Log #81 - Madcap Humour Masking Serious Musicianship - The Bonzo Dog (Doo-Dah) Band

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1. Coldplay - X&Y

2. Hawkwind - Warrior on the Edge of Time

3. Kings of Convenience - Quiet is the New Loud

4. The Bonzo Dog Band - Cornology CD1

5. Bear's Den - Islands

6. Boubacar Traore -  Kongo Magni

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Although many people will be familiar with the Bonzo Dog (Doo-Dah) Band’s biggest hit Urban Spaceman (produced by Paul McCartney under the name Apollo C. Vermouth!) and the anarchic The Intro and the Outro (where the band members plus notable guests are introduced with their bizarre instruments) the comprehensive Cornology collection brings together five fully fledged albums and a selection of solo offerings in a sumptuous 3-CD box set.

The three CDs each have subtitles. Volume one is entitled The Intro and contains the original albums Gorilla and The Doughnut in Granny's Greenhouse. Volume two is subtitled The Outro and contains the albums Tadpoles and Keynsham. Volume three is entitled Dog Ends and contains the band's final original album Let's Make Up and Be Friendly along with early Bonzo Dog singles, odds and ends and solo material.

The band are fondly remembered for their silly humour and dandy tailoring which most obviously influenced Monty Python but aside from the comedy they were also accomplished musicians being masters of a range of genres. 

Drawing largely on their unique readings of trad jazz standards (pumping tubas) and music hall novelties (plumy English accents) the Bonzo’s repertoire is supplemented by eccentric front man Vivian Stanshall’s own comic observations and Neil Innes’ finely crafted Beatlesque pop songs.

He was wearing Billy Bunter check trousers, a Victorian frock coat, black coat tails, horrible little oval, violet-tinted pince-nez glasses, he had a euphonium under his arm, and large rubber false ears. And I thought, well, this is an interesting character.

Neil Innes on meeting Stanshall for the first time.

The Bonzos were admired by contemporaries of London’s swinging 60s scene sharing a residency at the famous London UFO club with Pink Floyd and appearing in the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour. Despite such exposure lasting commercial success eluded them and they remained an underground cult band on the fringes of the art school circuit. Their quintessentially English brand of madcap humour lampooning colonialism, the upper class, and seaside holidays, didn’t travel well and a badly managed American tour was aborted; “there’s a good chance we won’t get into the country again” said Stanshall. By 1970 it was all over aside from a brief reunion for the self explanatory Let’s Make Up and Be Friendly album.

The most accessible stand alone CD for beginners is probably Tadpoles which includes some of the Bonzo’s best known songs like the singalong Hunting Tigers Out in Indiah and children’s favourite Monster Mash, as well as Space Cowboy. However this is to overlook the surprising depth displayed across the less celebrated of these 72 songs as demonstrated on this particular album by the delicate By a Waterfall and brilliant variations on traditional forms in Dr Jazz and Laughing Blues. Tadpoles ends with Stanshall’s rather apt Canyons of Your Mind resplendent with Elvis vocals and a guitar solo so terrible it is very funny:

So if you fancy something completely different, that the kids will love on long car journeys, and is guaranteed to raise a smile, take a punt on at least one of the Bonzo albums. Before long you will be singing the chorus to Hunting Tigers out loud at the office water dispenser.

Bonzo mainstay Viv Stanshall died in a house fire in 1995

The Intro and the Outro:

Hi there, nice to be with you, glad you could stick around. 

Like to introduce `Legs' Larry Smith, drums 

And Sam Spoons, rhythm pole 

And Vernon Dudley Bohay-Nowell, bass guitar 

And Neil Innes, piano. 

Come in Rodney Slater on the saxophone 

With Roger Ruskin Spear on tenor sax. 

I, Vivian Stanshall, trumpet. 

Say hello to big John Wayne, xylophone 

And Robert Morley, guitar. 

Billy Butlin, spoons. 

And looking very relaxed, Adolf Hitler on vibes. 

Nice! 

Princess Anne on sousaphone. 

Mmm. 

Introducing Liberace, clarinet 

With Garner "Ted" Armstrong on vocals. 

[Jazzy scat singing] 

Lord Snooty and his pals, tap dancing. 

In the groove with Harold Wilson, violin 

And Franklin McCormack on harmonica. 

Over there, Eric Clapton, ukulele. 

