can PJ proby possibly be as good as Nik Cohn makes him out to be?

man, the dude made a habit of splitting trou...how could he not be great?!?
(that's all I know about him, really)

i know i know!

has anybody ever heard him sing?

You mean you haven't heard his versh of 'Love Will Tear Us Apart'? (he was kind've taken up by Savoy bks in the 80s/90s, after they re-published Cohn's 'Johnny Angelo' rock nov, and they got a strictly down-on-his-uppers PJ to record various 'novelty' tunes for them, the Joy Div song most notoriously. When times were hard, PJ wld also sell his 'exclusive' tale of woe to the tabloids which always consisted of 'Famous Sixties Pop Star PJ Proby is now so broke he has to eat cat food and sign on at the dole office')

His sixties rec are florid rub, frankly, the real fag end of the Brit-rocker boom.

interesting, that nik cohn can sure blow the proverbial smoke

I remember reading in Q a few years ago that he'd done a spoken-word recording of a banned book called "Lord Horror", written by a British nazi sympathiser. I mean, how low could the man possibly sink? Even if he only did it for the money that's surely morally inexcusable(and probably scuppered what was left of his career to boot).

There are a few great PJ Proby moments. He really was kind of a parody of the orig. ballad-singer slop, as Cohn asserts.

The thing you have to remember is that Proby was the kind of guy Cohn wanted to write about--excessive. Just like Dean Martin is the kind of case study that Nick Tosches loves.

The version of Cohn's book that came out a few yrs. ago, entitled "Awopbopaloobop," is an inferior version of the original book, entitled "Rock from the Beginning," Stein and Day, 1969. The prose was watered down. Grab the orig. version if you can. Cohn certainly has his faults but being boring certainly isn't one of them. "Rock from the Beginning" remains the single best book on rock music until 1968, no contest.

"Niki Hoeky" is great MOR swamp boogie nonsense. "Get hip to the consultation of the boolawee!" I think you'd love that song, at least, Fritz.

I like Niki Hoeky, never heard proby do it though

i've actually just got excerpts of "awopbopaloobop" in a collection of cohn stuff called "ball the wall." I think the orig. "rock from the beginning" is pretty hard to find. the later stuff in "ball the wall" is good too, esp. "another saturday night".

Cohn's "Heart of the World" about NYC's Broadway is very nice indeed. I bet Powell's in Portland, Ore. has a copy of the orig. "Rock from Beginning."

Who else does "Niki Hoeky"? I've only heard the Proby version and the Bobbie Gentry version. The Proby version's more out of control.

Probably not. He is better than PJ Harvey though... (now there's a taking sides idea...)

I've got the Bobbie Gentry verion & I think aretha franklin does it too on the Lady Soul record maybe.

The 'Lord Horror' bks, published by Savoy again, are full of teenage gotho-sadism and Nazi-flirtation outrage, but the writer (David Britton) always claimed to have an anti-fascist agenda.

i really like three week hero - haven't heard much else

I used to know the Savoy people some years back. They're nice people, primarily interested in pushing the boundries of free speech in the UK and causing outrage/trouble at the same time...

Britton was jailed about 10 years ago for the publication of an 'obscene comic book' (the person ever in the UK to be jail for this crime!)...

But as for Proby, I love the guy. Phenomenon is a great LP, as is the Three Week Hero LP ( which is basically a Led Zeppelin album with proby on vocals)

The guy is a complete maniac, but is one of rock real mavericks...