Bonzo Dog Band - Tracks

Dedicated to Kong who must have been a great bloke

The Bonzos and post-Bonzos singles and album tracks from the Discography, in approximate chronological order, with links to the lyrics where available.

Vivian's record sleeve comments are included, as are the appearances of the Rawlinsons and Maynards.

The early days of 1920s-1930s novelty songs

My Brother Makes The Noises For The Talkies (Amberg/Raymond/Bernauer)

I'm Going To Bring A Watermelon To My Girl Tonight (Conrad)

Typical of the 1920s era of risqué songs trying to evade the censorship of the times.

Used as the tune for Spike Jones and His City Slickers's Der Fuehrer's Face.

Alley Oop (Frazier)

Button Up Your Overcoat (De-Sylva/Brown/Henderson)

Gorilla

Cool Britannia (Trad., arr. V. Stanshall/N. Innes)

Very Carnaby Street

The Equestrian Statue (N. Innes)

Guaranteed to brighten up your day if it's grey

Jollity Farm (L. Sarony)

Stuff It Up Your Jumper

I Left My Heart In San Fransicso (D. Cross)

Vivian's impression of a certain crooner

Look Out, There's A Monster Coming (V. Stanshall)

Jazz, Delicious Hot, Disgusting Cold (Stanshall/Innes/Ash/Spear/Slater/Nowell/Smith)

The Bonzos' comment on the Trad Jazz revival in the early 60s

The tune is based on the Morse Code Melody (D. & A. Gray), as performed on By Jingo, It's British Rubbish

Death Cab For Cutie (V. Stanshall)

Elvis-cum-pulp-detective parody

Narcissus (Nevin)

Hey, you have the same trouble with your trousers as I do

The Intro And The Outro (V. Stanshall)

The Band is introduced (including the first reference to the Rawlinsons). [next Rawlinsons]

Mickey's Son And Daughter (Lisbona/Connor)

The stork has brought a son and daughter for Mr. and Mrs. Mickey Mouse

Big Shot (V. Stanshall)

Very Mickey Spillane - very cool.

Music For The Head Ballet (N. Innes)

Piggy Bank Love (N. Innes)

I'm Bored (V. Stanshall)

I'm tired of Art - drawing bored

The Sound Of Music (Rogers & Hammerstein)

Peel Sessions / Unpeeled

We're Going To Bring It On Home

Sofa Head

The Craig Torso Show

A parody of Wonderful Radio 1 and its DJs, including a jingle using the Monster Mash tune. Also contains a parody of With A Little Help From My Friends and the Bonzos' I Left My Heart In San Fransicso.

Craig to studio guest: "Tell me, are you a regular listener?"

Tarzan Stripes: "Yes, thanks, I'm quite regular."

Give Booze A Chance

Hilarious parody of John Lennon and Yoko Ono and their Give Peace A Chance - a peace-take. Macrobiotic, man!

Live/Bootlegs/Miscellaneous

Help!

The Beatles hit performed in the manner of Bob Dylan

The Doughnut In Granny's Greenhouse

We Are Normal (V. Stanshall/N. Innes)

Vivian: But we are not BAD people. A breezy opener.

The music is very like the contemporary Pink Floyd.

The vox pop bits are reminiscent of the bits on Dark Side of The Moon. Between the two there is a hint of the theme from the contemporary BBC TV Nationwide early evening regional/national current affairs programme - very normal.

Postcard (V. Stanshall/N. Innes)

The captain says he's going to heave too... (bleah)

Vivian: 88 two fat ladies, 22 two little ducks, 26 bed & breakfast, 69....

Beautiful Zelda (N. Innes)

Vivian: Smudgy goes through a phase. Introducing: "The Rasstones".

Can Blue Men Sing The Whites? (V. Stanshall)

Vivian: The sea-wind ruffled the sheer silken fabric of my turban. I cupped your face in my lovely hands.... our lips stretched closer and closer.... I swept your face with my eyes.... I remembered a rice-pudding I'd left in the oven. Just packed with protest & truth.

