Well, box set fans, here it is: the collected albums of the Bonzo Dog Band: Gorilla, The Doughnut in Granny's Greenhouse, Tadpoles, Keynsham, and Let's Make Up and Be Friendly.

In the spirit of all good box sets, there are some extra goodies: A and B sides of their two early Parlophone singles (My Brother Makes the Noises for the Talkies/I'm Going to Bring a Watermelon to My Baby Tonight and Alley Oop/Button Up Your Overcoat) and what apparently was a German single (Mr Apollo/Ready Mades). Plus, three Bonzo-related items: Labio-Dental Fricative (Vivian Stanshall Sean Head Showband), Re-Cycled Vinyl Blues (Neil Innes), and Trouser Freak (Roger Ruskin Spear and His Giant Orchestral Wardrobe). So does this make your $20 Rhino Best Of... CD obsolete? Almost... Rhino has Suspicion by Vivian Stanshall and His Gargantuan Chums which isn't in EMI's set.

Fantastic sound quality. I had on hand the Gorilla CD as reissued by BGO records which sounds decent enough until you compare it to the EMI CD. EMI's clarity is a joy to the ears.

And it is a joy to the brain to be able to follow the BDD-DB from the beginning to beyond the end. If your budget forces you to be on the installment plan, this set is being sold in some stores as individual discs: Disc 1 (The Intro) contains the Gorilla and Doughnut albums; disc 2 (The Outro) contains Tadpoles and Keynsham; and disc 3 is called Dog Ends, a fair title since it contains the rarities and the Let's Make Up album (which really came after the breakup of the group), but Let's Make Up is more than a typical contractual obligation album, in fact one cut (Rawlinson End) eventual was made into a movie!.

...Dada for now.
      Kimba W. Lion
from 1994 issues of The Off-Center Record newsletter
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