HW/OFF: Arthur Brown

[Jon Jarrett]

On Thu, 5 Dec 2002, Gordon Taylor wrote:

> Further to Arthur Brown's KIngdom Come,   I saw this band on the tour they
> did around the Journey album.   As previously noted they used an early drum
> machine called a Bentley Drum Machine - also variously called an Ace Bentley
> Rhythm Generator and a Bentley Rhythm Ace.   The "Bentley Rhythm Ace" name
> was revived by a left field dance combo from Birmingham (UK not Alabama) in
> the 1990s.   I don't know why they decided to use it instead of a real
> drummer, in the early 1970s it must have been somewhat optimistic to use such
> an untried piece of eqipment on a concert tour,   but I recall that when the
> Sisters of Mercy introduced their drum machine (known as Dr. Avalanche) they
> claimed that not only did it keep better time than a real drummer but it also
> drank a lot less.

        There's some very similar things said about the drum machine
Kingdom Come used on Arthur Brown's web-pages (which are, in case people
don't know this, at <http://www.godofhellfire.co.uk>). The relevant bit is
at <http://www.godofhellfire.co.uk/70s.htm> and goes:

        `"I've had four good drummers in Kingdom Come," Brown
explains. "And I've worked with many more good drummers in the bands I've
had since I started. I know, in other words, what a good drummer is--and I
also know most drummers can't handle what our music needs.

        "Sometimes we might want them to work very, very simply  and the next
moment we ll need them to do something very complex. None of the drummers
I've worked with have been able to take it."

        `Hence Bentley--in actual fact a Bentley Rhythm Ace drum machine
which Brown plays on stage. The band bought it when Chris Burrows, the
last drummer, left.

        `"We realised it has a place of its own in rock music," Brown
says. "There's one thing, you see, that limits all rock bands, and that is
the fact that a rock band is built around a drum kit.

        "The drum kit is limited by what the hands and feet of the drummer can
do, and also by the problem of amplifying the kit to the electronic level
oF the band.

        `"The Rhythm Ace, in that sense, is equivalent to 200 ordinary drum
kits. It frees the whole scope of rhythm and lets you get into patterns of
rhythm that you just can t get with a drum kit. On mine, for example, you
can have a drum kit and a Latin-American section at the same time--and
there is no way you could do that otherwise."

        `The Rhythm Ace itself is a four-stage rhythm generator. The first
stage contains the "operations system" which generates, through a system of
oscillators, any conceivable permutation of rhythmic pulses.

        `The second stage is a rhythm selection unit which selects pulses from
the operations system to provide rhythmic patterns ranging from straight
rock to jazz and Latin-American tempos over a wide range of possible
variations.

        `The third stage provides the "voices" in much the same way as the
voice tabs of an electronic organ--except that the voices of the drum
machine are drum voices. The final stage is a pre-amplifier with an output
to an external power-amp system.

        `"The Rhythm Ace gives you any rhythm that a drummer can play," Brown
explains, "as well as rhythmic combinations that can't be played on
anything but the machine.

        `"It's also something that you can play the same day you buy it,
as long as you've got a feel for rhythm. That's the only important thing
unless you develop a feel for music, you won't be able to get as much out
of it."

        `Brown is careful to emphasise that the Rhythm Ace is not so much a
substitute for a drummer and kit, as much as a new direction for the
rhythmic basis of rock music. "The sounds it produces are like drum
sounds," he says. "But they're not the same as drum sounds. They're
percussion rather than drumming."'

        It goes on with some very grand ideas about adopting a new
geometrical scale for music and so on and this should remind us that
Arthur Brown's always been very good at unlikely ideas that he doen't
necessarily intend to do; see also the bit about the encephalograph at the
head of that page and the *three* variant biographies... But it's all a
laugh innit.

        Bentley Rhythm Ace the band by the way were a splinter from Pop
Will Eat Itself, of all people, though I never heard any so as to know if
it sounded the same. All trivia, hopefully of interest to someone anyway,
yours,
       Jon

ObLP: The Bevis Frond - _Miasma_
--
"I recognise that I have transgressed many of the precepts of the divine
law, and that I am subjected by various vices and iniquities, disobedient
to the words of the divine mystery brought unto me and a worshipper of the
delights of this military age." Marquis Borrell of Barcelona, 955 A.D.

             (Jonathan Jarrett, Birkbeck College London)