Hi Eric! 

On my left Sir Kenneth Clark, bass sax. 

A great honor, sir. 

And specially flown in for us, the session's gorilla on vox humana. 

Nice to see Incredible Shrinking Man on euphonium. 

Drop out with Peter Scott on duck call. 

Hearing from you later, Casanova on horn. 

Yeah! Digging General de Gaulle on accordion. 

Rather wild, General! 

Thank you, sir. 

Roy Rogers on Trigger. 

Tune in Wild Man of Borneo on bongos. 

Count Basie Orchestra on triangle. 

[CBO:] (Ting!) 

Thank you. 

Great to hear the Rawlinsons on trombone. 

Back from his recent operation, Dan Druff, harp. 

And representing the flower people, Quasimodo on bells. 

[Q:] Hooray! 

Wonderful to hear Brainiac on banjo. 

We welcome Val Doonican as himself. 

[V:] Hullo there! 

Very appealing, Max Jaffa. 

Mmm, that's nice, Max! 

What a team, Zebra Kid and Horace Batchelor on percussion. 

A great favourite and a wonderful...

Also in the magazine this week we have what I consider Hawkwind's best album Warrior on the Edge of Time. This is probably their most "prog" album. I love the cover too. It's a simple illustration yet manages to convey the atmosphere of the album.

Bear's Den are not particularly original being another of those lo-fi acoustic groups from the Fleet Foxes school but they are definitely one of the best. Islands is full of melodic numbers beautifully sung in harmony.

I'm not sure about Coldplay. I think they are good but they also annoy me. I don't know why. Maybe their music just seems a bit earnest and possibly overrated? Good at what they do but not particularly original or exciting. I'm new to the X&Y album and on early listens it seems quite heavy which is a good thing in my book. One to return to another time.

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Log #38 - Talk Talk - From Popstars to Jazz Proggers

1. Matthew E White - Fresh Blood
2. Kings of Convenience - Quiet is the New Loud
3. The Whitest Boy Alive - Dreams
4. The Whitest Boy Alive - Rules
5. Talk Talk - Spirit of Eden
6. Gorillaz - Plastic Beach

Talk Talk did a sudden about turn with this album rather like David Sylvian did after leaving Japan, or Spinal Tap in their jazz fusion period! Having been Top of the Pops fodder in the early 80s this departure to an album of extended largely instrumental progressive jazz pieces was the last thing fans were expecting... and it's rather gorgeous!

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Log #37 - Kraftwerk in Brighton!

Kraftwerk returned to Brighton this week for the first time in 36 years. Playing at the Brighton Centre the "group" "played" a crowd pleasing set of greatest hits from Computer World, Man Machine, Electric Cafe, Tour De France, Radioactivity, Tran-Europe Express, and of course Autobahn - the original 1974 album that really announced their arrival.

Kraftwerk land in Brighton

So what of this? Well a number of things spring to mind...

It was an event! The "event of the season" as Buffalo Springfield once said? Possibly, although here in Brighton we are spoilt with many events. Kraftwerk concerts (and appearances of any sort) have been rare over their career although recently with their 3D tours and residences at various art galleries they have become a little more common place perhaps diluting the significance. It is still super hard to get a ticket though. I had failed a number of times before securing a side circle seat for this event.

Kraftwerk are one of those groups universally admired, not just for their music, but for their influence. In this way they are a bit of a sacred cow, immune to criticism. Listening back to the music they created in the 70s it really is remarkable - so different to anything else at the time and, although it is a cliche, still sounds as if it could have been produced yesterday. I was at school at the time and although the first pop synthesizer bands were starting to emerge in the wake of pioneers like Kraftwerk my interests remained firmly rooted in rock music. I didn't get these new synthesizer bands (Depeche Mode, OMD, Gary Numan etc) or Kraftwerk at all. But oddly Kraftwerk were one of the few electronic bands that many rock fans did like. Apparently it was not uncommon to see fans in denim jackets with Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin patches at Kraftwerk concerts. Apparently they were really loud too...

...which is why I was surprised that the music was quiet at the beginning as the house lights dimmed and neon green numerals danced across the backdrop and the band started with three numbers from Computer World. It was almost like it was still the background house music.  Later on people started shouting out that it was too quiet and amazingly someone must have heard as the volume was turned up from Radioactivity onwards.

