Pete Brown

Pete Brown is probably most famous as the lyricist for Cream but his history is wide ranging with bands such as Piblokto and Battered Ornaments and collaborations with Graham Bond and Jack Bruce. But he was also a poet, a real live standup poet who did tours reciting his poetry and had been published in significant US magazines from the mid-fifties onwards.

This album is Brown himself reading his early poems and was originally released in 1973.

As with most poetry, it requires the listener to actively engage in what they are listening to, the words are important but his speech patterns and the emphasis on certain words and phrases is crucial. His mood comes over in the words and in his speech and in the music that accompanies a number of the poems – for example ‘Night Lament (After Lorca)’ which features Raymond Williams on Spanish guitar, Tony Hudd on acoustic, Ed Spewcock on percussion and Brown himself playing a Tunisian drum.

Brown appeared at the Roundhouse with Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Laurence Ferlinghetti at the 1965 First International Poetry Incarnation, ‘Wholly Communion’, and a number of these poems were read there.

As a music reviewer it is a very different skill to accurately review poetry but the work here is wide ranging from the intimate and heartfelt to statements upon the world at large and his use of language shows that he is not just literate but also understands the ear of the listener – he is always listenable but sometimes you need to repeat a track to understand his meaning but that understanding will come.

If you are after background, forget it but if you are prepared to invest the energy needed to fully understand his vision and meaning it will be well worth the effort.