A parody of British Blues

Hello Mabel (N. Innes)

Vivian: A stuffed pig makes an attractive lampshade.

In the style of 1920s Jazz novelty songs

Kama Sutra (V. Stanshall/N. Innes)

In position 72 you were me and I was you

Vivian: Suit Single Businessman. Sorry no Irish. Oh Really? No.. O'Reilly

Humanoid Boogie (N. Innes)

It's a wow, a gas, a Wall Street Crash. Like cigar ash.

Vivian: Will Flash reach the zone of blood in time to save Hulk as he battles the Mekon in the Twilight Galaxy? Will Brainiac really stop the Belcher of Britain metamorphosing the Brain-Wife? Who is Muscular Orange? Learn all... See all... Rockall... next week in "he forgot to say Pardon"...

Trouser Press (R.R. Spear)

It's much better than the prefabricated concrete coal bunker

Vivian: Roger's vocal dèbut. Starring Riff Cliché & the Rebel Trouser. (A reference to Cliff Bennett & The Rebel Rousers?)

My Pink Half Of The Drainpipe (V. Stanshall/N. Innes)

Vivian: I am disabled. I play Mozart & Paganini. Please help me.

Rockaliser Baby (V. Stanshall/N. Innes)

Vivian: A trenchant butchers at teenage trouble spots. You know what I mean?

Opens with a snatch of the theme tune to BBC TV's 50s/60s police series Dixon of Dock Green.

Rhinocratic Oaths (V. Stanshall/N. Innes)

Vivian: Poème bruitiste. Concerto & Warsaw Gâteau

Featuring Percy Rawlinson. [next Rawlinsons]

11 Mustachioed Daughters (V. Stanshall)

Vivian: "You've sent my wife home wiv an headache & Auntie Doris has spilt blackcurrant all over her trouser-suit"

Cabalistic!

Tadpoles

Hunting Tigers Out In "Indiah" (Hargreaves/Damerell/Evans)

Tigers don't go out on rainy nights - they've no need to whet their appetites

Shirt (R.R. Spear)

Featuring another vox pop, a Pythonesque mini-sketch and Roger's solo on the electric shirt collar.

Tubas In The Moonlight (R.R. Spear)

Dr. Jazz (Oliver/Melrose)

Monster Mash (Pickett/Capizzi)

I'm The Urban Spaceman (N. Innes)

Produced by Paul McCartney and Gus Dudgeon

Ali Baba's Camel (Gay)

It's horrible to walk for miles with sand between your toes

Featuring a cameo by Sir Henry Rawlinson. [next Rawlinsons]

Laughing Blues (Bradley)

By A Waterfall (Kahal/Fain)

Performance reminiscent of Spike Jones and His City Slickers

Mr. Apollo (V. Stanshall/N. Innes)

Five years ago I was a four-stone apology - today I am two separate gorillas

Canyons Of Your Mind (V. Stanshall)

Elvis again.

Keynsham

(sleeve notes)

Hysterics: Mrs. Slater
Aggro, trucking & handling: `Borneo' Fred Munt & Chalky Chalkley
Theremin Leg: Roger Ruskin Spear
Perfumed parlour snake: `Legs' Larry Smith
Hair-styles for the above: Maison Poov, New York
Functions of the body arranged by: R Slater

You Done My Brain In (N. Innes)

Let me crawl away and die

Vivian: An affirmation of madness.

Keynsham (N. Innes) (aka Tragic Magic)

Vivian: "We" are introduced.

Quiet Talks And Summer Walks (N. Innes)

Vivian: All the romance of the novel.

Tent (V. Stanshall)

Vivian: A penetrating inquiry & some recreations.

We Were Wrong (V. Stanshall)

The wind blew my skirt up and it frightened the horses

Vivian: Nostalgic routine. Spot the deliberate fag.

