Here is the section on Dr Brown from Chris Williams book, "Adrift In The Ether"
Kev Ellis Vocals, harmonica (A-M)
Dave Shah Guitars (A-E)
Phil Leary Bass guitar (A,B)
Richard Pepin Drums (A)
Dave Cook Bass guitar (C-I)
Karen Darville Drums (B,C)
Adrian Brown Drums (D)
Rick Anderton Drums (E-K, M)
Dean Aldridge Guitar (F)
Rat Yo-yo Guitar (G)
Mik Stranger Guitar (H-J)
Huw Lloyd Langton Guitar (I)
Marcel Hone Bass guitar (J-L)
Stef Olissinski Guitar (K,L)
Chris Andrews Drums (L)
Grant McNaughton Guitar (M)
Andy Radburn Keyboards (M)
Simon Mansfield Keyboards (M)
Al Shaw Bass guitar (M)
Dr. Brown Live At The Poly 1987 (B)
Dr. Brown In The Raw 1987 (B)
Live 1990
(Beard, official issue of
Italian bootleg)
1990 (E)
Live 1995 1995 (J)
My Lovely
Horse: Live At The Olde
Oyster House
1996 (M)
Dreamscape
EP: Unrelenting Sky /
Dreamscape / Dreamscape (Sonic
Arcana Mix) (Garageland GRCD013)
1994 (I)
The Land Of
Red And Gold (LP only, two
pressings: first with gold lettering on sleeve,
second with black, Beard 001)
1989 (D)
In The
World Of Dreams (LP only,
500 in coloured vinyl with signed and
numbered sleeves, Beard 004)
1990 (E)
Live In The
Mind's Eye (CD has extra
track, Beard 005 / 005 CD)
1992 (E)
Another Realm (CD only, Beard 006 CD) 1993 (G)
Another
Realm (500 only, auto'd, insert,
Magic Gnome MG 4299323)
1996 (G)
Live 1992
Doctor Brown were the epitome of a freak band: bearded, hairy, loud and bluesy. They formed in 1985 when Kev Ellis met Dave Shah at a Portsmouth sixth form college. They recruited a bassist and a drummer and began gigging in the Portsmouth area; Richard Pepin was a bit of a disaster as a percussionist and he was replaced by Karen Darville.
This line-up recorded the band's first two cassettes. The first of these, ‘Live At the Poly’, highlighted Dave Shah's skills as a guitarist, but inevitably the sound was ropey. They recorded their second tape in a proper studio having won a day's free recording in a local battle of the bands competition. Side two of ‘Dr. Brown In The Raw’ features a jam that would later be transformed into ‘Land Of Red And Gold’. Shortly after the release of this cassette, Phil Leary was replaced by long term Dr. Brown bassist Dave Cook. There then followed a period of stagnation in the band's career until they decided to record an album in 1989, having seen the boost that releasing something on vinyl had given to Mandragora. In the interim, Adrian Brown had replaced Karen Darville on drums.
The band's sound engineer had bought a quarter share in a local studio and arranged some cut price recording time for them. To keep costs to a minimum, the band recorded all the material live in the studio with no overdubs. The result was the impressive, if somewhat under-produced, debut album ‘The Land Of Red And Gold’. There are three truly outstanding pieces on the LP: ‘Great Britain’ is an intelligent and well constructed protest song with some amazing guitar work, while the title track is a longer piece of epic proportions; great harmonica as well. The best track is probably the reggae tinged ‘Torpedo Town’, a song about the demise of a Portsmouth festival which was held annually in protest against the presence of a torpedo factory and at which Dr. Brown were regulars. The rest of the songs are heavy blues numbers and of lesser interest unless blues is your bag, although one bluesy piece, ‘We Dance In Circles’, displayed a pagan sensibility that would be apparent throughout their work.
The replacement to Adrian Brown, Rick Anderton, was credited on the album. Adrian had been forced to leave by the pressures of job commitments. With ‘The Land Of Red And Gold’ selling quite well, the band recorded and released their second LP, ‘In The World Of Dreams’. This is predominantly heavy boogie, with one track in this style, the hilarious ‘Big Red Ford Capri’, standing out. However, a number of other styles are apparent, notably progressive acid rock. The excellent ‘Magic Cat’ sounds like The Dark, although it is difficult to believe that the band had heard them at this time. ‘Unchained’ on the other hand sounds so much like Elias Hulk that it is impossible to believe that the band had not heard them. A third progressive piece, ‘The Oak’, has a gentler feel and strongly pagan subject matter. The closing track, ‘Celebrate The World Of Dreams’, is an altogether folkier piece with violin provided by guest musician Caroline Driscol.
Around the same time as the release of ‘In The World Of Dreams’, Dr. Brown were featured on the LP version of the ‘Psychedelic Psauna’ compilation, contributing a track recorded especially for the album, ‘Freakbeat’, a tribute to the irregular psychedelic magazine. Only a shortened version of the track made it on, but the full version can be found on the CD release of ‘Live In the Mind's Eye’. To be honest, it's pretty lousy. The curtailed version can also be found the ‘Fun With Mushrooms’ CD.
