BONZO DOG DOO DAH BAND – GORILLA LP – Nr MINT A1/B1 UK

Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band – Gorilla
(Sunset Records  1980 LBR1019)
Matrix No’s: A1/B1 – UK Pressing

Sleeve in Excellent/Very Good+ condition
– some wear to edges, some ringwear near top and crease on bottom left corner

Vinyl in Nr MINT condition
(there are some light surface marks visible on the vinyl when held up to the light but they don’t affect the sound quality)

The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (also known as The Bonzo Dog Band) are a band created by a group of British art-school denizens of the 1960s. Combining elements of music hall, trad jazz, psychedelic rock, and avant-garde art, the Bonzos came to the attention of a broader British public through a 1968 ITV comedy show, Do Not Adjust Your Set.

• Vivian Stanshall (1943–1995): trumpet, lead vocals
• Neil Innes (b. 1944): piano, guitar, lead vocals
• Rodney “Rhino” Desborough Slater (b. 1944): saxophone
• Roger Ruskin Spear (b. 1943): tenor sax and various contraptions
• “Legs” Larry Smith (b. 1944): drums

Gorilla is the debut album by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, originally released by Liberty Records in 1967.

The album includes “Jazz, (Delicious Hot, Disgusting Cold)” which savagely parodied their early “trad” jazz roots and featured some of the most deliberately inept jazz playing ever recorded—the record company only allowed two hours of studio time per track, so it was completed in a single take to allow for the far more complex “The Intro and the Outro” in which every member of the band was introduced and played a solo, starting with genuine band members, before including such improbable members as John Wayne on xylophone, Adolf Hitler on vibes, and J. Arthur Rank on gong. Other “members” were Val Doonican, Horace Batchelor and Lord Snooty and His Pals.

The album was also issued in the US on Imperial as LP-9370 (mono) and LP-12370 (stereo), but minus the track “Big Shot”. The original issue of the album had the same booklet issued with the UK album.

The album was recorded on a four-track tape recorder, as was typical for 1967. Due to the limited number of tracks, most of the non-band “personnel” on “The Intro and the Outro” are simply faded in and out, and few notice they are absent in the later stages of the track.

Sleeve notes

“Dedicated to Kong who must have been a great bloke.”

Track listing

Side one

1. “Cool Britannia” – 1:00
2. “The Equestrian Statue” – 2:49
3. “Jollity Farm” – 2:29
4. “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” – 1:04
5. “Look Out There’s a Monster Coming” – 2:55
6. “Jazz (Delicious Hot, Disgusting Cold)” – 3:11
7. “Death Cab for Cutie” – 2:56
8. “Narcissus” – 0:27

Side two

1. “The Intro and the Outro” – 3:04
2. “Mickey’s Son and Daughter” – 2:43
3. “Big Shot” – 3:31
4. “Music for the Head Ballet” – 1:45
5. “Piggy Bank Love” – 3:04
6. “I’m Bored” – 3:06
7. “The Sound of Music” – 1:21