Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
it's hard to tell the difference when they take their hats off..., 14 Mar 2008
At last, quality reissues of all the Bonzos' albums - it's hard to believe that the only one previously issued separately on CD was Gorilla. The Cornology box valiantly collected (nearly) all the previously available material into one place but these reissues are the real deal - superbly remastered and packaged, augmented with bonus tracks that are worth listening to more than twice, and featuring extremely droll sleeve notes by surviving joint chief Bonzo Neil Innes.
Doughnut was the second Bonzos album, and the first on which they sank their razor sharp parodic teeth into rock music in a big way - while it is extremely diverse stylistically, the music hall and novelty dance band covers and trad jazz parodies to be found on the preceding Gorilla and subsequent Tadpoles are largely absent here - it's their first album to feature entirely original material, all written by Innes and/or Vivian Stanshall apart from Roger Ruskin Spear's berserk Trouser Press.
Nearly every track here is a winner and even the slighter songs are very good. We Are Normal is a superb parody of the then prevalent psychedelic bands, especially Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd. Postcard spikes mid-20th century seaside resort clichés at a leisurely pace. Beautiful Zelda is an innocent early 60s pop meets sci-fi B-movie fantasy with a fab tune. Can Blue Men Sing The Whites mercilessly punctures the self-important purism of the late 60s white blues boom. Trouser Press is a piss-take of 60s soul rave-ups with completely ridiculous lyrics and a trouser press solo. My Pink Half Of The Drainpipe is a hilarious tirade against suburban bores and banality with a French-sounding accordion backing. And the greatest gem of the whole album is the extraordinary Rhinocratic Oaths, in which Neil Innes's absurd but rather splendid circular music serves as a backdrop for Vivian Stanshall's hilarious and surreal series of spoken vignettes. I particularly love the concept of a hedge being trimmed into the shape of a human leg.
The bonus tracks here are not the best selection on these reissues; they include silly but not spectacularly funny versions of Blue Suede Shoes and Cher's melodramatic Bang Bang and a different mix of their early 45 Alley Oop, all previously unissued, plus the single version of Canyons Of Your Mind (very similar to the album version - was the single really stereo?) and the German version of Mr Apollo, by far the best of the bonus tracks with Stanshall's spoken outro ("once I was a 4-stone apology, now I am 2 separate gorillas") translated into German to rib-tickling effect. My only real complaint about the whole reissue is that this last track, evidently sourced from vinyl, still suffers from the jump that marred it on Cornology - surely, given that the backing track is exactly the same and there are no vocals at that point, a quick bit of jiggery pokery with Protools could have taken the missing piece from the English version and inserted it here. While we're indulging in trainspottery, however, it's also worth pointing out that the brief piano interlude that followed the final track (11 Mustachioed Daughters) on the original album, but was omitted from Cornology, has been restored here. So that's alright then.
This is one of the Bonzos' greatest albums, perhaps THE greatest. No other musical comedy act bears repeated listens like the Bonzos - their genius was to be great at both music and comedy and combine the two seamlessly. Wonderful stuff.
|
|
|
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
best of a strange but talented bunch, 4 Sep 2007
This album saw the Bonzos at their peak, and this version is enhanced with some extra tracks which unlike most 'undiscovered treasures' do fit particularly well onto the original roll call. It wasn't a concept album typified by tracks following a single theme but it is a dazzling array of musical and lyrical styles which hang together perfectly and benefits from sitting down and listening to the whole album from start to finish. There are no highlights in this album simply because there are no weak tracks, showing just how far the Bonzos had come since their early days doing music hall pastiche. The immense influence which Neil innes exerted in the band shows through clearly in this album and that's not to belittle the contribution of anyone. "Beautiful Zelda" was at least as commercial as 'Urban Spaceman' and listening to 'Postcard' alongside 'My Pink Half of the drainpipe' invokes so many memories our working class life in the late 60's it is scary. (Adults did used to hang over the garden fence blethering on a Sunday afternoon whilst rice puddings were burning in the oven. If Neil Innes had written the Small Faces hit 'Lazy Sunday' what a fantastic trio of songs that would have made.) Stanshall was talented and a great figurehead, but Innes always had the potential to take the band to undiscovered heights which perhaps he got to in the Rutles eventually.
I've waited a lot of years for the cd re-issue of this classic '60's album - more literate, funny and downright 1960's weird than any of their contemporaries could achieve through a thousand overdubs or mangled chords. "We are normal and we dig bert Weedon' they claim on the opening track, and suddenly digging Bert Weedon doesn't seem so strange anymore. This is a great legacy for an idiosyncratic bunch of talented musicians and performers.
....... and thanks to the entertaining booklet I now know what 'The Doughnut in Granny's Greenhouse' was!
|
|
|
|
~ Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band
~ Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band
~ The Bonzo Dog Band
~ The Bonzo Dog Band
~ The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band
With an Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate, you can get them what they want (even if you don't know what that is). 
Amazon Home