Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band
Gorilla

THE REVIEW

This is a convertible album, a gentle breeze in the hair and the scent of grass, it's a picnic in Hyde Park on a May day, a balm for the body and the mind, it's the ability to savor life in small doses, it's the 1967 debut of the fabulous, fantastic, phantasmagoric, sparkling...(trumpet fanfare)...Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band!

We're talking about people cut from the same cloth as Uncle Frank, knowledgeable and competent yet always jovial and modest, capable of shaping the most intricate bignami into the most accessible form without ever showing, not even for a second, pretentiousness or presumption, a band that's anarchic in its own way and at the same time democratic given the absence of a true leader in the collaboration between Neil Innes, Vivian Stanshall, Rodney Slater, Roger Spear, and the dozens of musicians from various musical-cultural backgrounds who take turns alongside this English combo.

"Gorilla" is above all a masterpiece of arrangement: trumpets, sax, ukulele, clarinet, piano, keyboards, synth, and probably much more, serve as a backdrop to the sacred triad of rock instruments.

However, it is inappropriate to talk about rock for this genuine intellectualized country band that dips its generous spoonful of ideas into a colorful soup of swing, ragtime, pop, and vaudeville.

Listening to this album is like burying your face in a bunch of daisies, violets, and rare little flowers like the festive march of "Cool Britannia", the delicate "Jollity Farm", the chaotic fanfare "Jazz, Delicious Hot, Disgusting Cold", the amusing demonstrative lesson of "The Intro And The Outro", the noir atmosphere of "Big Shot", "Piggy Bank Love" that beats the Beatles at their own game, the joyful masterpiece "Look Out There's A Monster Coming", pearls capable of resizing even a magnificent work as a progeny of this under examination like "Cyclops" by Dogbowl.

They are all little candies filled with vibrancy, a lightness and a spontaneous inventiveness truly rare, unique in a musical undergrowth where the Bonzo Band has carved out a special place, perhaps close only to the Canterbury fields but with roots well anchored to the popular terrain and branches that reach out to embrace European rural folklore.

A gorilla that turns into a butterfly.

Delightful!