Pip died. David has more information on his blog. Mia says he’s in a better place hanging with Bach and Mozart. Perhaps he’s having a beer with Barry Hannah as we speak.
Here’s a review I wrote a few years back about Pip's first gig in forty years. Thanks to Ariel Pink for recognizing a true outsider and making it happen. If this performance was any indication, Pip's poetic fires raged undiminished until the end. You can’t ask more from a life than that.
Ariel Pink, Pip Proud, East Brunswick Hotel, Melbourne
Could Pip slip? Don’t know, but our nerves sure shake. Last time Pip played was pre-Woodstock, for goodness sake. Since then, the far-out Oz folksinger’s been speaking to angels and literally blinded by love - a 37-year hiatus. Our faith is restored the moment he starts singing about ‘dueling dildos’ – with suction sounds added for shits and giggles.
Fronting an unfathomable rhythm — sitar moans, eerie keyboard drones and the like — Pip and the guitar girl duet: “Will you tell me about Los Angeleeeze? Where they stripteeeze all day and all night, will you tell me?”
“You don’t want to know!” she cautions, while drummer David Nichols hypnotises us into believing he’s Mo Tucker.
“Tell me, you bitch,” Pip pleads and so on. It’s really something else.
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The rest of the review went like this:
Pink’s a mystery boy wrapped in a labyrinth of sugar-shit chic. Can he bake an accomplished sponge cake blended with Pop goodies as well as he does in bed when the 8-track’s running?
We’re about to see.
He arrives dressed in a flashy top he presumably pinched from a flamboyant ice-skater, now deceased. He gains bonus points for introducing himself as Davey Jones, then loses points for this smarmy comment: “Ever heard of California?”
His smallness grows thanks to a curly falsetto and he evokes Jonathan Richman sublimely. He cuddles the microphone and flounces.
The band starts cold and generates heat slowly like a 70s heating unit. By the time we get to ‘Jules Lost his Jewels’ I am so completely enraptured with movement I look down to notice the bottle of beer I am holding has begun to ejaculate a considerable geyser of foam.
Love you Mia!
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