5. The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah BandThe Doughnut In Granny’s Greenhouse
This is a weird one. That was in my parent’s record collection. They had a few records, but that was one that we would listen to a lot as kids. It’s very appealing to children. It’s kind of like a musical Monty Python, but a lot better in my opinion! They had this really stupid, silly, strange music that was a lot better than it should have been. You often get that when a comedian makes music, you can sort of tell that actually the music underneath is really good. Lots of their humour is derived from the fact that the music is played really badly, and it was sort of shit and sort of funny!
That source of amusement has followed me my whole life. I’m much happier trawling YouTube for awful music than I am looking for the hottest new good band. I almost spend more time listening to awful music. Not just because I find it funny but because I find things in it that a professional would never think of, and that is sometimes all you want to hear, something that you’ve never heard before. I think a lot of humour is relayed in my music directly from the Bonzos.
Do you think there are any songs of your own which reflect that sentiment?
I think with ‘Distant Past’ and the robotic voices it is all kind of absurd. I have a sense when I play live, or record, or think of myself being in a band, I always have a sense of my own absurdity, and that what I’m doing doesn’t actually mean anything, and I’m getting paid to stand in this position and pretend to have these emotions. I think a lot of the Bonzos’ power is in saying, "Yes, we’re absurd and so are you and so is everything around you." A lot of my music is about that, that it only takes a power cut, and we’re just dogs again. And all this stuff that we think is so important is just silly bollocks that we’ve made up.