Joke Shop Man (N. Innes)

Vivian: The Armoury of Deception.

The Bride Stripped Bare By "Bachelors" (V. Stanshall/N. Innes) [see Marcel Duchamps]

Vivian: Welcome t'Club Foot

A description of the Band's experiences touring around the Northern club circuit

Look At Me I'm Wonderful (V. Stanshall)

Vivian: A warning.

Another transatlantic crooner parody.

What Do You Do? (N. Innes)

Vivian: Nihilist chant before deciding, decoding, decanting, n'chanting, N'baku, disgorging, dat's gorging piglets!

Mr. Slater's Parrot (V. Stanshall)

Vivian: Own-Up Time. A paradox. Homely fun. demands for the right to live like a civilised human-bean.

Sport (The Odd Boy) (V. Stanshall)

Vivian: Unusual flash-back. Rehearsals for the Rape of the Mind.

Presumably suggested by Vivian's childhood (as described in The Early Years). Featuring Mrs. Nellie Maynard and Harry Maynard. [next Rawlinsons]

I Want To Be With You (N. Innes)

Vivian: Sounds reasonable.

Noises For The Leg? (V. Stanshall)

Vivian: Procession of the Freaks. A horrid dream.

Busted (V. Stanshall/N. Innes)

Vivian: finale & extravaganza. Paté & Putty. The "ballet" of the streets & an astounding wind-up. The End.

Let's Make Up And Be Friendly

The Strain (V. Stanshall)

Vivian: Suggestress of Suicides, Mother of lunacies: Save me from shadows &......... The firm dimension of created things. Push, push. The 1st Movement from the Abbott of Unreason.

Turkeys (N. Innes)

Vivian: Music to cross London Bridge by. In documentaries: they disappear down their own Oxford Circus.

King Of Scurf (N. Innes)

Vivian: My scalp is squamous and..... I sport a beard to hide my spots, I s'pose. Although, Sometimes when the sounds grab me: I jump right up &... Pose & mime before a glass gold-edged & flecked with age. But for these trifling imperfections... hey... I look... pretty good. Uh huh.....

Makes you want to scratch...

Waiting For The Wardrobe (R.R. Spear)

Vivian: from stone, to mounds of steel, they howl. from fathomless infinities. Wardrobe. Stuff'd spawn of Celebes private ears. Arise. Monolith Wardrobe, rise! We wait & Soon, soon: We'll see.

Straight From The Heart (N. Innes/V. Stanshall)

Vivian: Cardio-paranoid-paroxysm. "Oh, you can get pills for that?" Pills? I've swallowed that many, I walk around like a blinkin' maracca. Black'n'Whites/red,n.greens/black/blues/booze. You name it. T'other day the quack lays a new one on me: Red, green & yeller. "What's this gonna do?" I arsks... "Oooh, nothing much" he quips quick as a cobra... "It just directs the traffic". A love song.

Rusty (Champion Thrust) (T. Kaye/L.L. Smith)

Vivian: Two chaps of like persuasion, outlawed by society, in my pompous swelling opinion, carry out their clandestine correspondences, in public before an audience of dissenting adults. "I don't care what they do, so long as it doesn't frighten the horses". True romance. A Weepie.

Rawlinson End (N. Innes/V. Stanshall)

Vivian: A thoroughly engrossing yarn written from the woman's point of view. Serialised that he would never be close enough to O to take command, Ian though he was tall enough & the men obviously respected him. Due for leave, he decides to return immediately to Rawlinson End, little suspecting that Paula is pregnant. Now read on....

The first mention of Rawlinson End. [next Rawlinsons]

Don't Get Me Wrong (V. Stanshall/N. Innes)

Vivian: How could you? Sometimes I think you're so shallow. You don't care about my body, you just care for me. Parasmia kills.

