A SIMPLE TWIST OF FATE

Before i ever had a band,i had been playing guitar for many,many years.By the time i
was 17 i'd been playing guitar for 6 years.I played alot when i was younger.No one ever had
to tell me to practice.I would just start playing guitar and before i knew it hours had past.
For 6 years i would practice,but i didn't think of it as practicing for at least several hours
a day and some times longer.I didn't just play the guitar-i would get so into the music
that i literally forgot about everything else.I also was writing songs at this time.In fact
from the very begining of my guitar playing i was allready making up original songs.
For nearly all of my early guitar playing day's and certainly for all the original songs
i made up-I played in a finger picking style with a thumb-pick.Because of all those years
of finger picking i am still pretty good at it today.I only learned to play with flat pick
many years after these early day's when i first realy learned to play guitar.I also practiced
scales endlessly.I got really good at it and i was fast.One reason i'm telling you all this is
because many of the musicians that formed Punk rock bands only had very rudimentry
skills as musicians.This was not the case however with me.By the time the first incarnations
of what would eventually become "Pete Holly and the Look's" started forming i had all-
ready been playing around Boise as solo acoustic act for several years.
There were many reasons i didn't stay a strictly solo act and started forming
bands.One of the main reasons was it was around this time that the singer-songwriter
movement lost it's popularity.Record labels were no longer signing acoustic solo acts.
Believe it or not-one of the last successful singer-songwriters to be signed to a major
label was John Couger Mellencamp known then as "Johnny Cougar".Two of the other
last one's were Willie Nile and Steve Forbet.Both came out of the starting gate strong
with Steve Forbert even scoring a big hit with "Romeo's Tune".But Forbert failed
to ever score another hit and as talented as Willie Nile was-he didn't breakthrough
to the mainstream. and both of them eventually faded into obscurity.I loved Steve
Forberts first album "Alive on Arrival".I used to listin to it alot even after we formed
"The Look's" but the writing on the wall was easy to see.The Heyday of singer-songeriters
was over-history.So as much as i had wanted to be a singer-songwriter and didn't
really want to start a band-because the singer-songwriter movement had come to an end-
I ended up starting "The Look's".
That's one of the reason's why "The Look's" had a sound that was hard to pin down.
The band was really just a vehicle for "souped-up" versions of the songs i'd written on
acoustic guitar.All of them.For the most part-I have never written even one song on
an electric guitar;the instrumental "Pete's Naima" is the lone exception.
And that's the way it's allway's been for me.Behind all the labels people have put
on me and on "Pete Holly and the Look's".The catagory that the greatist majority of
my songs and the song's we played in "The Look's" really belongs in is singer-songwriter.


written by Pete Holly-2010-copyright-all rights reserved

DECISION-MAKING IS THE GREAT ISSUE

Deal me in,man.Damn it,deal me in.







from Malcom Boyd's "Book of Day's"

Musical Secrets

by Pete Holly

#1."Battle of the Garges"-original "12" inch vinyl release in 1981.
If you look really hard you can see etched into the vinyl after the
last song-"Sky Saxon Live's".Sky Saxon was the lead Singer and
songwriter of the legendary Garage Band "The Seed's".The
Seeds best known song,"Pushin' to Hard" is one of several classic garage band songs that appear as cover versions on the album.
{source-Greg Shaw-the man who put Bomp on the map}

#2."Paperback Writer"-The Beatles-If you listen carefully to
the background vocals by John and George they aren't singing
about a "Paperback Writer".Instead they intone the french
nursery rhyme "phar-ah-jauqe-ah".Some how it work's !

#3."Day Tripper"-The Beatle's-More Beatles mischief as the line
that was originally written as "She's a Big Teaser" become's
"She's a Prick Teaser".Boy's will be Boy's.

#4.The song that won Johnny Rotten the lead-singer spot in the
Sex Pistols was a spontanous and spitited version of Alice Cooper's
"I'm Eighteen".

#5.The Rolling Stones and The Beatles got along famously.All of the
Good Boy/Bad Boy rivalry was complete fiction made up by The
Stones Manager-Andrew Long Oldham.

But wait a minute-Andrew Long Oldham also was the most vocal
oponent of the English Music Trade Papers trashing of The Beach Boy's
Landmark album "Pet Sounds".He went so far as to take out a very
expensive full page ad in "The London Time's"-proclaiming "Pet Sounds"
as the Greatist record of all time and that all the critics were idiots
who didn't know a true work of genuis when they heard it.Paul McCart-
ney also expressed his fondness and amazment at the extremly
creative use of sound on the Record.

