Gorilla (Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band Album)

Gorilla (Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band Album)

Gorilla is the debut album by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, originally released by Liberty Records in 1967. In 2007, EMI reissued the album on CD with seven bonus tracks.

The album includes "Jazz, (Delicious Hot, Disgusting Cold)" which savagely parodied their early "trad" jazz roots and featured some of the most deliberately inept jazz playing ever recorded—the record company only allowed two hours of studio time per track, so it was completed in a single take to allow for the far more complex "The Intro and the Outro" in which every member of the band was introduced and played a solo, starting with genuine band members, before including such improbable members as John Wayne on xylophone, Adolf Hitler on vibes, and J. Arthur Rank on gong. Other "members" were Val Doonican, Horace Batchelor and Lord Snooty and His Pals.

The album was also issued in the US on Imperial as LP-9370 (mono) and LP-12370 (stereo), but minus the track "Big Shot". The original issue of the album had the same booklet issued with the UK album.

The album was recorded on a four-track tape recorder, as was typical for 1967. Due to the limited number of tracks, most of the non-band "personnel" on "The Intro and the Outro" are simply faded in and out, and few notice they are absent in the later stages of the track.