Monday, 6 December 2010
Had I still been polluting the airwaves on local community radio in early 2008 there's little doubt Hughesy would have been much more proactive in tracking down this album by the reformed Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band.
The Bonzos were, after all, one of Hughesy's all-time favourite musical aggregations, and arguably received more than their fair share of airplay on Fools Gold and High Class Music.
Even though the late and extraordinarily great Vivian Stanshall would be impossible to replace as such, at the time I noted the presence of New Millennium Bonzos Adrian Edmondson, Stephen Fry, and Phill Jupitus alongside most of the surviving members of the original line up.
Those three Viv-substitutes were, as far as I could gather, recruited to tackle some of the Viv bits in live performance, and I had some reservations about their possible contributions to a new studio recording.
The absence of the decidedly eccentric Mr Stanshall means, of course, that there'll be a decided lack of what I'd tag the sweet essence of giraffe factor, those linguistic elements that could only be described as coming from somewhere in an alternative reality somewhere beyond the outer reaches of left field.
Fortunately, when you look at the original Bonzos' four album discography it's fairly easy to distinguish between Gorilla, their first album made when they were operating in what amounts to warped vaudeville ragtime trad jazz novelty territory and those that followed, which were substantially headed towards the further reaches of faroutness.