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Rating: The assault on the sky is the business of the saint, but also of the clown. It's not bad to nibble at the blue and then spit it back at the poor in spirit (a category to which I am honored to belong).
The assault on the sky is everyone's business. And everyone climbs as they wish; there's someone who uses a ladder, someone who jumps, someone who closes their eyes... and then there's someone who jumbles up meanings by blowing on them like the wind does.
Because, etymologically, the word "buffoon" originates precisely from a type of wind.
Oh, be careful children, today's topic is the paradise/hell of English eccentricity, that little nothing that the most perceptive call the granddaughter of melancholy and cousin of wisdom.
This paradise/hell has a funny name, indeed a hilarious one...
And this name is Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, the most perfect paradigm of the magical little word it contains. Which word? Bonzo? Dog? Doo-dah? Band? But, you see, deep down they're all magical. But I vote for the one with the hyphen.
And then, to say, how do you translate Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band? The dada band of the bonzo dog? The bonzo band of the dada dog? The dog band of the bonzo dada? The bonzo dog of the dada band? Oh, the problem doesn't exist, it sounds good any way you say it.
And anyway, imagine: the Quartetto Cetra and Uncle Frank playing together at the Mad Hatter's tea party; the perfect English lawn turning into a dump of every musical debris or trifle, the nighttime raid on the town band's instrument repository.
"Gorilla", the first album, is a stunning light gas that escapes from the alchemist's room like soap bubbles from a hoop. Only those little bubbles, when they explode, they don't just go poof.
It starts with a kind of TV jingle worthy of G.A.S.A.D (Groups to the left of the other Sunday), it continues with a little Beatles-esque thing embellished (?) by rococo drops and splashed with a bass tuba orgasm.
Then comes "Nella vecchia fattoria", a crooning from a comic opera, a skipping nonsense, a steamboat dixieland... and a lot of various trivialities...
If you're thinking of a horrid and unlistenable mess, you're way off track.
Everything is tempered by a bizarre five o'clock tea atmosphere and an almost sweet madness. And all those oddities, held together by a childlike taste for play, finally slip away smoothly in song fashion. As if chaos refused to take itself seriously.
And the impression is that of being on a cloud. Only that from that cloud hangs a holey sock.
The conversation is different for the next one, "The doughnut in granny greenhouse", more devoted to a canon (although canon is just a manner of speaking) pop rock. Sure, there's no lack (and how could there be?) of trombone effect on a march or a raspberry on a music box, but in place of the almost nineteenth-century delight of the previous one, there's a quite different tone.
And along with the usual super-silly trinkets, there are fantastic fake rock and fake blues (read parody) and even very avant-garde moments where Uncle Frank, with a tear, definitely stretches ahead of the Quartetto Cetra and the Beatles seem to connect with the Soft Machine pataphysicians, those of the first two albums.
What to say, for example, of the concluding "Mustachioed daughters", where reciting voices rest on a comic tribal background torn by sound effects and horror organs? And of "We are normal" which is circus, sarabande, little orchestra, glorious free-form joy and furious rock'n'roll?
But then in the end, just like for "Gorilla", there is an overwhelming sense of absolute psychedelic, and these little songs provoke the same disorientation as an "I am the walrus" (Beatles) or a "Flaming" (Floyd Barrett era). After all, those were the years.
Then, of course, these guys had to be seen live. It is said of fabulous concerts (each different from the other) and of a band of four or five members that on stage grew to twenty/thirty. Of verbal flashes, excursions into the grotesque and tributes to nonsense. Of abstruse robot mannequins and a million clowneries... pity not to have been there.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 We Are Normal (04:49)
We
We are (ar ar ar ar ar...)
We
We are...
And, uh, here come some normals...
they look like normal... Hawaiians.
Well, uh, you didn't mention what month.
You think you're normal?
Yes, quite normal.
OK, here comes one.
Go inside! (tee hee hee)
Well it's, ah, it's not for me to deter really, is it? I mean
it's for a psychiatrist to deter these things, isn't it?
I like dehre food, and dey arr veddy nice people.
Ooh, itsalright, innit?
That a face?
Smart. It's your backside.
Oh, they're just typically normal.
No! This is not manly!
Well, it is unusual. Well, it's like a rabbit! He's got a head onhim like a rabbit!
I don't know, it's just not like normal people do.
You're not runnin' around in your underpants are you?
We are normal and we want our freedom
We are normal and we want our freedom
Wir sind gew�hnlich, wir sind zufrieden
We are normal and we dig Bert Weedon, ha ha!
We are normal and we want
Our freedom
Our freedom
Freedom!
Freedom!
Freedom!
We are normal and we want our freedom!
02 Postcard (04:23)
Oh, I do like to be beside the sea
Drinking bear sits in Silver's Arcade
Sips imaginary lemonade
Amusement Pork!
Writing letters home
What a lovely view-EE-ooo (blah blah blab blab) (Dear Mom)
"What the Butler Saw" was a bit of a drag
The captain says he's going to heave, too
Bored with Bingo, we went for a swim
Fat sea cows with gorgonzola skin
Semi-nude!
After lunch, we grabbed our trunks
And we all got cramp!
Trousers rolled, the sea is cold
But it's good for chillblains
On the prom, white plimsolls and blue shorts
Brass band playing by the tennis courts
Love-fifteen! Love fifteen year olds
What a lovely view-EE-ooo, I've written at last
What's the rudest one? Just for a laugh
Just married and it sticks out for a mile!
