If my flat was burning down and I only had time to save one item from my music collection it would be this delirious box set, hands down, without question.
To call the complete works of The Bonzos inspired comic and musical genius is to condemn with faint praise.
This material is capable of reigniting faith in the human race in even the most manic depressive of souls. The songs are brilliant musical compositions first and foremost. Each one a perfectly honed pop gem that The Beatles themselves would have been proud of. In fact songs like Yellow Submarine, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, Octopus's Garden, When I'm Sixty-Four, etc sound amazingly like Bonzos cast-offs (great tunes but not funny enough). The 72 tracks on these three CDs are by turns hilariously funny, whimsically poignant, deeply disturbing and wildly surrealistic (in a way that clearly fired the imaginations of the Monty Python team) while always retaining genuine compassionate insight into the human condition. This is what, for me, elevates them to the level of true art.
Praise be that people like this lived, met, hit it off and created work of this magnificence. Vivian Stanshall, Neil Innes, et al should be knighted, beatified, sanctified, whatever, forthwith and long shall their names echo down the halls of posterity! In some weird and wonderful alternate universe they would have been as big as The Beatles in the 60's and the Fab Four would have become the 'fondly remembered cult band'.
