OK, I know a lot of people are going to come down on me like a ton of bricks, but I hated Brent's sounds. His B3 playing was great (and of course, the B3 sounds great), but his keyboard tones render the 80s pretty much unlistenable for me. I know I'm probably just too old, but the GD had a very organic vibe about their sound and listening to FM synths which sounded like nasty generic presets sucked all the organic vibe out of the sound. Add in Brent's penchant for severely overplaying in a way that did not add to the groove but played over and against it, and you get a sound that just has no appeal to me. Had he stuck with B3, I would be a huge fan. His noodling sounding listening to some intelligent people trying to have a conversation while there's someone who keeps popping up and saying "hey, listen to me! Listen to me!" Again, his B3 playing was not nearly as much like this, but when I hear someone who plays a phrase that they make stick out, I want it to exist in the context of what other people are playing or have a half life of longer than 4 bars. It needs to weave into the music as whole in the moment (the genius of Keith and Bob and Phil and Jerry) if not at least into a longer story that it itself tells. It begs the question, why am I listening to this phrase? In Brent's case, a lot of times it was because it's there. That's not enough.
His vocals also grated. He sounded like someone trying to cross Gregg Allman with Michael McDonald and while I loved the first few shows I saw with him (Billerica and UMass '79 especially, hey the vocals were in tune! It's a revelation!), after a short while he turned me off to the point that I quit going. He had tons of energy, which was invigorating at first, but he had no creative spark that comes with listening on the intuitive level. There's a 1970 or so Dark Star I remember hearing which devolves down to silence, where you can hear a pin drop, for probably a minute or more, and you can still feel music and an intense groove in the silence. There's no way he would have let the music get even close to that level of listening over playing. He was an OK bar band player but he was no intergalactic ambassador to the supreme weird. Jerry was dedicated to making every note have its own personality and Brent just sounded like he was throwing a lot of stuff out there without thinking. Pig was as grounded as they come, but he knew when to lay out when it went out of his jurisdiction.
Pluses in his favor: he got Jerry motivated, he sang in tune, we didn't have to wait for a long time for them to find a replacement for Keith.
Other minuses: his version of the blues sounded merely petulant and whiny rather than world weary and soul searching. The blues is music of redemption and I just don't hear it with Brent. His swearing on stage just seemed juvenile. I don't want to pay money to go to shows to get yelled at. If I wanted that, I would have been following Henry Rollins or any number of rappers who can do it much better.
Flame away!
I dont come on for one day, and I AM SPAMMED! 
.. 
Brent ~ Outstanding Performer. Good Voice. Skills. Awesome. Better.
