Mistakenly and overenthusiastically heralded by the '60s Australian press as the Aussie response to
Bob Dylan,
Pip Proud was in fact much more akin, musically and otherwise, to such fractured poets as
Syd Barrett, Alexander Spence, and
Roky Erickson. His music can also be seen as a precursor to the lo-fi indie folk that began flourishing in the early '90s. Born in 1947 to a middle-class family in Hindmarsh, South Australia,
Pip Proud abandoned an electrician's apprenticeship as a teenager and moved to Sydney to live with his older brother, Geoffrey, an up-and-coming painter. Self-described as "spastic," Proud had problems coordinating his hand movements, and as a therapeutic exercise he taught himself guitar. Soon after arriving in Sydney, he began composing his own songs and quickly won the patronage of Michael Hobbs, a Sydney stockbroker and friend of the elder Proud. With this financial support, Proud began recording his songs and compiled an album called De Da De Dum, which was privately pressed and distributed in 1967. Although only about 50 copies were issued, the album found its way to the right hands and soon Proud was performing on local television variety shows, and by 1968 he had a contract with Polydor. Largely a re-recording of De Da De Dum, Polydor issued Adreneline and Richard in late 1968. The album featured Proud's elongated, semi-spoken, mantra-like lyrics accompanied only by his oddly timed guitar strum, erratic and primitive but unmistakable, and unlike anything released in Australia at the time. And indeed, the public didn't quite know what to make of Proud. At any rate, Adreneline and Richard sold well enough for Proud to record a second album for Polydor. Proud recruited a rhythm section for the recording of what would eventually become A Bird in the Engine, but the musicians couldn't adapt to Proud's idiosyncratic playing and so the album became, again, a mostly solo effort. By its release in 1969, Proud's popularity/notoriety had waned in his native country, so he moved to London with hopes of finding more sympathetic ears. Initially, Apple showed some interest in his music, as did John Peel and his Dandelion label, but nothing materialized, and soon Proud was out of contacts and penniless. Upon his return to Sydney in 1970, he found himself virtually forgotten by the press, and a death in the family left him unwilling to start all over again, so he began a series of odd jobs that lasted until the early '90s. By the mid-'90s, with the growing popularity of lo-fi, there began a renewed interest in Proud's music. Championed most prominently by New Zealand singer/guitarist Alastair Galbraith, Proud's two Polydor albums were complied onto one CD (minus two songs deleted at Proud's request) and released as Eagle-wise on Australia's Half a Cow records.
One of These Days was released on Emperor Jones in 1998, compiling alternate takes of songs from the '60s along with songs written and recorded in the '90s. Oncer, the first album of completely new songs from Proud in over 30 years, was released on Emperor Jones in 2000, and a second disc of new songs, A Yellow Flower, followed in 2001. ~ Jason Nickey