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!