Having got a seat to the side (it is a case of first come first served with seat selection on the internet for such a popular event) I was also wary of the effectiveness of the 3D. As a green number 4 launched towards my head at the start these fears were allayed. The crowd cheered. Later on a satellite floated above me during Spacelab from Man Machine (one of the musical and visual highlights). A UFO hovered in front of the i360 and the Brighton Centre before moving off to the Pavilion - nice local touch. More cheering.

However I continued to wonder if the 3D graphics would have been more impressive or evident from front on. I think probably not as I did have a look on my way to a bathroom break. Also, surely, they would have checked these things, and there were many seats much more to the side than mine.

Boom! Boing! Tschak!

I say "played" but that's a relative term. The four musicians (they are no doubt consummate musicians, not just technicians, having written the music at least in the case of original member Ralf Hutter, even if it is debatable how difficult it is to "play" it on computers) stood mostly motionless behind four stands and you could not see what they were doing from my angle. But their arms were moving up and down (punching some drum pads and things) or from side to side (keyboards), and Hutter (far right) was "singing" (speaking) in German and heavily accented English into a head mic. The screen helpfully showed the words to many of the "songs".

The Man Machine robots play to a full house at The Brighton Centre

At the start of the extended "encore" the real musicians were replaced by the famous Kraftwerk robots from Man Machine and "played" Robots. Humourously one of the robots wouldn't move at first. Eventually his arms rose - more crowd cheering. At the end the robots were unceremoniously pulled off stage by crew. This could have been more slick - for instance I did think the robots could have done a bit more visually although their virtual playing was exemplary. The humans returned and finished off, leaving the stage one at a time to tumultuous acclaim.

One frustration I find with a lot of concerts, especially ones like this, is the insistence on seating only. Although there are great visuals to watch, it's not a classical concert. Standing (and dancing) would have been much more exciting - I know the band are too big for such a venue but a Kraftwerk DJ set at the Concorde2 for instance would be immense! Health and safety is important of course, and in the circumstances the increased airport-like security on the door was welcome, but I do get a bit annoyed when the bouncers ask you to return to your seat if you go walkabout. Some brave souls did dance a bit in the aisles before the inevitable.

Over 2 hours of Musique Non Stop

But what of those tunes? They are all very familiar. I don't have all the Kraftwerk albums but reckon I recognised 90% of the set list. The music is simple yet perfect  - chunky repetitive bass lines and hypnotic drum beats overlaid with catchy 4 bar melodies. The tracks played live were respectful to the originals - perhaps slightly beefed up in places more akin to the remixes in The Mix album. The more recent (still old but relatively recent in Kraftwerk years) tracks from Tour De France and Electric Cafe (or Techno Pop as it is now renamed) sounding particularly current. Autobahn was the slightly edited version which appears on that album - the opening car door slam and horn receiving one of the loudest cheers of the night. Greatest hit The Model was welcomed with glee and accompanied by the original black and white video - Hutter's voice equal to the original single which strangely was officially only the B side to a track from Computer World not released until 1982. Pete Paphides explains -

Though it originally appeared on 1978's The Man Machine, The Model made more sense in a pop scene reconfigured by a rouge-streaked generation of androgynes who paid as much attention to the mask as to the emotions that it sought to conceal. In the world of Spandau Ballet, Gary Numan, Duran Duran, Visage and Scary Monsters-era Bowie, some people called themselves futurists; others preferred the term New Romantic. In terms of sound and subject, The Model was the exact point where the two intersected.

Kraftwerk at the time were a secret known only to the cool kids at school. The Model became a no.1 hit and blew that cover.

My choice from Kraftwerk this week is the Trans-Europe Express album - one of their best from their 70s hey day/decade. The music sounds fresh and vibrant, mathematically perfect, and decades ahead of its time.  Showroom Dummies is the consummate Kraftwerk tune (one of the few favourites missing from the Brighton setlist actually). The full log this week:

1. Henryk Gorecki - Miserere
2. Kings of Convenience - Quiet is the New Loud
3. Kraftwerk - Trans-Europe Express
4. Talk Talk - Spirit of Eden
5. Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti CD 1
6. Gorillaz - Plastic Beach

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Log #4 - The Whitest Boy Alive - Odd Name / Tight Band

A couple of new entries in the magazine this week. Firstly my new Whitest Boy Alive CD arrived and it's a corker - extremely catchy pop tunes with the funkiest bass lines and the sharpest of beats. A super little band now sadly defunct after only two albums but who live on in part through The Kings of Convenience (who are apparently recording a new album). I've played this album over and over this week, and in the car too on a long journey, so there hasn't been much look in for the rest. KOC retain their place of course and continuing my acoustic/americana/nu-folk mood I've slotted Fleet Foxes into hole number 2. Not too sure about the lead singer on their album any more but the harmonies are good.

