Some History...

Pete started his musical exploration on guitar and in writing with his good friend Steve Atkinson and then recorded his first demo track in 1969 on the Akai belonging to Steve. This started the Pig’n’aif collaborations and projects, initially with Steve and bassist Dave Hobson (who was a constant performer on the local scene). The first set of output was entitled “What’s In A Name!” and contained a mixed range of rock ballad, boogie and progressive material and was on very limited cassette format release.

Pete worked away in Scotland for a couple of years in progressive rock bands before returning to Sheffield to embark on the next of his collaborations with Dave and Steve. Pete and Dave took Pig’n’aif down to Oxford for a period of time, collaborating with a number of pro and semi-pro musos before returning it eventually to Sheffield. This was also a steady period of writing and generated output that would later surface under Pig’n’aif, Phoenix Rising and in Dave’s own band projects.

Over the years there have been a number of releases from Pig’n’aif either as a means of publishing recordings prior to use in bands or as a form of musical documentation by Pete and his collaborators. Pete also collaborated once more with Steve for a period of time, prior to forming Phoenix Rising.

Pete produced a solo album ‘The Jester... Thinks...’. He later revisited the masters for the album with Mick Shedd putting down vocals on most of the tracks. This naturally resulted in a different flavour to the album and necessitated the re-recording of some of the instruments and a general re-mix. Pete also took this opportunity to add a number of additional tracks to the album. “The album is now much more as I originally envisioned it,” says Pete. “ It is more polished and with the new material added, it is more cohesive. Mick’s vocals definitely added something to the overall balance of the material. I was much more happy with it and could move on to the next album at last.”

Pig’n’aif spawned a stage format project with a live jam band based on their ‘Pig'n'aif Blue’ and ‘Pig’n’aif Blue-ish’ albums with some other good classic blues-rock (with a twist) standards. Their recent release has taken a while to escape from the traps, but ‘Handover’ is now out in the wide world. Be warned... it could seriously damage your sensibilities. A number of tracks were taken from the album and included on compilation albums by Factory Fast Records of New York (see the Discography here). There are now two new albums to add to the list, the synth based Prog-Rock album ‘Electronicalis’ and the more conventional but much more grumpy ‘Musicalis Grumpiosa’

Meanwhile Pete, Jack, Chris, Mel, Mick and the rest of the guys continue to work on parallel projects and we can expect new studio albums of original material in the not too distant future. As Pete says ‘I’ve got to keep busy before the music muscle seizes up altogether’. Not sure where he keeps this vaunted muscle, as he is already a continuous sheet of rippling muscle from head to foot (as those of you who know him will testify). Yeah right...