History Never Repeats

by Pete Holly

Without actually coming out and saying it-writers who are not proffesional
historians,archeologists,geologists,astronomers or astro-physisists make state-
ments,mostly on television,but also in books,and of coarse on the internet that
try to convince a person of average intelligence that,in essence,Homo Sapien
Sapiens{the human species}don't and never have had the abilility to come up
idea's,using only the power of thier human brains,complex and powerful
enough to 1.Build the Great Pyramid{s} 2.Move incredibly large and heavy
Stones {stonehenge,Numerous sites in south america,the easter island statues etc.}
3.Have a great understanding of the Star's and thier movements and the ability
to use that information to create exremely accurate calenders and and other
extremly accurate time accounting systems.Yet,if you keep up with all the
latest archeological and scientific discoveries not only have scientists been
able to figure at least one way that out ancient ancestor's could have achieved
all these great accomplishments but in many case's they have figured out two,
or three differant way's which the ancients could have divised techniques,
systems and even built{thou crude by today's standards}machines that could
perform any task that would have needed to create all of the physical wonders
of the ancient world that either we have knowledge of or that still exist today. Since electric light wasn't made available to the mass public until the 20th
century it is not surprising at all that are ancient ancestors had such a vast
and amazing understanding of the star's movements since at night the star's
in ancient day's would have appeared to our ancestors as an amazing world
of a signifacnce.Of coarse it makes perfect sense that they studied it relentlessly
until they had it figured out right down to literally a fraction of a second.
Part of the reason we misunderstand the amount of intelligence
ancient civilizations possessed is because the secrets to unlocking it were destroyed.
The Library at Alexandria in Egypt being burned to the ground was without
a doubt the single largest loss of ancient knowledge that has ever occured.
The Burning of the Aztecs Codex by the Spanish Conquistadors coming in at
a close second.
But Some wiser minds saw these disasters coming and were able to remove
or otherwise hide and so preserve some of the documents of our ancient ancestor's
Amazing technical knowledge,Art,Understanding of the cosmos,the human mind,
advanced mathmatics and medicine{understanding of the Human Body}.
It is because of the forsight of a few individuals that we know just how advanced
in intelligence and technology our ancestors were.Armed with this incredible
amount of knowledge that we now know,even the earliest civilizations possessed.
It is not difficult to understand how The Wonders of the Ancient World were
designed and created by brains identical to our own.


written by Pete Holly-2010-copyright-all rights reserved

Poetry

by Pete Holly

When Summer Comes-
Folk's are Friendly,
They let thier guard down-
even on thier enemy

If summer can do such
Magical Tricks,
it no wonder lovers,
get in a fix,

with Pregnant expectations,
the Blushing Bride to be-
anounces the occasion,
as Busy as a Bee-

the farmer irrigates his fields,
The Beehive State in Mind-
The Deacon knows the situation-
he knows it's some don't send Valentines,

So with elegy to you and those-
Whose Valentines be missing-
god's a touch-need not say much-
Let our nature do the the speaking-

That's enough for now-
with summer in full bloom,
catch the dreams while warmer seems-
to grant gods wish's in full moon's-

written by pete holly-2010-copyright-all rights reserved

The Music Business is The Music Business

by Pete Holly

If you think now is the only time there has been alot bad music in the market
place try this.Find some old copies of Music Trade Magazines from any old time period
and you'll see that the ratio of bad music to good or great music is about the same.
The ratio-or "Crap Factor" as some refer to it as,is allway's about the same.The
amount of corruption in the music business stay's pretty steady too.The bottom
line is-there are very few checks and balance's in the music business.The line in
"There's no Business Like Show Business" about "anything the public will allow" didn't spring out of the imagination of the lyric writer-it sprang out of "The reality
of the Nature of Show Business".The nature of show business is to make,write,perform
or otherwise produce whatever you can get the public to buy.That was true in 1925,
and it's still true today;85 years later.George and Ira Gershwin wrote and produced
100's of Musicals for Broadway in the 1920's amd 30's.How many do you think were
Hit's.Only a fraction.Most of thier shows bombed-but occasionally one caught the
public's fancy and that's when the Money Rolled in for the Gershwin's."Oh Kay" was
one of "The Gershwins" biggest Bomb's.It played for maybe a week before being
tossed into the trash heap of failed Broadway Show's-which is quite large as one might
imagine.Yet,there is one song from "Oh Kay" that had a longer life.If you saw the film
"Mr. Hollands Opus" you may have heard it.It's a rather picturesqe and fanciful number
known as "Someone to Watch Over Me".So the musical wasn't a complete failure.One
song from it lives on in George and Ira Gershwins song catolog and it's a real Doosie.
So one learns that in show business-as in life itself-each failure-is also a pathway to
success in the future.And that's today's show business lesson of day.Until next time-

Best Regards,

Pete Holly,

President,
Look's Music International Records


all rights reserved-written by pete holy-2010-copyright