Lost Ears (Puddletown Express)

AMG Review of Lost Ears (Puddletown Express)

Joe Viglione
All Music Guide

Almost 90 minutes of Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come compiled from the years 1968-1972. There is nothing of the perverse majesty that his "Fire" single boasted, save Arthur Brown's personality sprinkled over these four sides. There are three unreleased tracks by Brown's The Puddletown Express band and extensive liner notes from Chris Welch of Melody Maker, dated 1976. Those notes remind us that Alice Cooper cites Arthur as an influence, and the story of a night this band opened for The Alice Cooper Group adds to the intrigue as the heavy progressive music plays. Andy McCulloch of Greenslade and Carl Palmer of Emerson, Lake & Palmer went through the revolving door of Arthur Brown's musical ministry, and his influence on those groups - at least musically - is documented here. "Love Is A Spirit is an almost acappella opening to sde 2 with just the keyboards creating an eerie church-like feel before the band kicks in and gets heavier, a thick dirge that is the rule, not the exception, and maybe a reason why this extraordinary artist never fully caught on. "The Experiment" is Deep Purple during their Tetragrammaton phase, and maybe Arthur Brown would have been better off following their lead and re-inventing Joe South material. That Vanilla Fudge formula launched Deep Purple while Gooch Harris does his best Jon Lord but the music remains somewhat inaccessible. Brown shifts somewhere between Sylvester & The Hot Band to some Frank Zappa inspired nightmare. "Time Captives" is excellent science fiction rock, and one gets the feeling had The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown, Kingdom Come and Puddletown Express had a Shep Gordon managing or an Andy Warhol endorsing him, this controlled insanity would have reached a wider audience. The concise and succinct power of his 1968 smash is missing on The Lost Ears, and despite the excellent musicianship, this lengthy collection becomes an ordeal. The two and a half minutes of "Conception" have Arthur Brown howling like some whacked out witch doctor, and it's entertaining, but you aren't going to play it three times in a row, and Dr. John - The Night Tripper learned how to bring that persona full circle. The Lost Ears is an important document of an innovative figure, a Screaming Jay Hawkins from a far distant future. Missing are hit singles, and Alice Cooper could have repaid the musical debt by helping Arthur Brown out with that. The Puddletown Express material sounds like Syd Barrett escaped from the asylum to make another record, and who's to say that's a bad thing?