1. Bear's Den - Islands
2. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
3. Matthew E. White - Fresh Blood
4. Kings of Convenience - Riot on an Empty Street
5. Afro Celt Sound System - Further in Time
6. The Whitest Boy Alive - Dreams

Matthew E. White is a class act and Fresh Blood is an effortlessly soulful album. Bear's Den have a knack for some great tunes, lovely Crosby Nash Stills harmonies, and melancholic lyrics. I saw them at a local venue last year and for their encore they dismounted the stage and huddled unplugged in a circle in the crowd to sing an unplugged Bad Blood, the last track on the album. I highly recommend this talented young band.

Finally the Afro Celts hold on to a position largely due to plans to see them early next month. This week it is the turn of Further in Time which I think is one of their earlier albums (actually their 3rd - ed.) and features guest appearances from Peter Gabriel and Robert Plant.

Album of the week: Dreams

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Log #3 - Who's That Girl?

A few new entries in the box this week. First a word on a great young band I saw in Brighton last night. Sam Jordan and the Dead Buoys (nautical spelling deliberate after a clash with a US band of the same name). I told them afterwards they sounded like Bear's Den which they took as a compliment, hence the new entry in the player. Both bands specialise in beautiful sensitive acoustic melodies and gorgeous vocal harmonies, the right side of the Mumfords.

1. Bear's Den - Islands
2. Various - Trojan Dub 3 CD Box Set - CD no. 1
3. Matthew E. White - Fresh Blood
4. Kings of Convenience - Riot on an Empty Street
5. Wilco - Being There
6. Afro Celt Sound System - Anatomic (vol. 5)

Matthew E. White I first heard on seeing his stunning Rock and Roll is Cold video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co4krl2xge0

The Wilco album I once saw in one of those Top 50 lists. It sounds a bit dated now, and the vocal delivery is rather relentlessly depressing. I think the later Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is probably the better album. But its a double CD with alot of material so probably requires some more listening.

Cover art this week is from the lovely Kings of Convenience album. I have always been fascinated by album cover art - how a design captures an imaginary world or a grainy photo a moment in time. I love the retro feel of this cover with the brown shades, the turntable, the intellectual chess playing boys and the beautiful bookish girl with the mysterious glance. The boys are band members Erlend Øye (left) and Eirik Glambek Bøe (right). But who is that girl? Is she a model, or a real person, or possibly the guest singer Feist?

So I googled "who is the girl on the cover of riot on an empty street" and would you believe it google knew!

The following article by Clarissa Oon is reproduced from the band's website via my google search http://www.kingsofconvenience.org/strait.html :

Boe's Liv Tyler-lookalike girlfriend is on the cover of Riot On An Empty Street, the recent sophomore major-label release from him and bandmate Erlend Oye [I look forward to spinning a Whitest Boy Alive CD I've just ordered - Oye's side project - hopefully in issue #4 if it arrives in time].

Boe gazes at the camera, looking slightly grim as she and geeky bespectacled Oye eye each other suggestively. She was also with them on the cover of their 2001 breakthrough album Quiet Is The New Loud, says 28-year-old Boe, whose stubbled good looks remind one of a younger Viggo Mortensen. Speaking via a temperamental mobile-phone connection from Palermo, Italy, where the duo is playing a gig, Boe says his medical student girlfriend - whose name he mumbles and is lost in waves of static - was initially not meant to be in the picture. Recalling the day they shot the Quiet album cover four years ago back home in Bergen, Norway, psychology student and part-time musician Boe said he and Oye had been driving around getting lots of photos taken.

For the last picture of the day, we said to my girlfriend: 'Come on, you be in the picture with us to remember this day.' 

The shot ended up on the album cover 'because it reminded us of a series of paintings by Norwegian painter Munch, with one person in the foreground and a couple in the background, called Jealousy'.