We wish you were here
We wish you were here
We wish you were here
We wish you were here
We wish you were here
We wish you were here
We wish you were here
We wish you were here
We wish you were here
We wish you were here
We wish you were here
We wish you were here
We wish you were here
It rained yesterday, so we stayed indoors
The food's all right, I'm okay, hope you are same
Wish you were always, your loving son Anthony
I hope I get bronze this year
08 Trouser Press (02:18)
[Spoken]: One, two, three, kick!
Come on everybody, clap your hands
Ooh, you're looking good
Are you having a good time? I sure am
Do you like soul music?
(No)
Well, do the trouser press, baby! One, two three!
[Sung]
Trouser press fever! Wooh!
Trouser press fever! Wooh!
Trouser press fever! Wooh!
Trouser press fever! Wooh!
Give it all you can
It's much better than
A pre-fabricated concrete cold bunker!
[Spoken]: You're so savage, Roger.
Press those trousers!
Ecstasy boost, ecstasy
[Sung]
The coffee increases shirt crease
Turn up for the books now
Trouser it to me
Don't hang me up now
(Cheering)
[Spoken]: The programme you have been listening to is a one-act play in eight parts by G. G. Dunnett for eighteen albatrosses and reservoir. The part of Old Bill was played by a frying pan. The other part of Old Bill was played by Sir Rupert Carpet who found a pair of swimming trunks on his head and was surprised... (fades out)
09 My Pink Half of the Drainpipe (03:34)
You who speak to me across the fence
Of common sense
How your tomato plant will win a prize,
won't that be nice,
And by the way, how's your wife?
Your holidays were spent in Spain
You went by train
You'll go again
Have you seen me bullfight poster on the wall?
Do you know the appy memory it recalls?
Here's a photograph of me and my son, Ted
That's me cousin with his hanky on his head!
We booked in at our otel just after two
And met a family from Bradford that we knew
Oooh, a melody! Burp!
My pink half of the drainpipe
Separates next door from me
My pink half of the drainpipe
Oh, Mama!
Belongs to me
Rodney's vain saxaphone solo, as promised
My pink half of the drainpipe
Semi-detach-ed, ah!
My pink half of the drainpipe
Oh, Mama!
Belongs to moi
I have a sister in Toronto who's a nurse
And I've had a bit of bother laying turf
It's life, not books, that taught me all I've learned
Woop, in the b'oven my rice pudding's getting burned!
Ere, have you seen the new attachment on me drill?
I must have the cat put down, cause he's ill
Hey, neighbour!
My pink half of the drainpipe
I may paint it blue
My pink half of the drainpipe
Keeps me safe from
you!
I'm a wobbly jelly, you're a pink blancmange
I'm a sherry trifle, you're a chocolate sponge
Your dad wears a paper hat, mine inflates balloons
Whoops! Boodly boop! Pop! Here comes a spoon!
My pink half of the drainpipe
Separates me from the incredibly fascinating story of your life and every day to day event in all it's minute and tedious attention to detail... And was it a Thursday or a Wednesday? Or, oh, no, it wasn't though. Oh, who cares anyway because I do not
So Norman, if you're normal, I intend to
be a freak for the rest of my life, and I shall baffle you with cabbages and rhinoceroses in the kitchen, incessant quotations from "Now We Are
Six" through the mouthpiece of Lord Snooty's giant, poisoned, electric head.
SO THEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE!
11 Rhinocratic Oaths (03:22)
After his second wife passed away, Percy Rawlinson seemed to spend more and more time with his alsatian owl.
His friends told him "You should get out more, Percy, or you'll wind up looking like a dog, ha ha."
He was later arrested near a lampost.
At his trial some months later he surprised everyone by mistaking a policeman for a postman and tearing his trousers off with his bare teeth.
In his defence he told the court "It's hard to tell the difference when they take their hats off."
Mrs Betty Pench was playing the trombone when she heard a knock on the door.
"I wonder who that is at eleven o'clock in the morning" she thought, but cautiously opened the door and instead of the turbanned ruffian she had expected, she found a very nice young man.
"Mrs. Pench, you've won the car contest, would you like a triumph spitfire or 3000 in cash?" He smiled.
Mrs. Pench took the money. "What will you do with it all? Not that it's any of my business," he giggled.
"I think I'll become an alcoholic," said Betty.
With a geranium behind each ear and his face painted with gay cavalistic symbols, six foot eight seventeen stone police seargent Geoff Bull looked jolly convincing as he sweated and grunted through a vigorous triscutine at the Fraga Gogo Viachella.
His hot surge trousers flapped wildly over his enourmous plastic sandals as he jumped and jumped and gyrated towards a long-haired man.
"Uh, excuse me, ma'am, I have reason to believe you can turn me on."
He leered suggestively.
As if by magic dozens of truncheons appeared and they mercilessly thrashed him.
Poor Geoff, what a turnout for the books.
Much as he hated arguments or any kind of unpleasantness, Ron Shir thought things had gone too far when, returning from a weekend in Clapton, he found that his neighbour had trimmed the enourmous hedge dividing their gardens into the shape of a human leg.
Enraged and envious beyond belief, Ron seized his garden shears and clipped his white poodle Leo into a coffee table.
"That'll fix it," thought Ron, but he was wrong.
The following Wednesday his neighbour had his bushy waist-length hair cut and permed into a model of the Queen Elizabeth and went sailing.
Everywhere he went, people said "Hooray!"
Sometimes you just can't win.
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