‘Live In The Mind's Eye’ was released to meet demand for a new album. It's a pretty cracking live record with superb versions of ‘Great Britain’, ‘Land Of Red And Gold‘ (incorporating a much improved version of ‘Freakbeat’) and ‘Magic Cat’. The cover of ‘Gloria’ is possibly the best version ever, while their rendition of ‘Baby Please Don't Go’ is more than competent, with an excellent extended harmonica solo. The CD version features an extra track, but since this is the extended studio version of ‘Freakbeat’, it's probably not worth the extra expense. ‘Live In the Mind's Eye’ was recorded at a gig in Breda in Holland. The town is just on the Belgian border and the band felt compelled to write a song about the spectacle of Belgians going across to Holland to have a smoke. The result was ‘Across The Border’, recorded in a small studio in Breda. The song appeared on the cover disk of Ptolemaic Terrascope, vol.2 no.3, and would later appear on Dr. Brown's next album.
At the end of 1992, the band returned to the studio to record another album, with Nick Saloman of The Bevis Frond in the producer's chair. They took the opportunity to record an hour-and-a-half long jamming session with him under the name Doctor Frond; this unfortunately continues to languish in the vaults. The band were struck a great blow when Dave Shah left the band after the band's first gig in Italy. Rat Yo-yo of The Great Imperial Yo-yo was drafted in as a replacement, along with Dean Aldridge. These two played in the band both separately and together; it was Rat, however, who appeared on Dr. Brown's fourth album.
Rat's style of guitar playing was hardly less skilful than Dave Shah's and was certainly more psychedelic. Consequently, ‘Another Realm’ was by far the most psychedelic (and best) Dr. Brown release with much less emphasis on the blues than on previous records - only two tracks were in such a style: ‘Daydreaming’ and ‘Girl She Never Knew’, both of which feature Dave Shah on guitar. Dave can also be heard on ‘Across The Border’ and the extremely weird ‘Palindrome’, much of which is recorded backwards. Both Dave and Rat are on the spacey reggae piece ‘Lucky Jack’. The most overtly psychedelic pieces feature Rat exclusively. ‘Social Disease’ is an energetic protest piece with some blistering guitar soloing and even better fret work can be heard on the ‘Mind's Eye’. The stand out piece is the title track ‘Another Realm’, which sets spacey guitar playing against powerful percussion before the bass kicks in, matching the guitar riff; this heralds in ten minutes of some of the most expansive music around. The initial release of the album was on CD only, but it was reissued a couple of years later on Delerium's collectors' arm, Magic Gnome.
Rat's stint with the band did not long outlast the release of ‘Another Realm’ due to commitments with the Yo-yo, and Dean left the band because of his indifferent live performances. His replacement was Mik Strange who had previously played in a band called Zing Bong Yang with Rat. No sooner had he joined than Huw Lloyd Langton of the Lloyd Langton group and formerly of Hawkwind asked to join as well. This line-up lasted nine months, although the only release from this period was the ‘Dreamscape’ EP, licensed to the Swedish Garageland label. ‘Unrelenting Sky’ is a superb piece, very mystical and with some very spacey guitar. It merges with ‘Dreamscape’, which is another fine song, although the remix has an inappropriate drum beat. The sleeve of the EP fails to list Mik in the line-up due to an oversight on the part of the record company but he can clearly be seen in the photographs.
The most telling blow to the band came when Dave Cook was forced to leave due to family commitments and work pressure, although they soldiered on with long term sleeve artist Marcel Hone taking up bass guitar duties (Marcel's brother is Niall Hone, formerly with Mandragora and Wobble Jaggle Jiggle, and his father is Mo Hone of Cherokee Mist) and this line-up recorded a live cassette. Suddenly, Mik announced he was leaving and shortly joined Great Imperial Yo-yo on bass; his replacement was Stef Olissinski. Rik Anderton also quit, and his replacement was a former colleague of Stef's, Chris Andrews.
Inevitably, the band was unable to survive the stresses of these near continual personnel changes and they folded early in 1995. Unable to stay out of the music business for long, Kev Ellis took over vocal duties in the psychedelic reggae outfit Heliotrope when that band sacked their first singer as well as singing on The Tribe Of Cro's debut cassette.
Dr. Brown's split was fortunately not permanent and Kev reformed the band half way through 1996, having tired of playing with Heliotrope. Three members of that band - Grant McNaughton, Andy Radburn and Al Shaw - came with him. This line-up with guest saxophonist Richard Measey recorded the ‘My Lovely Horse’ live cassette. This is a fair performance and features a couple of Dr. Brown classics - ‘Land Of Red And Gold’ and ‘Jack Daniels’ - alongside a couple of new compositions - ‘Shaka’ and ‘Dance With Me’ - and some lengthy improvisations based around Hawkwind cover versions.
See also:
The Great Imperial Yo-yo
Hawkwind
Heliotrope
The Tribe Of Cro
Wegg