the ensemble playing on such tracks as "We Are Normal" and "Rhinocratic Oaths", bests much of what the Beatles and other so-called psychedelic bands were trying to create. The lyrics, full of all sorts of jokes and poetic snips at society, are a blast to listen to ... you get the feeling that Innes and Stanshall were laughing their heads off in the studio as they recorded the songs on Urban Spaceman. Every song on this album is highly listenable, though some may prove to be disturbing. Other personal favorites include "Beautiful Zelda" and "My Pink Half of the Drainpipe". With a slight nod and wink to those who influenced them, the Bonzos themselves went on to influence numerous musicians in rock and roll with their off-kilter brilliance and scary-good chops. My advice: listen to this album, now!

Urban Spaceman by the Bonzo Dog Band makes me think of the band Ween. I know this is backwards by thirty years. I also am not comparing the two because some term them "comedy rock." I have heard Weird Al Yankovick, and that is comedy rock. Neither Ween or Bonzo Dog are, at least in the same sense as Weird Al.

But here is the line between Bonzo Dog band and Ween. Both make amazing music that happens to have funny lyrics, not funny lyrics with gag music.

I actually think this whole notion of comedy rock as a genre is a bunch of bunk: the Mothers Of Invention and Bonzo Dog were both labeled such and neither sound like the other. Their music is as far as LA is from London. You either have a gag record or not and with the Mothers and Bonzo, gag records are the last musical experience I get listening.

If you play Urban Spaceman and don't pay any attention to the words, you hear a diverse album that competes with Buffalo Springfield, Love, The Hollies, any reasonably well rounded 1960s band.

Of course Bonzo are at a disadvantage in a contest with Ween, only in that Ween have regaee, metal, rap, a whole pool of musical influences that did not exist in 1968 popular music for Bonzo. But Bonzo take advantage of jazz, dance hall, psychedelia, folk, most brands of music available to a band of this era.

Ween probably learned a lot from them. You should too. Get this

The premier humorock (if that's a real word) group of all time turns out one of its silliest, most insane albums of its career here. What other band is bold enough to make songs with titles like some of the following:

Trouser Press

Can Blue Men Sing The Whites?

Tent

11 Mustachioed Daughters

My Pink Half Of The Drainpipe

Rhinocratic Oaths

Another point of interest is the song "We Are Normal" which, under its wacko premise of an invasion of harmless, fun loving aliens, hides some truly excellent psychedelic guitar playing.