Fresh Wound (N. Innes)

Vivian: Up Memory Lane. "Yeah, that's right. records are mortal, too, y'know. Together: I don't know how to put this but... (Effect: Thunder) All: I've decided to leave the group. You can't do that... what about the tax man. All on account, dear boy, no matter. No grey matter. I'm not sticking around to hear all this filth... we'll continue this in public, you sod. Oh yeah, & world peace off the lot of yer".

Sounds like the early Beatles, Neil imitating John Lennon

Bad Blood (V. Stanshall)

Vivian: Rick O'Shea the popular young criminal sings before a corrected audience. Recorded `dead' at the Bordstiff Training Centre for Boys & Terrestrial Scum. They spat at Oscar Wilde (C.II) on the way to Reading Jail. A little tent of blues. (O'Shea served 7 years for agent-bashing).

A spoof of revenge Westerns

Slush (N. Innes)

Vivian: Surgical appliance officer played by Jacques Tati encounters vivacious but suicidal young actress Charlene, who is hopelessly in love with cheerful truncated Tom Straightenough played by Audie Murphy. What follows is everyone's guess. Horror comedy. Repeat. Zzzz. Fin. "That means `The End' but not for us, eh, darling? Here let me help you with your mantle of madness. Whatsay a large last one; then on to my place for the full-strength stuff..... or, or, yours if it's nearer. Oh, this time I'm really going to..... but sweet thing..... why do you weep? Fin.

Post-Bonzos Singles

Witchi Tai To

A commercialised mantra chant popularised by Harpers Bizarre and Brewer and Shipley

Jam

A psychedelic classic, with paisley-patterned tongue firmly in cheek

Ready Mades (V. Stanshall/N. Innes) [see Marcel Duchamps]

Labio-Dental Fricative (V. Stanshall)

Featuring Eric Clapton

Paper Round

Trouser Freak (R.R. Spear)

Suspicion (V. Stanshall)

Blind Date (V. Stanshall)

Written for Matt Monro (but not accepted!)

We met at Waterloo/She smelt of alke-hol

It was no surprise to find you were a pygmy

Re-cycled Vinyl Blues (various)

Angelina (N. Innes)

Come Out Into The Open (N. Innes)

Punkutation

Never Swat A Fly

Lie Down And Be Counted (N. Innes)

Age of Desperation (N. Innes)

Topless-A-Go-Go (N. Innes)

Feel No Shame (N. Innes)

Fluff On The Needle (N. Innes)

Bandwagon (N. Innes)

What Noise Annoys a Noisy Oyster

Oo-Chuck-a-Mao-Mao

The Young Ones (Tepper - Bennett)

Are You Havin' Any Fun (Fain - Yellin)

The Question (V. Stanshall)

Why can't I be different and original... like everybody else?

The clarinet part of the tune resurfaced in the main theme for Sir Henry At Rawlinson End two years later.

Silver Jubilee

Drama on a Saturday Night

I Must Be In Love

Spring Time for Hitler (M. Brookes)

I've got a Braun New Girl (In God We Rust) (L.L. Smith)

Protest Song

The Hard to Get

Lady Mine

Crystal Balls

Amoeba Boogie

Theme

Kenny and Liza

Human Race

Dear Father Christmas

City of the Angels

No Matter Who You Vote For The Government Always Gets In (Stanshall/Innes/Spear/Slater/Smith)

Lucky Planet

Not the First Time

Sail Away

9-5 Pollution Blues (N. Innes)

Lead Us

Things I Could Have Said

Come Into The Open

Godzilla's Return

Electric Shocks

All by Yourself in the Moonlight

I'm a Fly

Mattress Man

Blue Baboon

The Liberty Laughing Song

Doctor Rock

Patrick Moore

Make Yourself a Happiness Pie

Living Doll

How Sweet To Be An Idiot

Prologue (N. Innes)

Momma Bee (N. Innes)

Immortal Invisible (N. Innes)

