IVIV: Bang Bang/We're Only In It For The Money

[Robin Landseadel]

Seeing how much time already has been spent in cul-de-sacs and  
roundabouts I offer the list an extended cadenza.

As far as I can tell, the Bonzo Dog Band cover of Sonny Bono's  
composition "Bang Bang" differs substantially from the original,  
though it's more half-remembered than re-written:

	I was five and he was six
	We rode on horses made of sticks
	He was black and I was white
	He would always win the fight

	Bang bang, I shot him down
	Bang bang, I'll hit the ground
	Bang bang, that awful sound
	Bang bang, my baby shot me down.

	Jesus came and changed the time
	When I grew up, I called him mine
	He would always laugh and say
	"Remember when we used to play?"

	Bang bang, I shot you down
	Bang bang, you hit the ground
	Bang bang, that awful sound
	Bang bang, I used to shoot you down.

	Music played, and people sang
	Just for me to take the blame

	Now he's gone, I don't know why
	Until today, sometimes I cry
	He didn't take the time to lie
	He didn't, um, even say goodbye

	Bang bang, he shot me down
	Bang bang, I hit the ground
	Bang bang, that awful sound
	Bang bang, my baby shot me down...

The biggest alteration is in the second verse: the original is  
"Seasons came and changed the time."

The original version of the song was performed by Cher:

http://tinyurl.com/ld2y6c

. . . later performances by Diva Cher [tm.] in the wake of [and  
mightily influenced by] Michael Jackson displayed a predictably high  
level of surrealism:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA-lKOKyRJo

Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" unearthed and popularized Nancy  
Sinatra's cover:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5Xl0Qry-hA&feature=related

Doubtless there must be someone more knowledgeable about the Bonzo Dog  
Band than I and hopefully any items here requiring correction will be  
so corrected in due time.

As far as I can tell "Bang Bang" is a "piss take," scraps from the  
studio floor that did not appear in the public's ear till the 2007 EMI  
CD re-issue of "The Doughnut in Granny's Greenhouse"—the original 1968  
LP is possibly the greatest single surrealist slab of vinyl in the  
history of rock & roll. "Donut" was issued in the U.S. as "Urban  
Spaceman," folding in Neil Innes' composition—and huge UK hit—"I'm the  
Urban Spaceman." The producer of  "I'm the Urban Spaceman."— "Apollo  
C. Vermouth"—turns out to be none other than Paul McCartney [with Gus  
Dudgeon] and therein lies a tale.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbLDI5lNdRQ

I'm sufficiently lucky as a Beatlemaniac to have heard the "New" Mono  
re-issue of "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" on a high-end  
rig. My best friend bought the Mono box yesterday. The short and  
skinny is that, yes indeedy—the Mono Pepper is very different and it  
is overwhelmingly better. When Sergeant Pepper was first issued in  
June of 1967, KRLA and KHJ abandoned their usual "singles only" policy  
and played every track, off this Mono copy. Playing an entire album on  
a "Top 40" station was a wee revolutionary act, one that led directly  
to the emergence of "Underground Radio." This was the sound that swept  
the world and the Inherent Vice of listening to corrupted data is  
further rendered obvious by the scorching guitar sounds, wall-o-sound  
bass lines and the Labio-Dental Fricative noises of John Lennon's  
vocals. It's that much better and doubtless a billion illicit CD dubs  
will bloom. Or something like that.

But my biggest takeaway from listening to this fine remastering job  
through some mighty-fine Arcam & Paradigm gear it is this: The Bonzo  
Dog Band really was the Beatles biggest influence in 1967—or at least  
Paul's biggest influence. Paul's songs and the sonic production of  
those songs—a tribute to seedy British vaudeville—is very much in debt  
to one of the great eccentrics of all time and the only other "Rocker"  
to be present in a Beatles movie, Vivian Stanshall:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9y4vLrHsm4

Of course, there's also plenty of seedy British vaudeville in  
Gravity's Rainbow—the Disgusting Candy Drill leaps to mind. But there  
is also a particularly Stanshallian quality to figures like Brigadier  
Pudding. A later work of Stanshall's—Sir Henry At Rawlinson's End—has  
humor continuing in a vein not at all dissimilar from various British  
cranks that appear in Gravity's Rainbow:

	If you're going to get something badly wrong, I recommend
	being corrected swiftly, abruptly, and ideally by your own hand.
	Happily the chips have fallen in such a way as to help me
	correct my ungracious comments with which I signed off three
	days ago, about the Bonzos being effete Little Englanders, and
	Viv Stanshall being a UKIP supporter. The very opening lines of
	this CD give the lie to those hasty and misguided slights:

		English as tuppence, changing yet changeless as canal
		water, nestling in green nowhere, armoured and effete,
		bold flag-bearer, lotus-fed Miss Havershambling oximath
		and eremite, feudal-still reactionary Rawlinson End.

	The whole is evidently a caustic satire on a set of effete Little
	Englanders (see full transcript). You get from this little glimpse
	of the absurdist language that drips out of Viv Stanshall, and
	which connects with some of the work of his fan, Stephen Fry.

Must see YouTube and that means everybody—Here's Fry and Laurie's  
"Tricky Lingistics":

http://tinyurl.com/ks57p2

	I think I remember reading somewhere that some of Stanshall's
	last work was part-financed by Fry and Peter Gabriel — I
	thought it might have been the film of Sir Henry…, but that was
	1980, and I don't imagine the 23-year-old Stephen Fry would
	have had enough money to finance films.

	Spoken word albums always face the challenge of Why would
	you listen to this more than three times? Firstly, the language on
	Sir Henry… is sufficiently dense to require a few listenings to
	absorb it all. Secondly, the voicings of the characters are
	sufficiently mad for some to want to listen to them enough to be
	able to imitate them in cult jokes. The Boy, who is no stranger to
	hearing some odd voices, almost jumped out of his skin a
	couple of times while this was on.

http://www.musicarcades.com/2008/11/vivian-stanshal.html

	The body of Doris Hazard's Pekinese, unwittingly asphyxiated
	beneath Sir Henry Rawlinson's bottom during a wine and
	middle-age spread at the Great House, has been given to Old
	Scrotum the Wrinkled Retainer for indecent burial beneath Sir
	Henry's giant marrow.

	This monstrous jade zebra veg, by stern instruction, was daily
	drip-fed with a powerful laxative. Thus ...

http://www.vivarchive.org.uk/articles/playscript.htm

Sir Henry, part the first:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYf7Oph353U

And now back to "Another World," which already is in progress . . . .