Mummy, my teddy bear has stopped breathing

[MissKittysMom]

Help! I'm descending into a Bonzo Dog Band and Viv Stanshall nostalgia fest. I've been listening to Sir Henry at Rawlinson End while commuting this week, and find that a somewhat dangerous combination. I haven't heard such gloriously insane abuse of the English language since the early Firesign Theatre days.

What are your favorites? What am I missing? What will it cost me to regain my sanity?

[markwoll]

The Conception Corporation had a couple of albums.
My favorite was Conceptionland and Other States of Mind.
Very Firesign.
conceptionland.jpg

Some of the 70's National Lampoon recordings are pretty good. Mostly short pieces

I have been listening to The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy BBC radio show this week in the car.
It make my wife roll her eyes, but I love it.

[GuitarGeek]

My first knowledge of Viv Stanshall I ever had came from reading about a book about The Who. Apparently, he and Moon hung out a lot together. When got started getting into mischief, Viv was one of his co-conspirators. One story has that the two of them dressed up in Nazi regalia (or rather, Viv dressed as a Nazi, Keith dressed as "the man with the little mustache" himself) and went on a pub crawl in central London. One of the pubs they walked into, the barman apparently came out from behind the par, grabbed Keith by the lapels, literally lifted him up on the ground, and then advised him to leave "before he got damaged".

Another story had Viv dressed as Vicar walking down whichever street in the middle of the day, with lots of people going by, and Keith and a bunch of his other mates jumped out of a car and made like they were beating the crap out of Viv. This happened reportedly with lots of passerbys walking by, cars driving by, and nobody took notice of the "assault" as it happened.

As for The Bonzo Dog Band, I've never had any of the albums, but somewhere around here, I have a tape I copied from a college radio show which has Busted on it. I've probably got a few other things from them on tape from similar broadcasts, but never got around to buying the albums.

Re Hitchhikers Guide: I have the book of the radio scripts that was put out back in the mid 80's, which has a few bits that were edited from the original broadcasts, plus extensive notes about the casting, the music and so forth.

And since Firesign Theater was mentioned, I still think their first three albums are some of the funniest things I've ever heard in my life. There's a bit on their first album called Le Trent Huit Cunegonde, in which all the kids act like square adults and the adults act like hippies.

Principal: Benway, your son's a drop in.
Dr. Benway: It'll just kill his mother!

Mrs. Benway: Malcolm X John Lennon! Come in here, and dig your mother!
Malcolm X John Lennon Benway: Not now, Mom! I gotta go to the library to do my homewor...I mean, meet my connection!
Mrs. Benway: You can't fool me! I know you're in one of those underground study groups!

And the whole piece ends with the President ordering the Air Force to drop 10,000 hardbound copies of The Naked Lunch on Western Nigeria, thus overthrowing the last bastion of unhipness in the free world.

[Lopez]

My favorite Bonzo record is the first, Gorilla ("dedicated to Kong, who must have been a great bloke"). Hilarious verbally and musically.

I also like former Bonzo Roger Ruskin-Spear's solo record, Electric Shocks. More fun stuff like "All By Yourself in the Moonlight" and "Mattress Man."

[Big Ears]

My favourite Viv Stanshall material is the original Rawlinson End sketches he recorded for John Peel. To my knowledge, they have not been officially released in this form, although there are some on the net. Stanshall also contributed to Bob Calvert's Captain Lockheed project, which I think is funny and the music stands alongside the best of Hawkwind, and he played on Steve Winwood's first solo album (which, I hasten to add, is not intended to be funny). The upper-class twit comedy of Leslie Phillips, Peter Cook, Viv Stanshall, John Cleese and Michael Knowles has always struck a chord with me.