The Best of the Bonzo Dog Band (1991)

Like other British art-school groups of the '60s, these jesters brought deep cultural awareness to their work. Mixing jazz, '50s rock & roll, Dadaist art, film noir, upper-crust satire, and more, the group shared Monty Python's absurd comic sensibility, but had far better tunes. (Indeed, pianist Neil Innes later worked with the Pythons, and did the songs for the 1977 Beatles parody, The Rutles.) The Best of the Bonzo Dog Band contains the group's dubious claim that ''We Are Normal'' and an ode to shirts — complete with man-on-the-street interviews — this generous compilation exhibits the brain-tickling delights of the Bonzos' looking-glass world. A-