Bring Back The Bonzos!

Here in the Walsh Household, the cooking has always been my domain. There is nothing wrong with my wife's cooking, it's just that I was brought up on a Mediterranean diet, and my wife wasn't! So, rather than complain about the type of food that she likes to cook, I decided to do all the cooking. The strange thing is that my wife now prefers the food that I grew up with.

So today my son and his family were coming over for dinner and I decided to go out on a shopping trip to replenish the barren waste-land that was once a fridge. Before I set off to the shops I decided to change the CDs I had in the car, I always have a bag full of CDs in the car because I use them on my radio show (Phoenixfm 96.7 Wednesdays 2-4pm). Today, while looking through my music collection - which is ultra-eclectic - anything from Led Zep to Leonard Cohen, for some reason nothing jumped out and said, “play me!” That was until I came across my collection of Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band CDs.

I think it's safe to say that the Bonzo's are a "Marmite" band: you love them, or you hate them. I love them! They are quintessentially British and completely mad. They bought up lots of old records from the twenties that were out of copyright and re-recorded them with new lyrics. Because they were a 'sixties band, they also did mock rock n roll tracks as well. They even started one album with a song called 'The Intro Outro', where they introduce the band then just carried on introducing other people such as Adolf Hitler on vibes, Roy Rogers on Trigger! Then there's a song about the perils of dating agencies, called 'Look Out, There's a Monster Coming!' The list goes on, and gets more sillier as it goes. Such songs as 'Tent' or 'Can Blue Men Sing the Whites?' for instance. The humour is old-style British, and they were the forerunners of the Monty Python: in fact Neil Innes, one of the songwriters of the Bonzo's, wrote the early songs for Monty Python. The other song writer in the band, Viv Stanshall, was as crazy off stage as he was on, and is sadly no longer with us. I don't know what happened to the rest of the band, such as Legs Larry Smith or Roger Ruskin Spear.

Their stage shows were something to behold. From what I've been told, they were like Monty Python on acid! But in the end, as with most bands, it all started to fall apart. It ended in a field in Dublin where an event that they had turned up for had been cancelled. They customarily used explosives on stage (honest) and so, on the day, they had a bagful with them. There was scaffolding in the field, that had started to be erected for the stage, so they took out all the explosives that they had, and blew up the whole thing, then went their separate ways!

I set off on my journey today and played these old songs, and even though I have heard them all hundreds of times before I laughed at each one: they never stop being funny! This has to be a rare phenomenon where a comedy song fails to lose the humour. I have heard lots of comedy songs in the past, including some that I thought were brilliant on the first listen, but became quite tiresome by the fourth. But these Bonzo songs have you singing along with them. But of course if, like my wife, you think they are childish and stupid, you won't agree with me.

But as I listened to the songs I wondered if they would work in other countries. I don't think they ever went to America, though I could be wrong. I think you may have to be British to get the humour, and I don't think even the younger generation of the Brits will get the joke: maybe its a time and a place thing. I recently saw Monty Python getting back together. When I was younger, I found them very funny, but when I watched them back they left me cold. That's the strange thing about humour, it sometimes has a time span. The comedians that packed theatres here in Britain in the 'seventies found it hard to get a gig anywhere in the 'eighties. And the anarchic comedians of the eighties are now the safe face of television, advertising insurance, etc! I don't believe in all that rubbish that people spout about 'selling out'. We all have to make a living, but I think I would prefer to do new and different things rather than live on past glories.

But I'm sure that there are lots of people out there that want singers to sing the same songs and comedians to tell the same jokes. So with this in mind, I do encourage you to try out the Bonzos if you have never heard of them. There are box sets of their complete works to buy. If not try the 'Gorilla' album which is probably one of their best in my opinion. If you get the humour you will never tire of it trust me. If you don't get the humour, well you can blame me for wasting your money, I suppose!