WELCOME TO MY NERVOUS SYSTEM

My name is Pete Fij. Welcome to my world.



You might know me as  the lead singer of Adorable or Polak, maybe through my ongoing project with Terry Bickers, or perhaps my recent collaboration with Tiger Stripes. This isn't planned as a standard music artist website, although I'm sure that this will have more than it's fair share of musical aspects, but it's more of a meandering through my thoughts - a journey through my nervous system.

Not quite sure where it will go - it will probably be like a part-work magazine that comes out in instalments, and grows week-by-week into either a fascinating insight into a particular topic, or more often than not , an untidy pile of magazines in the corner of your room that you end up putting in a box and forgetting about for a few years, until one day you finally snap and take it to a car boot sale to sell. Of course it's only then that you realise that no-one else wants it either, so it remains unsold and ultimately the box ends it's days at the local rubbish tip - recycled so that they can make some more part-work magazines that no-one else really needs.

Hope this untidy pile gives you an insight into a little bit about me and some of my work. Don't be a stranger - pop on back as this will be an evolving, living thing. Enjoy your trip around my nervous system, though please be careful where you  probe, and if it all gets a bit too much, just head for the nearest orifice, and get the hell out.

The posts will be sporadic, but I aim to have something posted at least once a month.

MUSICAL MEMORY #4 - Polak

POLAK May 1996 - December 2003

Pete Fijalkowski - Guitar / Programming / Vocals, Krzys Fijalkowski -Guitar, Bob Brown - Bass / Guitar, Simon Dunford - Keyboards, Matt Sigley - Keyboards, Richard Brincklow - Keyboards, Chris Parsons - Drums
DISCOGRAPHY - 'Cha Cha Cha' (on 33 1/3 Single on Noisebox 7"), '2 Minutes 45' (Genereic CD single), 'Im Sick' (Generic CD single), 'Impossible' (Generic Cd single & 7") , '3x3' (Generic compilation album), ''Swansongs' (One Little Indian album) , 'Joyrider' (One Little Indian Cd single), 'Rubbernecking' (One Little Indian Cd single)'

After the split of Adorable, I was in a post-car crash haze, not quite sure what had happened. Still concussed from it all, I spent a year working on a pop project called Casino with my friend Sian -  a kind of Pet Shop Boy/Girl thing with me taking more of a back seat as the keyboard player (a bit like hte guy in Sparks, only without the Hitler moustache). We demo'd for a couple of majors, but I wasn't convinced we were on the right track, so just before we released our debut single I pulled out of the project. I craved the sound of guitars, and was taken with the idea of working with my brother. One day if I manage to convert the Casino cassette demos into MP3s I might post them up , and tell you all about it, but that's for another time.

The original idea was born out of a hung-over Boxing Day pub conversation in 1995 with Krzys, near the Fijalkowski ancestral home. Despite the fact that as kids we had recorded some songs together (entitled 'Changesoneflobberjowski' - a three song tape recorded on our dad's stereo comprising of a Beatle's cover, a Bowie cover & an original that I think was a note for note rip-off of 'Last Train to Clarksville' by the Monkees...plagarism started early in our childhood!) we had never done anything further of much note. Krzys had recorded a couple of 4-tracks with me in my early Candy Thieves days and played guitar for us at one gig when Wayne couldn't turn up, but the practicalities of teaming up together had never really been very realistic as we had always lived at least an 8 hour round trip for most of our adult lives.
The opportunity for turning the hazy pub conversation into something more concrete happened a few months later when I was invited to contribute a track a  US compilation album,. We recorded 'Not Listening' and Polak were born.

We recruited Simon who had previously fronted Krzys' old band The Bardots who kept him company on the long car journeys down from Norfolk, and Bob & Chris made up the Brighton contingent. After the previous high tensions in the tail-end days of Adorable, it was a welcome relief to be in a band with a group of people who enjoyed being in each other's company, and there was an exciting energy of being together. Releasing singles on our own label under the great guidance of our new manager Martine McDonagh we managed to get a little bit of press notice & a deal with One Little Indian.

Here's what I wrote on completing 'Swansongs' in early 1999:

"Sometimes we weren't even sure if we'd get to this point, but on a hunting & scavenging budget of Visa-card-debt & drive-by robberies, 'Swansongs' is now finally completed. recorded in studio downtime through the night at the Loophole, beginning when the pubs closed, and ending when the early morning cafes opened, wincing at the sight of six o'clock sun that signalled it was time for us to crawl home past the street cleaners, the milk men & the dazed. 

During the course of making of the abum we lost sleep (still catching up), guitars (sold to help pay for the recording), our van (stolen from outside the studio) and a keyboard player (farewell sweet Spike); but the pay-off was worth it for us. We're now One Little Indian'd up to the full, and with Mr Sigley joining our band of mariachis, we're now ready to take the next bus-ride down the line to see how this story will pan out. 

You only get to make your debut album once, and we decided to go about it as if it were also our last. of course, we hope that this is not the case - that Polak go on to become some lumbering dinosaur of a band - the kind that people say "they should have given up years ago". for us that would be bliss. but you never know; a failing satellite might be heading for our heads as we speak, we might be an identity parade away from being tripped up, helping the local police improve their drive-by-robbery clear-up rate, or our friends at Visa might finally ask for their card back." 

'Swansongs' came out to good reviews, unlike the follow-up 'Rubbernecking' which came out to no reviews at all, but it's the memories that you tend to carry with you, not press clippings - Hazy European nights, Texas (the state, not the band), a second album that put my fear of second albums to rest , a succession of keyboard players left strewn by the wayside in our wake, nights spent talking bollocks into the not so early hours with my sofa sleep-deprived brother, and friendships that extended beyond pub opening hours. Krzys decided to leave after Rubbernecking, and although we were offered a deal by One Little Indian for a third album, it wasn't enough for us to give up our day jobs, and there was a realisation that the remaining trio of Bob, Chris & myself wouldn't be able to tour to support any album we produced as we were all too poor, and I wasn't prepared to put my all into working on something that I couldn't see through.

