Around the same time that Captain Beefheart was being pointlessly made over in an inevitably doomed attempt to render his music more palatable to mainstream audiences, similar moves were afoot to re-imagine Arthur Brown as a “colourful” AOR figure – less of an affront to delicate sensibilities than the demoniacal nuthatch of yore with his head on fire and his cock out.
Amazingly, it worked: on record, at least. To say that “no one bought it” refers more to the simple fact of audiences failing to shell out for the relevant product rather than refusing to countenance the concept of Brown as a kind of hobo Robert Palmer. Chisholm In My Bosom has actually weathered the passage of time surprisingly well, given that it missed the zeitgeist by several light years on its original 1977 release. Let A Little Sunshine (Into Your Life) and Need To Know are definitive 70s AOR, the latter in particular, with its harmonised, lightly flanged guitar parts, somewhere between Killing Of Georgie-era Rod Stewart and The Sutherland Brothers & Quiver.
Brown had never been in more supple voice; if Monkey Walk is like The Goodies fronted by a stripper vicar, the meandering 19-minute title track could also be an itinerant Astral Weeks.
