Pour l'Amour des Chiens | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | 12 December 2007 | |||
Genre | Comedy rock | |||
Label | Storming | |||
Producer | Mickey Simmonds Neil Innes | |||
The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band chronology | ||||
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Pour l'Amour Des Chiens (French: For the Love of Dogs) 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.
The album was performed by original group members Neil Innes, Roger Ruskin Spear, Rodney Slater, 'Legs' Larry Smith, Vernon Dudley Bowhay-Nowell, Martin 'Sam Spoons' Ash, and Bob Kerr, with New Millennium Bonzos Adrian Edmondson, Stephen Fry, and Phill Jupitus. Also credited are Mickey Simmonds (musical director), David Catlin-Birch (guitar and vocals), Johnny Marter (drums and percussion) and Steve Barnacle (bass and jazz guitar).[ citation needed ]
When compared to the CD from the above package, the CD-only edition omits "Scarlet Ribbons", "Stadium Love", "Mornington Crescent" and "Sweet Memories", while adding "We Are Normal".
The Times awarded the album four stars and described it as "rarely less than charming", [1] while The Observer gave it three, calling it "predictable" and "only half amusing". [2] Record Collector said, "Delicious idiocy through wordplay, Wire People, songs about dead dogs, Old Tige, neurotic gardening, Purple Sprouting Broccoli and a gloriously levelling cover of the Kaiser Chiefs "I Predict A Riot" – it’s all here. Tiptoeing through the innate silliness, it’s often easy to forget the quality of their playing, which, unlike some of the low-grade gags on offer, is faultless." [3]
Describing the album in his 2009 book The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band - Jollity Farm, Bob Carruthers says of "I Predict a Riot": "Hard to predict the plot of this one, as Mr Spear and Mr Edmonson are let loose on this Kaiser Chiefs classic. Planned and unplanned studio incursions by Mexicans, Wurzels, that bloody chicken clarinet and HM constabulary." [4]
The Rutles were a rock band that performed visual and aural pastiches and parodies of the Beatles. This originally fictional band, created by Eric Idle and Neil Innes for a sketch in Idle's mid-1970s BBC television comedy series Rutland Weekend Television, later toured and recorded, releasing two albums that included two UK chart hits. The band toured again from 2002 until Innes' death in 2019.
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.
Phillip Christopher Jupitus is an English stand-up and improv comedian, actor, performance poet, cartoonist and podcaster. Jupitus was a team captain on all but one BBC Two-broadcast episode of music quiz Never Mind the Buzzcocks from its inception in 1996 until 2015, and also appears regularly as a guest on several other panel shows, including QI and BBC Radio 4's I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.
Mornington Crescent is a street in the London Borough of Camden.
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.
Keynsham is the fourth album by the Bonzo Dog Band. It was released in 1969 on Liberty Records.
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.
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.
David Catlin-Birch is a British musician. He was a bass guitarist for pop/alternative rock band World Party, and was the original "Paul" for the March 1980 launch of The Beatles tribute band, The Bootleg Beatles.
Larry Smith, often known as "Legs" Larry Smith is an English drummer of the comedy satirical jazz group the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.
Mickey Simmonds is an English session keyboardist, arranger and composer. He is best known for his work with progressive rock acts, Mike Oldfield, Renaissance, Camel and Fish. He has also worked with Joan Armatrading, Paul Young, The Rutles, Art Garfunkel, Kiki Dee, Mastermind, John Coghlan's Diesel Band, Elkie Brooks, Judie Tzuke, Imagination, Bucks Fizz, Jennifer Rush, The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, the list goes on.
Let's All Go to Mary's House is a 1925 popular song written by Con Conrad & Leo Wood which was recorded in the UK by the Savoy Orpheans and by Jay Whidden and His New Midnight Follies Orchestra. It's a jazz dance song which exhibits the standard style of that time, and includes a reference to the Charleston which was less than a year old at this song's publication. The arrangements of the recordings mentioned uses the syncopation and popular orchestration typical of the time. It often appears on compilations of 1920s-era music as any internet search will reveal.
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.
How Sweet to Be an Idiot is the first solo album by Neil Innes, formerly of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, and was released in 1973.
"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".
Adrian Charles "Ade" Edmondson is an English actor, comedian, musician, writer and television presenter. He was part of the alternative comedy boom in the early 1980s and had roles in the television series The Young Ones (1982–1984) and Bottom (1991–1995), which he wrote together with his collaborator Rik Mayall. Edmondson also appeared in The Comic Strip Presents... series of films throughout the 1980s and 1990s. For two episodes of this he created the spoof heavy metal band Bad News, and for another he played his nihilistic alter-ego Eddie Monsoon, an offensive South African television star.
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.
Martin Ash was a British performer, percussionist, artist and art lecturer better known to many by his stage name Sam Spoons, the percussionist of The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band.