 We didn't exactly trouble the hit parade (#112 for 'Impossible'), but if I had to put a listening post on my grave, after I've left this world for the great recording studio in the sky, of the four band studio albums I've recorded to date I think I'd chose 'Rubbernecking'. 

MUSICAL MEMORY #1: Bubblegum Flesh

BUBLEGUM FLESH / THE FUZZYFELTS March 1988 - April 1989 

Wil Superstar - Guitar / Vocals, Pete Fijalkowski - Bass, Matt Crane - Drums, Louise - Tambourine & Smiles

It was 1988. Those in the know were getting ready for a flared-trousered summer of acid-dropping raves, but me and my friend Matt just wanted to be in a band...any band...Wil's band.

The fact that neither Matt or I could play our instruments didn't really bother us and we duly lied to our musical guru-to-be telling him that we're a rhythm section when in fact neither of us have ever picked up a bass or drumstick between us in our lives, but Wil didn't examine our musical CVs too closely -  he  just seemed glad that he had found some willing accomplices.

Every Wednesday afternoon Matt and I would hitch the 10 miles from Coventry to Leamington Spa to rehearse our set in Wil's damp attic bedroom. Matt favoured the Bobby Gillespie school of drumming - standing up hitting just a snare and a floor tom, (though even this most basic of kit set-ups was beyond our meagre resources & so two cardboard boxes were used), and he used to rehearse with an almost Charlie Watts-style nonchalence, reading the NME as he played, sometimes missing a beat so he could turn the page. He had many things going for him, a great sense of humour, a floppy fringe & a large collection of Burlington socks to name but three, but a sense of timing was not one of them. I sweated my way through the tricky 3 note bass-lines, thankful of the fact that all of Wils songs used the same trio of chords, thus saving me the stress of having to learn any further complicated finger movements, whilst our leader crooned in a style reminiscent of a very Welsh and very angry Morrissey shouting in your face. "Slit your wrists in a cold bath, go on go on and make me laugh". His girlfriend Louise was roped in on tamborine duties, and she used to lie in bed watching daytime TV as we played around her. Occassionally when we played live, she could be cajouled into an upright position.

I played my first ever gig in June 1988 at Warwick University, and to quote Wil's great hero "I can laugh about it now, but at the time it was terrible". Seeing as our set was only 15 minutes long (4 songs, one of which we played twice because we thought it so good!),it didn't seem a good sign when my flatmates started heckling 2 songs in. Luckily I sported quite a long fringe at the time which I was able to hide behind. The live tape of that gig is the only recording that was ever made of the band, and it's kind of beautiful in it's absolute crapness, it's so naive it's almost pre-music. Matt slows down, speeds up when he is horsewhipped over the PA by Wil, goes a canter for 3 and a half bars, then slows down to a practical standstill. The bass makes random lumbering noises whilst Wil Superstar (as was his stage moniker) trying to manfully make up for his complete lack of a rhythm section, decides to opt out of singing the words and shouts them instead. 

After this the gigs were easier. We knew we were crap (as opposed to before the first gig were we kind of hoped we were alright), and we started revelling in our crapness. People started liking us, and our gigs became something of an event, our notoriety helped by Wil getting hawled up in front of an over-zealous Student Committee to answer accusations of sexism because he put Louise's role in the band as "Tamborine and Smiles" on a poster. Other friends in slightly-less crap bands started wanting to do guest slots on stage. I was against it, preferring the purity of the classic four-piece, but there was an advantage of safety in numbers, that made it easier to glare at the barrackers.

Somewhere along the line Wil, changed the name of the band to The Fuzzyfelts and a controversial fourth chord was added to the repetoire, but after a dozen or so gigs, I had had enough, and hung up the bass for good. Matt threw away his drum sticks for a life of computer boffiny, whilst Wil went off to form (and subsequently get kicked out of) The Beautiful Happiness who post-Wil released a Sonic Boom produced single on Cheree. However, as Wil walks off into the sunset, I think that maybe, this might not be the last we hear from him in this self-indulgent tale.

PETE & TERRY GIVE A SH*T

After years of waiting, Pete Fij & Terry Bickers have finally broken cover and have released the first fruits of their labours in the studio, in the shape of a free download of the radio un-friendly track "I Don't Give A Shit About You".

"Once you look beyond the cussing, it's a tender lost-love song" says Pete "I used to always steer away from swearing in songs in my younger days, but in this song it feels justified and essential. There's a tension I like with the actual words & Terry's lovely harmonies - we're like a foul-mouthed Simon & Garfunkel".

" It was my least favorite song out of all the candidates for our album in rehearsals" confesses Mr Bickers "but during the recording process it evolved way beyond my expectations. After the initial backing was recorded a lot of extra ideas came along and it was a really enjoyable process adding these and developing the song into what it is now. This experience reminded me that if we keep open to things, give them our best what we encounter may surprise us! The song is in part a homage to the Velvet Underground with a bit of Dr John's 'Gris Gris' thrown in and for me that's part of it's appeal."

The track is the first official release from the duos forthcoming album, which is slated for a release in Spring 2013. It can be downloaded here at Pete & Terry's Soundcloud page, although those who are swear-averse might want to give this one a miss due to the explicit nature of the lyrics as suggested by the title - but as you're already reading this, we've probably already offended you - sorry.

Don't forget you can keep abreast of all of Pete & Terry's activities by liking their facebook page.

Photography by Tiya Ivy.