The reference to Edvard Munch's paintings tells you two things about the Kings of Convenience, whose pensive acoustic harmonies and intelligently laconic lyrics earned them the label 'the thinking girl's boyband' from a Guardian reviewer: One is that Boe, who reads psychoanalyst Carl Jung's writings for work and semiotician Umberto Eco's essays for fun, thinks really deep thoughts. The other, that he and his songwriting band mate - who have been compared to a hip, latter-day version of 1960s troubadours Simon & Garfunkel - lead separate and somewhat competitive lives.

Friends of 12 years who played together in a now-defunct rock band Skog (Norwegian for 'forest'), they called themselves Kings of Convenience as a shorthand for 'the convenience of two people playing guitars together, instead of all the hassle travelling around with a big band'.

They have lived in different countries for the past six years: Boe in their rainy coastal hometown of Bergen, and Oye as a deejay in Berlin. The latter released his solo dance album Unrest early last year. Suggest that it might be more convenient for the two to live in the same country, and Boe explains, in his low gentle voice that 'my life choice and his life choice are different'.

The band is not the reason we live in different countries. The band still exists in spite of the fact that we live in different countries.

Recorded early this year over a six-month period in Bergen, with periodic visits from Oye, Riot has a more evolved sound than its predecessor album, with a few whimsical, dancy tracks amid slow, autumnal numbers. Boe says they take turns to sing lead, and argue a lot. 'We each think each one's voice is better,' he adds, followed by a rustle like a smile at the other end of the line. Still, they are committed to writing songs together, frequently exchanging ideas over the phone.

'Maybe every second month, I'll go to Berlin, or he comes to Norway.'

Sounds like a long-distance relationship. 'Exactly.'

Album of the Week: A toss up between Riot and Islands

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Log #2 - Bob Marley Lights Up and Catches Fire

I've been playing quite alot of reggae and reggae/dub recently. This culminated in seeing the reggae covers band Easy Star All Stars a couple of weeks ago - a band that plays covers of Pink Floyd, Michael Jackson, Beatles and Radiohead - check out their cover of Paranoid Android for something completely different.

The Trojan set contains a wealth of music I'm not familiar with like The Upsetters, King Tubby, Gregory Isaacs and Tommy McCook. I don't know if these versions are extra "dubbed" up or are originals (I expect the latter). I've also just got back from a mini-road trip in France where my fellow travellers were playing a lot of reggae and dub on the blue tooth.

1. Various - Trojan Dub 3 CD Box Set - CD no. 2
2. Bob Marley - Catch a Fire
3. The Doobie Brothers - The Captain and Me
4. Kings of Convenience - Riot on an Empty Street
5. War on Drugs - Lost in the Dream
6. Afro Celt Sound System - Anatomic (vol. 5)

Of course Bob Marley is much more common, but maybe not this album so much. Although considered a classic, or even his best by many, this album came earlier (1973) than the more famous hits. But more the better for it - it's much more rock than I was expecting, with guitars and organ, but with that easy groove. And what a fantastic cover with the extra thick spliff. Way to go Bob. My kids saw his son recently at a festival.

Bob Marley rolls up on Catch a Fire

Thank you to facebook junky Arthur P for The Doobie Brothers recommendation. Named as one of his two most favourite albums ever I had to hear it. It's right up my street, but I don't know if it will prove a stayer. Stand out track to date is Long Train Runnin'. Intiguing cover too. Another similar (I imagine) band we were playing a lot of in France was The Allman Brothers. I had no idea their tune Jessica was the theme tune to Top Gear. I like discovering trivia like that.

Anyway back to this list and the lovely Kings of Convenience. This was also inspired by something I was playing on my Ipod on the plane over - The Whitest Boy Alive. I think both bands have interchangable members, and they certainly sound very similar. The Kings project are more acoustic and with their vocal harmonies sound alot like Simon and Garfunkel. There is a beautiful track near the end where they are joined by a female vocalist. I think they are from Scandinavia somewhere, possibly Norway. Speaking of Scandinavia I am off to see Swedish band Goat next week, that should be interesting.

The War on Drugs record is one of the best rock albums of recent years - it was my Record of the Week in another post. It's been a go to album for a couple of years now.

I'm also seeing Afro Celts sometime soon. Can't remember this album at all - they are all very similar and indistinguishable in my experience so far. Time to familarise myself in the run up to the gig.

Record of the Week: Catch a Fire

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