Pip Proud – "Adreneline & Richard" (International Polydor Production – LPHM-108) 1968

Resembling,as well as sounding like the mythical fourth Shagg. Proud Australian Philip Proud's debut album from the hippie era has very little to do with Adrenaline,even though it appears in the title; but has more in common with an anesthetic. Yeah, he can't sing,has a speech impediment,wears glasses like the bottom of a couple of beer glasses,can't play a guitar or write songs!?...not a good start for a wannabe hippie troubadour who seems to walk around in a bin-bag?.....but gimmie that anyday rather than the bore fest forced on us by any of those trendy 'singer-songwriters' from Laurel Canyon back in '68 (Judee Sill excepted by the way)......excuse me ,a bit of sick just came up into my mouth.

Whereas, Pip could have come from Stan Laurel Canyon, if it ever existed? For the hundreds, if not thousands of acoustic waving folk singer wannabees from the sixties and seventies who were just plain Awful!....not all of them were funny though,so this is why Pip stands out from the crowd of long-hair earnest strummers so much...he's fucking hilarious.Unintentionally so,but funny enough for us to still listen to this terrible dross to this day. His name will be name-dropped at hipster coffee shop get togethers,where they will stroke their beards in appreciation,....and that's just the women.He's played at Outsider Art appreciation evenings alongside the mighty Shaggs,Wesley Willis,The legendary Stardust Cowboy,and the other outsider legends that make our failed lives seem like a raging sucess. Yeah, we need these losers to make ourselves feel good, but it isn't your lost album we're playing is it? Your poetry doesn't get read out at Hipster beat soirée's does it? Oh No!...So who's the loser now eh?

Philip may no longer exist upon this mortal coil (RIP) to unveil his latest work,and he did continue making his idea of what music is well into the new millenium;but he lives on in the form of black plastic disc's,binary codes,and magnetic waves,which is a remarkable turn around for something that we all should acknowledge is patently complete rubbish as modern standards dictate......but, Fuck that shit and Fuck their modern standards.

It's funny too.

But not as funny as Mike Leigh's "Nuts In May",which includes Pip's female equivalent, Candice-Marie,who has an uncannily similar voice. 

Tracklist:

A1 Adreneline And Richard 2:25
A2 The Tennis Player 3:38
A3 There Was Melancholy 3:58
A4 Latin Version 2:12
A5 Into Elizabeth's Eyes (To Mother Whilst Dying) 4:32
A6 Sounds 3:40
B1 Purple Boy Gang 2:20
B2 De Da De Dum 2:34
B3 When Each Descends 2:18
B4 We Crossed The Atlantic 3:07
B5 The Old Servant 6:32
B6 Laughter And Laughter 2:21

DOWNLOAD the opposite of adrenaline HERE!

Pip Proud – "A Bird In The Engine" (International Polydor Production – LPHM-109) 1969

When the land mass of Australia broke away from Pangaea a billion years ago, the isolation led directly to the evolution of the marsupial . Then in the sixties,the cultural isolation directly led to the evolution of Pip Proud. A self-described singer-songwriter, poet, novelist and dramatist....when in fact he was shite at all of these vocations.....it's another way of saying I'm a lazy fucker and I ain't gonna work.No one can prove that a poet isn't working on his next 'poem',even when it looks like lying down. Not that this lisping tone deaf myopic missing Shaggs member was employable in any way.The fool who signed him to Polydor could not have even met Pip,or heard him in action until it was too late. To think that he could have been Australia's answer to Donovan,was a miscalculation of decca-esque proportions!? Whoever it was must have been sacked.Its the opposite to the prat who rejected the Beatles for Decca......having said that I would have done the same if i'd heard Love Me Do....but certainly signed Pip Proud,looking from a twenty first century perspective therein.

Pip's output, is often compared with Syd Barratt's solo work,of which Philip denied all knowledge;but this stuff makes Syd sound like more like Wagner rather than the acid casualty we know he was.Worse news for Pip is that Syd Obviously had a talent for songwriting,something no-one could say about Pip. 

Pip's song's are constructed along the same lines as The Shaggs first album,as if he had been locked away from any music in a cupboard for 18 years,then let out to make his impression of what music should like to someone who has never heard any.It's no coincidence that he even looks like the mythical fourth Shagg.There are no verses or chorus's as such,with the droning guitar chord sequences strummed in a barely conscious stream of hazy unconsciousness kind of way. His pronounced lisp is not only charming,but adds that seed of a doubt whether this is all just another of those 21st century fake band Jokes,recorded by a comedian taking the piss out of Sixties Folkies, and record collecting saddo's.....it's hilarious either way....especially if it turns out that pip Proud was actually Real!?

Something he does actually share with Syd Barratt, is his wavering time keeping,exacerbated by his glaring tone deafness.

Of course there are those who hail this work as the product of undiscovered genius,and take it deadly seriously.....Maybe I'm the idiot who got it wrong? I sincerely doubt it, but whatever is the truth of the matter, this record is fucking hilarious.

Pip does actually sound uncannily like Candice-Marie from BBC drama classic "Nuts In May" by Mike Leigh (1976)

Check out Candice's protest song(click the embedded video) that plays over the end credits. If you haven't seen it,you have never lived...you can right this dreadful wrong by watching the whole thing by clicking HERE!

Tracklist:

A1 Marie
A2 Hey Sue
A3 A Fraying Space
A4 She Says To Me
A5 She Dwindles Her Fingers
A6 A Bird In The Engine
B1 Eagle-Wise
B2 French Girls
B3 Vida
B4 There Is No Rest
B5 Nancy
B6 Lover, Lover

DOWNLOAD a cuckoo flying over the engine HERE!