Topless A-Go-Go (N. Innes)

Feel No Shame (N. Innes)

How Sweet To Be An Idiot (N. Innes)

Dream On (N. Innes)

L'Amour Perdu (N. Innes)

Song for Yvonne (N. Innes)

This Love Of Ours (N. Innes)

Singing A Song Is Easy (N. Innes)

Unusual

Pinball Wizard

On Her Doorstep Last Night

Trouble With My Trousers

Shove-off Shostakovich

I Love to Bumpity-Bump

When Yuba Plays The Rumba on the Tuba down in Cuba

Frank the Ripper

Morecambe and Wise

Heartbreak Hotel

My Goodness How (Or The Revolutionary New Concrete Mixer)

Unusual

Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead

Afoju Ti Ole Riran (Dead-Eyes)

Truck-Track

Yelp, Bellow, Rasp et cetera

Prong

Redeye

How the Zebra Got His Spots

Featuring another cameo by Sir Henry Rawlinson. [next Rawlinsons]

Dwarf Succulents

Bout of Sobriety

Prong and Toots Go Steady

Strange Tongues

Lakonga/Baba Tunda

Single recorded at the same time as MOUA (? - same year anyway), also featuring African rythms - 6 years before Peter Gabriel's use of them (on Peter Gabriel) and 12 years before Paul Simon's much-hyped "discovery" of them (on Graceland).

The Rutland Times

L'Amour Perdu

Gibberish

Front Loader

Say Sorry Again

I Must Be In Love

24 Hours In Tunbridge Wells

The Fabulous Bingo Brothers

Concrete Jungle Boy

The Children of Rock and Roll

Stoop Solo

Song o' the Insurance Men

Testing

I Give Myself To You

Communist Cooking

Johnny Cash

Protest Song

Accountancy Shanty

Football

Boring

L'Amour Perdu Cha Cha Cha

The Hard To Get

The Song o' the Continuity Announcers

Taking Off

Drama On a Saturday Night

Dreams Shine Through

Busy Day

Three Piece Suite

La Vie En Rose

Sir Henry At Rawlinson End [next Rawlinsons]

Aunt Florrie's Waltz

Interlewd

Pigs 'Ere Purse

6/8 Hoodoo

Smeeton

Fool & Bladder

Endroar

Junglebunny

The Beasht Inshide

Rawlinsons & Maynards

Papadumb

The Innes Book of Records

Here We Go Again

Montana Cafe

All In the Name of Love

Kenny and Liza

Ameoba Boogie

Theme

Human Race

Spontaneous

Love Is Getting Deeper

Etcetera

Teddy Boys Don't Knit

King Kripple (V. Stanshall)

Slave Valse (V. Stanshall)

Gums (V. Stanshall)

Humbert Rawlinson's toy dog. [next Rawlinsons]

Bewilderbeeste (V. Stanshall)

Calypso to Colapso (V. Stanshall)

the Tube (V. Stanshall)

Ginger Geezer (V. Stanshall)

The Cracks Are Showing (V. Stanshall)

This track occurs at the end of the film of Rawlinson End. [next Rawlinsons]

Flung a Dummy (V. Stanshall)

Possibly An Armchair (V. Stanshall)

Fresh-Faced Boys (V. Stanshall)

Terry Keeps his Clips On (V. Stanshall)

Cumberpatch Senior (the former gardner, who also kept his bicycle clips on to keep wasps out) is, like all Rawlinsons and favoured servants, buried upright in the Victory Garden to help feed the vegetables.

Bass Macaw & Broken Bottles (V. Stanshall)

Nose Hymn (V. Stanshall)

Everyday, I Have the Blows (V. Stanshall)

Smoke Signals at Night (V. Stanshall)

Nouveau Riffe (V. Stanshall)

Off The Record

Libido

City of the Angels

Them

Time To Kill

Rock of Ages

One Thing On Your Mind