Consumer Guide Album

The Bonzo Dog Band: The History of the Bonzos [United Artists, 1973]
I didn't like them initially because I was under the impression they were a "group"--a musical aggregation--when in fact they're a comedy troupe who play instruments. Explaining why I don't like (i.e., laugh at) them in retrospect is harder--responses to comedy are even more personal than responses to music. Just say that what they do strikes me as boarding-school humor--covertly classbound escapist silliness without Monty Python's moral underpinnings. This generous two-disc compilation, an hour and forty minutes of entertainment in all, is intelligent and imaginative. But it's also narrow for the worst reasons. B−