Customer Reviews
it's hard to tell the difference when they take their hats off... - By: freewheeling frankie, 14 Mar 2008 
At last, quality reissues of all the Bonzos' albums - it's hard to believe that the only one previously issued separately on CD was Gorilla. The Cornology box valiantly collected (nearly) all the previously available material into one place but these reissues are the real deal - superbly remastered & packaged, augmented with bonus tracks that are worth listening to more than twice, & featuring extremely droll sleeve notes by surviving joint chief Bonzo Neil Innes.
Doughnut was the second Bonzos album, & the first on which they sank their razor sharp parodic teeth into rock musicin a big way - while it is extremely diverse stylistically, the music hall & novelty dance band covers & trad jazz parodies to be found on the preceding Gorilla & subsequent Tadpoles are largely absent here - it's their first album to feature entirely original material, all written by Innes and/or Vivian Stanshall apart from Roger Ruskin Spear's berserk Trouser Press.
Nearly every track here is a winner & even the slighter songs are very good. We Are Normal is a superb parody of the then prevalent psychedelic bands, especially Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd. Postcard spikes mid-20th century seaside resort clichés at a leisurely pace. Beautiful Zelda is an innocent early 60s pop meets sci-fi B-movie fantasy with a fab tune. Can Blue Men Sing The Whites mercilessly punctures the self-important purism of the late 60s white blues boom. Trouser Press is a piss-take of 60s soul rave-ups with completely ridiculous lyrics & a trouser press solo. My Pink Half Of The Drainpipe is a hilarious tirade against suburban bores & banality with a French-sounding accordion backing. And the greatest gem of the whole album is the extraordinary Rhinocratic Oaths,in which Neil Innes's absurd but rather splendid circular music serves as a backdrop for Vivian Stanshall's hilarious & surreal series of spoken vignettes. I particularly love the concept of a hedge being trimmed into the shape of a human leg.
The bonus tracks here are not the best selection on these reissues; they include silly but not spectacularly funny versions of Blue Suede Shoes & Cher's melodramatic Bang Bang & a different mix of their early 45 Alley Oop, all previously unissued, plus the single version of Canyons Of Your Mind (very similar to the album version - was the single really stereo?) & the German version of Mr Apollo, by far the best of the bonus tracks with Stanshall's spoken outro ("once I was a 4-stone apology, now I am 2 separate gorillas") translated into German to rib-tickling effect. My only real complaint about the whole reissue is that this last track, evidently sourced from vinyl, still suffers from the jump that marred it on Cornology - surely, given that the backing track is exactly the same & there are no vocals at that point, a quick bit of jiggery pokery with Protools could have taken the missing piece from the English version & inserted it here. While we're indulgingin trainspottery, however, it's also worth pointing out that the brief piano interlude that followed the final track (11 Mustachioed Daughters) on the original album, but was omitted from Cornology, has been restored here. So that's alright then.
This is one of the Bonzos' greatest albums, perhaps THE greatest. No other musical comedy act bears repeated listens like the Bonzos - their genius was to be great at both music & comedy & combine the two seamlessly. Wonderful stuff.
best of a strange but talented bunch - By: M. Hisbent, 04 Sep 2007 This album saw the Bonzos at their peak, & this version is enhanced with some extra tracks which unlike most 'undiscovered treasures' do fit particularly well onto the original roll call. It wasn't a concept album typified by tracks following a single theme but it is a dazzling array of musical & lyrical styles which hang together perfectly & benefits from sitting down & listening to the whole album from start to finish. There are no highlightsin this album simply because there are no weak tracks, showing just how far the Bonzos had come since their early days doing music hall pastiche. The immense influence which Neil innes exertedin the band shows through clearlyin this album & that's not to belittle the contribution of anyone. "Beautiful Zelda" was at least as commercial as 'Urban Spaceman' & listening to 'Postcard' alongside 'My Pink Half of the drainpipe' invokes so many memories our working class lifein the late 60's it is scary. (Adults did used to hang over the garden fence blethering on a Sunday afternoon whilst rice puddings were burningin the oven. If Neil Innes had written the Small Faces hit 'Lazy Sunday' what a fantastic trio of songs that would have made.) Stanshall was talented & a great figurehead, but Innes always had the potential to take the band to undiscovered heights which perhaps he got toin the Rutles eventually.
I've waited a lot of years for the cd re-issue of this classic '60's album - more literate, funny & downright 1960's weird than any of their contemporaries could achieve through a thousand overdubs or mangled chords. "We are normal & we dig bert Weedon' they claim on the opening track, & suddenly digging Bert Weedon doesn't seem so strange anymore. This is a great legacy for an idiosyncratic bunch of talented musicians & performers.
....... & thanks to the entertaining booklet I now know what 'The Doughnutin Granny's Greenhouse' was!
