Track Listing

1. Aunt Florries' Waltz
2. Interlewd
3. Wheelbarrow
4. Socks
5. Rub
6. Nice 'N' Tidy
7. Pigs 'Ere Purse
8. 6\8 Hoodoo
9. Smeeton
10. Fool & Bladder
11. Endroar
12. Junglebunny
13. Beasht Inshide
14. Rawlinson & Maynards
15. Papadumb

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2609 in Music
• Released on: 1995-05-08
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Soundtrack

Customer Reviews

The Road To Unreason...
Not as some have said, the original version of 'Sir Henry at Rawlinson End' but by far and away the most concise. It's all you really wanted to know about Henry Rawlinson in an easy to swallow, beautifully performed hour.

And I've enjoyed this hour for what must amount to weeks in repeated plays. Even now, a word or phrase can suddenly shine out as a meaning or reference becomes clear. The narrative and songs are examples of Vivian at his very best and it comes as no surprise that this album continues to enthrall listeners decades after it's first release.

It's actually a condensed version or fragment of a much bigger series of recorded works which were performed in an equally erudite and mellifluous fashion for radio. Not that this album contains any part of the actual radio transmissions themselves.

One day perhaps, with enough encoragement, the BBC may release the original recordings. Until then the avid listener can only imagine the content of episodes such as 'Spades, Balls and Sausage Trees', 'Cabbage Looking In Mufti', 'Crackpot At The End Of The Rainbow' and 'The Road To Unreason'.

Utterly unique and extraordinary, this single hour of Stanshall opens up a world of astonishing beauty and invention like no other.

Frightening but exquisite
I recently bought this album having read about Stanshall's friendship with Keith Moon. At first listen it is quite bizarre, but the exquisite rhythm of the prose rings through and with some great comic moments you're immediately tempted to listen again.

I can understand the other reviews suggesting that this album grows on you; I've listened to nothing else for some time. Stanshall's careful delivery, comic voices and incredible throw-away one liners mean that there is something new to discover every time.

In short, a masterpiece and highly undervalued both in pecuniary and cultural terms!

Awkward beasts, winkles
Born out of short interludes in Bonzo Dog albums and Peel Show contributions in the late Seventies, this recording contains, quite possibly, the most entertaining 40 minutes you are ever likely to enjoy. The scene is set in the faded grandeur of dust-shrouded aristocratic manor Rawlinson End where the terrifying Sir Henry and a cast of larger than life grotesques, of League of Gentlemen proportions, go about their daily excursions under Stanshall's relentless microscope.
His use of language is extraordinary, and he can move from the bawdily asinine (the downtrodden manservant is called Scrotum: the wrinkled retainer) to space-cadet surreal in the course of a single sentence.
The piece is crammed to the gills with throwaway one-liners... for example when some of the characters are playing cards, one remarks to Sir Henry "why, if filthy fingers were trumps, what a marvellous hand you'd have."
All is narrated with his plummy, rounded, and hugely expressive voice morphing wonderfully into each perfectly realised character. The scenes are intersperced with musical interludes, which the idiosyncratic but canny Stanshall made timelessly gauche (echoes of the Bonzo's here).
Viv Stanshall's exquisitely sharp, savage and witty descriptions paint some of the most vivid and side splittingly laugh out loud funny scenes this writer has ever heard. The rich density of the descriptions and narrative will bring the listener back time and again to find nuances and meanings that elude first listens. An undeniable work of genius from the finest hour of this sadly missed English eccentric ... Indispensible.