This one's a bit o' fun, the Canadian issue of I'm The Urban Spaceman, utilizing the early-mid-60s US Liberty label design.

OK, now we are talkin' RARE. I now have a matched set, as it were, have managed to acquire both a white-label DJ promo AND NOW the stock black label issue of the very first Bonzo Dog Band single, "My Brother Makes The Noises for the Talkies" from 1966!!! [The DJ promo I acquired in London in 1984.]

Confirmed! after many years - The stock US single of "Slush" b/w "King of Scurf"!!! In 25 years of collecting the Bonzos, I had only heard of the existence of this single, and only had ever come across the DJ promo of "Slush" b/w "Slush"! But here is the only copy I've ever seen in all those years...

Well this one's not ultra-rare, but not terribly easy either, but still a great one - This looks to be either a jukebox EP or a promotional issue for "An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer", company sleeve and all - a good one for sure!

Oh yeah, can you dig it...Another one found after years of searching...the wonderfully whacked DRIVING STUPID and a one-sided DJ promo copy of their garage psych classic Horror Asparagus Stories!

UPDATE 2/28/03: Like Whoa - Not only did Driving Stupid writer/singer/guitarist Roger Kelley (a/k/a Kelley Rodgers) contact me via email in late 2000 after seeing the above entry (followed by a groovy and spirited exchange), Sundazed Records has since issued the legendary and never-released Driving Stupid LP!!!! Get it HERE!!!

A curious one for sure...As a lot of you know, Benny Hill's 1971 UK album "Words and Music" (containing the hit single "Ernie") was released here in the US in 1980 after his late-60s/early-70s shows became wildly popular. What is curious is that there seems to be no 1971 US LP release for "Words and Music" even though it was put out in the Capitol Re-issue series in 1980 (with two sides of a 1972 single added to the program); HOWEVER, here is a 1971 US promo copy of the "Ernie" single! Despite copious credits to the producers and other performers right on the 45, there is no rights organization designation (BMI/ASCAP/SESAC) and the publishing credit reads simply "Benny Hill". Anyone with definite release info (or to the contrary) for "Words and Music" in 1971, let me know!!!

UPDATE 2/28/03:Well it sure has been a hell of a long time since I updated this page innit?!?!?! I have gotten perhaps a little closer in the quest for US Benny Hill releases, here's a recent acquisition, the commercial stock copy (Capitol 3272) of "Ernie" - but still no rights organization and no mention of being from the LP "Words and Music" - this might be about it!

Other gems from the demented archives...

This record is rather legendary in "demented" music circles, a Spike Jones tribute on the Carpenters tune "Close to You", performed by The Clams, a group that included NY keyboardist Pete Levin, bassist Tony Levin (Pete's brother) and drummer Steve Gadd. As the story goes, there were only 100 copies of this pressed, needless to say I'm thrilled at having a copy (thank you M.K.!!). Hear it and read the Clams' story at Pete Levin's website!

This was my personal vinyl Holy Grail for many years after hearing it on the Dr. Demento Show back around 1979. Searched and searched, it was just impossible to find as it wasn't a hit in England, and was only bootlegged in the US as a Beatles recording! Took 9 years and 2 trips to UK but I got one. Peter Cook and Dudley Moore take on psychedelia via the sounds of The Supremes and The Beach Boys? One of my all-time favorite records, 1967's "The L.S. Bumble Bee".

Ever wonder whether Napoleon XIV's "They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!" came out in other countries? Evidently so, here are a couple of examples...First off, the German pressing, which not only uses the early-60's Warner Bros. label design, but also has a picture sleeve!!!!

Here's the British 45, where Warner Bros. was distributed by the Pye label (?!?!) - This is closer to the American label of the time - Not sure if the 45 had a picture sleeve but I actually saw (and couldn't afford - argh) a 45 EP in a sleeve!

Wonder how this record did in those countries....

Not much new has come my way as a BONZO DOG BAND collector in quite a long time...UNTIL NOW...Here's one I never knew existed in 20 years of collecting the Bonzos! Unless I'm looking in the wrong places I've never seen it in any discography...

It's a Canadian Capitol pressing of their 2nd UK single on Parlophone "Alley Oop"/"Button Up Your Overcoat"! To see this on a Beatles/Beach Boys-era Capitol swirl is deliciously confusing! I'm lucky enough to already own a DJ promo of this on Parlophone, but any new addition is quite welcome! WHOA!

