II

It was a dream come true when I discovered that P.J. Proby was to tour the east coast of Australia in August, 2004.

To my knowledge he had not performed here since approximately 1990, and I had been unable to attend that performance.

I had been fortunate enough to have seen him perform on stage in Australia on five previous occasions, however, the most recent had been 30 years ago. But I had never forgotten the brilliance of his earlier performances in The Big Show's at the old Sydney Stadium in the Sixties, when his controversial stage performances caused hysteria in the audience, front page news in the Sydney press, and outrage and condemnation from the clergy.

Undoubtedly the greatest rock performer I've seen. That's a big call, but it's very true. He's simply the best.

Admittedly I've seen other artists who have sold more records, or were supposedly "bigger" stars, but they have all fallen well short of the mark when compared with the incomparable talent of P.J. Proby.

I managed to get in touch with the promoter and P.J.'s manager and obtained an  itinerary of the tour. Unfortunately we had to forego attending concerts at Cairns and Townsville as they were impractical for us to get to, just a bit too far away, and would incur too much expense and travelling time.

So we arranged to take enough holidays to enable us to attend five shows, being two on the Gold Coast, two in Sydney and the final show in Melbourne. Fellow Proby fans, Lee and Leanne Thomas from Ipswich in Queensland decided to do the same, and my wife's cousin Gaye from Rosebud in Victoria also decided to join us for the Sydney and Melbourne shows. Curiosity got the better of Bonnie Griffiths from Coburg in Victoria, who runs the late Laurie Allen tribute website, (refer Links page), and she decided to come to the Melbourne performance too. Bonnie had heard so much about P.J. from Laurie, who was half of Australian singing duo Bobby & Laurie. They had huge success on the Australian charts and were a very popular support act on the P.J. Proby Australian tours in the Sixties. 

We managed to arrange for the best seats at every venue, having checked in advance when bookings were to open and got in first. Even for the Crown Casino show in Melbourne, for which the tickets went on sale at the same time as tickets for The Eagles Australian Tour. This coincidence prevented booking our tickets by computer as the ticket site became overloaded, so I hastily travelled into Gosford and joined the queue at the local Ticketek office. Fortunately, we again managed to get the best spot being Table 5, front row, centre stage.

 At the same time in Melbourne, long time Proby fan John Sharp also purchased tickets at Table 5 for himself and his wife Anita and we later became aware of this coincidence through emails to Joep Kilkens, (U.P), who runs The Netherlands Proby website.

So a table full of devoted P.J. Proby fans from various places in three states were destined to all meet up at the final concert in Melbourne.

Continue to Twin Towns Concerts