Vivian Stanshall was an English singer-songwriter, musician, author, poet and wit, best known for his work with the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, for his exploration of the British upper classes in Sir Henry at Rawlinson End, and for acting as Master of Ceremonies on Mike Oldfield's album Tubular Bells.
Neil James Innes was an English writer, comedian and musician. He first came to prominence in the pioneering comedy rock group Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and later became a frequent collaborator with the Monty Python troupe on their BBC television series and films, and is often called the "seventh Python" along with performer Carol Cleveland. He co-created the Rutles, a Beatles parody/pastiche project, with Python Eric Idle, and wrote the band's songs.
GRIMMS was an English pop rock, comedy, and poetry group, originally formed as a merger of The Scaffold with core members of the Bonzo Dog Band and the Liverpool Scene for two concerts in 1971 at the suggestion of John Gorman.
Rodney Desborough Slater is a member of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, playing saxophones and other musical instruments.
Roger Ruskin Spear is an English sculptor, multimedia artist and multi-instrumentalist who was a member of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. Spear is the son of the satirical artist and lecturer Ruskin Spear.
Gorilla is the debut album by Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, originally released by Liberty Records, LBL 83056, in 1967. In 2007, EMI reissued the album on CD with seven bonus tracks.
The Doughnut in Granny's Greenhouse is the second album by the British comedy rock group Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. In the United States, it was released as Urban Spaceman and added their U.K. hit single "I'm the Urban Spaceman" to the track listing.
Tadpoles is the third album by the Bonzo Dog Band. It is largely a compilation of their work from the television show Do Not Adjust Your Set, on which they were the house band. The US version of the album had a track list slightly different from that of the UK version: the US version removed "I'm the Urban Spaceman" and added "Readymades" the B-side of their follow-up single "Mr. Apollo".
Let's Make Up And Be Friendly was the fifth and, until 2007, final original album by the Bonzo Dog Band. The group had already disbanded when United Artists Records informed band members that the group owed the label one more album. This 1972 farewell album was the result. In 2007 the album was re-issued on CD by EMI with six bonus tracks, some of which were solo recordings by the members of the group.
Horace Cyril Batchelor was an English gambling advertiser. He was best known during the 1950s and 1960s as an advertiser on Radio Luxembourg. He advertised a way to win money by predicting the results of football matches, sponsoring programmes on the station. His spelling out of Keynsham, a town in western England where he operated, made it famous.
Cornology is a 1992 compilation box set, issued by EMI Records, of the complete recorded output of The Bonzo Dog Band, previously issued on the Parlophone, Liberty and United Artists labels.
Larry Smith, often known as "Legs" Larry Smith is an English drummer of the comedy satirical jazz group the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.
Sir Henry at Rawlinson End, released in 1978, is a largely spoken-word, solo comedy recording by British musician Vivian Stanshall, formerly of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. It originated in his Rawlinson End sessions for the John Peel Show on BBC Radio 1 beginning in 1975, and a similarly-named track on the Bonzo Dog Band's 1972 album Let's Make Up and Be Friendly.
Pour l'Amour Des Chiens is the first all new studio album by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band in 35 years, and their sixth album overall. It was released on 12 December 2007, produced by Mickey Simmonds and Neil Innes, by Storming Music Company.
"I'm the Urban Spaceman" was the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band's most successful single, released in 1968. It reached #5 in the UK charts. The song was written by Neil Innes—who won an Ivor Novello Award in 1968 for the song—and produced by Paul McCartney under the pseudonym "Apollo C. Vermouth". The B-side was written by Vivian Stanshall. A well-known staging of the song involves Innes performing solo while a female tap dancer performs an enthusiastic but apparently under-rehearsed routine around him. This skit originally appeared in a 1975 edition of Rutland Weekend Television, with Lyn Ashley as the dancer, and was more famously revived in the 1982 film Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl with Carol Cleveland taking over the role.
The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band was created by a group of British art-school students in the 1960s. Combining elements of music hall, trad jazz and psychedelia with surreal humour and avant-garde art, the Bonzos came to public attention through a 1968 ITV comedy show Do Not Adjust Your Set.
"The Intro and The Outro" is a recording by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. It appears on their debut album, Gorilla (1967). It is not so much a song as a comic monologue in which the speaker introduces the musicians who ostensibly appear on the recording. The recording fades out before the emcee completes the introductions and without the "orchestra" being able to play anything more than a vamp. The piece was written by Bonzo member Vivian Stanshall, who also provides the vocal. Stanshall first introduces the seven members of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, who are credited with their actual instruments, over a vamp that resembles Duke Ellington’s "C Jam Blues".
Teddy Boys Don't Knit is the third solo album by Vivian Stanshall. As with his 1974 debut solo album Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead, it consists entirely of songs, rather than the comedy-narrative-with-integral-songs of its immediate predecessor Sir Henry at Rawlinson End.
Rawlinson End was a series of thirteen 15-20 minute radio broadcasts, created and performed by Vivian Stanshall for BBC Radio 1 between 1975 and 1991. The early sessions, recorded between 1977 and 1978, formed the template for Stanshall's LP record album, Sir Henry at Rawlinson End in 1978.
Unpeeled is a 1995 compilation of sessions recorded by The Bonzo Dog Band for the John Peel show on the BBC during the late sixties.