Woo-hoo, one of the holy-grail items for Bonzo Dog Band collectors, it's "Legs" Larry Smith's 1978 single of Mel Brooks' classic "Springtime for Hitler"! Faithful to the original arrangement, that is until the second half of the tune breaking out into a Disco Broadway extravaganza! This was also released on a flexidisc, which I have yet to acquire, although I did see it in a record store in London in 1984 (*smacks self in head*).

This is a great one, another that I first heard on Dr Demento way back when...One of the best send-ups of Top 40 radio, courtesy of Bob Arbogast and legendary engineer Stan Ross, it's the Speedy Clip Show on KOS - Chaos Radio!!!

Maybe the most scathing satire ever, a brilliant audio play from Stan Freberg, with Daws Butler, Jud Conlon's singers and Billy May's orchestra. Forever biting the hand that feeds him (which is what we love him for), Freberg goes as far as to eat his own young on this one, a vicious and well-deserved attack on the over-commercialization of Christmas.

Buy the "Tip of the Freberg" box set at Amazon.com!!

British funnyman Benny Hill certainly took the US by storm in the late 70s and early 80s - but his career in England as a radio and movie comedian goes back to the 50s...Here's one of his early singles on Pye,"Gather In The Mushrooms", which was later used in his Thames TV series that aired all over the US starting in 1979.

So why isn't this one on "Golden Throats"?? Yep, Buddy Ebsen gives us "The Ballad of Jed Clampett"!

Back in the late 50s and early 60s the comedy album was really coming into its own, the long-play medium well suited to reproduce a comedian's nightclub "set". Warner Bros. Records set the standard for mainstream comedy records with Bob Newhart's "Button-Down Mind" series and later the classic Bill Cosby albums. Still they probably saw the need to promote these LPs to stations, hence these promo-only releases on 45. I also have a Bob Newhart WB promo and have seen another...this is 2 cuts from Cosby's "...Right!" album.

If you look at John Travolta and think Barbarino instead of Pulp Fiction, then this one is for you. Gabriel Kaplan's "Up Your Nose" - perfectly suited for me and my 12-year-old-at-the-time friends exhorting each other with "In your eye with a pizza pie" - this actually hit #91 on Billboard's Hot 100! It's actually quite funky.

This is the alter-Chipmunks, as if they grew up in Greenwich Village instead of David Seville's L.A. - Sascha Burland and Don Elliott created the scat-singing Nutty Squirrels in 1959 and a few singles and albums followed, they hit with "Uh! Oh! (part 2)" in that year. This is a harder to find promo EP. Honestly, these tracks swing hard!

Here it is dementoids, the original unedited "Existential Blues", complete with picture sleeve, on Connecticut's Ransom Records.

While this doesn't rate with Frank Zappa's most collectible singles (anything pre-Mothers is quite collectible), I quite like it - "How Could I Be Such a Fool" and "It Can't Happen Here" from "Freak Out!" Yes, a single edit from "Help I'm a Rock", what a choice to put on 7" vinyl!

Despite the fact that thousands and thousands of his early albums are still available on the Net and in used record shops, Tom Lehrer has become collectible. This is one that definitely falls under the harder-to-find category, a 7" 33rpm promo EP from his "That Was the Year That Was" album from 1965.

Best known for his wonderfully manic and unintelligible 1968 single "Paralyzed", here's "Standing In a Trashcan", a 1986 release from the Legendary Stardust Cowboy.  This was a Goodwill Store find in the mid 80s, another jump thru the roof moment. 

Here's a great item, a promo 45 of Stan Freberg's fun single "Banana Boat (Day-O)"/"Tele-Vee-Shun" from 1957. This is a different vocal take of "Tele-Vee-Shun" from the "... Original Cast" LP, and a completely different recording from the 1952 version that appears as the B-side of "Maggie".

Buy the "Tip of the Freberg" box set at Amazon.com!!

Another hilarious stab at Top 40 radio, this time the signal makes its way out from behind the Iron Curtain, it's Nikita the K and The Friends of Ed Labunski with "Go Go Radio Moscow"! An extremely fun record.

Figger this had to happen sooner or later...here's my first vinyl offering, our very own 45 under the Power Salad name, available here. It's been on The Dr Demento Show as well as his Basement Tapes 6 CD compilation. It's also on our CD, released spring 2000.