(The Blue Room floor circa 1999/2000 - Photo by Sir Ackronomicon)
This is the Sixth Book of Pope Goat VII. Where's Number 5? We never mixed it down.
This was the first book we recorded after we moved out of my mom's house and into our own apartment. We immediately transformed our hallway, which was actually pretty spacious for a hallway, into a permanent recording studio, the Blue Room, for us to use at our leisure. This was really the most thriving creative period His Holiness the Pope Goat gave us, and we recorded something like 45 of our 50 Books here.
All tracks were now one take, no overdubs, completely improvised either off a riff one of us started, or by just hitting record and seeing what happened. This is really one of our finest moments, as the excitement and energy of our new living situation and my new-found freedom really shines through.
About the psalms:
(note: psalms that are linked can be downloaded as samples)
01. All Ye Who Enter Here - Our first recording in our new apartment and in the Blue Room conjuring the powers of His Holiness, the Pope Goat.
02. Tropical Frog - We had some shitty cereal with stale marshmallows in it, like Lucky Charms or something, and it was advertising the new "tropical frog" marshmallow, so in true Pope Goat fashion, we did a song about it.
03. Tropical Toad - We didn't feel done with the "Tropical Frog" thing when the tape ran out, so we recorded a "sequel," as directed by the Pope Goat.
04. Do the Pope Goat - Pope Goat disco. Pretty self-explanatory.
05. Shit - Everybody does it.
06. Christian Disco - The only channel we got on our TV (since we refused to pay for cable) was TBN, the Born Again Christian channel, which became a huge inspiration to our music. I believe this is the first TBN reference in the Pope Goat cannon.
07. White Trash Rap - Here, we were joined by Sir Ackronomicon's brother, Sir P of Pimping Hos, on vocals, and Sir Minister Barry the Conquistador on keyboards. Sir Ackronomicon is on bass and I'm playing trumpet and screaming in the background.
08. You Silly Bitch - Yup.
09. Black Sunday - We were hungover on a Sunday morning, and we said, "Black Sunday" - a reference to the great Mario Bava movie - in our Pope Goat voices and realized were were being summoned by His Holiness Pope Goat VII to record, which we did.
10. Leaky Ceiling - One morning it rained and I woke up with a deluge of water dripping through my ceiling all over my room, like it was raining inside.
11. Metal Plate - Basically, when we were moving into our apartment, Sir Ackronomicon had leaned a metal plate from something his dad had welded against the railing outside our door, and when we were moving his mattress in, we knocked the plate, which slid under the railing and sailed down into the courtyard of the apartment complex. We heard somebody yell, "What the fuck was that?" We didn't think anything of it until he kept yelling. We looked at each other and knew something was wrong. We ran downstairs and saw some guy on his knees holding his head. Sir Ackronomicon pulled the guy's baseball cap off his head and blood poured down his face. I ran back upstairs and called 911. Luckily, the guy didn't sue, but Sir Ackronomicon was stuck paying the guy's medical bills for a while.
12. Toilet - It was one of those typical shitty cheap apartment toilets that ran for no reason or got stuck after you flushed and you had to jiggle the handle.
Pope Goat VIIBook of New Surroundings CDR
(MPAE/Hummer Productions)
1999
note: the .zip file includes booklet and tray-card inserts so you can make your own PG7 CD!
If you've been reading this blog from the beginning and/or you know me personally, then you know how highly I think of Libyan Hit Squad. Not only are they an incredible band, but they're great people as well. I'm proud to have shared the stage with them on the too few occasions that it happened.
They're a great group of guys with great songs and they're one of the five bands around today that I actually give a shit about (others include Six Finger Satellite, The Jack Saints and The Secret Machines). I really can't wait to hear where they go after this cuz I know it will be good.The images and music were uploaded with Craig Englund's full consent. Thank you, Craig! Extra special thanks for the LP art scans and MP3s!
Libyan Hit Squad
