(Original cassette insert.)
It's the first post of the month, which means it's time for another Book from His Holiness Pope Goat VII.
Book of the Headless Goat followed right on the heals of The First Book. It was recorded with the same setup we had in my mom's living room while she was away in NY.
As a joke, we submitted to a local LA film festival in the hopes that we'd get to play live in front of a bunch of industry fuckheads. The best part was going to some office on Hollywood Blvd. to meet the music coordinator of the festival. I made him listen to all of "Acid" and a little bit of "Sleep" while he tried to stifle his laughter. I kept a straight face and acted like we were the best band on the planet. Some lady in an adjacent cubicle complained. Needless to say, we didn't get the gig.
Headless Goat picks up where The First Book left off and bridges well with the unforgiving power-violence of Book of Extreme Measures (which will be posted next month). Again, the music was improvised first and the vocals were improvised later.
Sir Ackronomicon talks about the psalms (with comments by Sir Billy the Phreek):
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From the Dungeon of Sir Ackronomicon
A Treatise on the grouping of psalms called
Book of the Headless Goat
as recorded by
The Holy Order of the Knights of Pope Goat VII
01. Acid - After we recorded this psalm, Sir Billy The Phreek named it because he said it reminded him of his LSD trips. Although I had yet to take any heavy hallucinogens (wait for
Book of Extreme Measures for evidence), I think my brainwaves & sound were very in sync with “it” on this one. Sir Billy the Phreek began the song with this HUGE noise sound using his pedals and I forget what else. I love how the song “mellows out” with myself on harmonica, then Sir Billy the Phreek's noise dies out and I get super drippy with my slide bass and wah pedal. Sir Billy the Phreek hit the couch with his mic or something and I got into it by being his victim. Holy Goat! we banished some demons somehow with this one. “Are you feeling lost? It’s OK. You’ll never find your way out anyway.”
(Negativland and Throbbing Gristle were on my mind while we did this. My repetitive vocals were an attempt at recreating voice samples. Then it turns into S&M at the end. I was hitting the couch with a stick - possibly one of the "Lame Far and Limp Bizkit Drumsticks!" My favorite line is "I juggle clowns for a living!" -Sir BtP)
02. Sleep - After recording Acid, Sir Billy the Phreek really wanted to sleep. I said I wanted to do one more, although I was just as drunk and exhausted. It came out kinda funky.
(Perhaps my being tired allowed me to channel the Pope Goat better. -Sir BtP)
03. Monk E - This may have been when we were falling asleep. We did some mumble-chanting. It features more of my bass, with distortion and wah mic’d though a shitty burnt out little amp - I loved the sound! Phreek’s Rhodes had such a strong power though the distortion on his Fender amp. If the Pope Goat built a gothic church as the only place of peace for all of the tortured souls in the middle of Hell, we would be there playing "Monk E" for them.
(Meant to be played at a funeral along with "Memento Mori" from The First Book of Pope Goat VII. -Sir BtP)
04. Doughtnuts - For the love of doughnuts, and certainly not cops.
(I think we were eating doughnuts while we recorded this. -Sir Btp)
05. Fucking Piece of Shit Cat - Sir Billy the Phreek had this cat that we kept in the dungeon. Sometimes she would escape from her chained existence and sneak into our studio. She would also stick her paw under my bedroom and wake me up in the morning. We had to buy cat food AND feed her. She could never open the fucking can of food, hence the name, "Fucking Piece of Shit Cat." She snuck into our studio during this session and we chased her through the house, screaming while recording. She didn’t like it one bit. We would play this psalm for her really fucking loud whenever she escaped. She was a fucking piece of shit cat!
(Yeah, that cat WAS a fucking piece of shit; nothing like Lady Smokey, my FPOS cat who kicks ass! -Sir BtP)
06. Pope Goat VII - Ah, a tribute from the Goat to himself, through us. Phreek could really play like a demon in the Vatican. I grabbed the mic and stood on that soapbox to let the world know what the Goat was all about. The Goat reverted to his primitive state through Sir Billy the Phreek, and said, "Baaaaah!" Amen!
(Amen, Brother Ackronomicon! -Sir BtP)
07. Vikings and Pirates and Bears, Oh My! - I think I came up with this title at work and brought it home to Sir Billy the Phreek. Don’t know where it came from but Sir Billy the Phreek and I come from different backgrounds. You see, before we were The Knights of the Holy Order of Pope Goat VII, I was a pirate and he was a viking. The drum machine really sounds like a machine gun. This psalm is long and obnoxious, different from our other psalms, which can be short and obnoxious. I love it like it was my own psalm.
(The psalm title came from His Holiness himself, as do all our other psalm titles. It tells the story of how His Holiness Pope Goat VII brought us from two different eras of history into his time in the Middles Ages, then into the future. -Sir BtP)
08. Fish - On top of having the aforementioned "Fucking Piece of Shit Cat," we had a whole mess of fucking piece of shit fish. We went into the minds of the fish, which wasn’t that difficult because fish are really dumb. You see, they were religious fish who really didn’t know about Darwin. Oh, the nerve! And they, like the aforementioned "Fucking Piece of Shit Cat," had to be fed. They probably ate their own shit - I can’t remember. Well, we screamed at them while recording, as usual, because they were fucking piece of shit fish. At least they couldn’t escape. “The Pope Goat commands that everybody eat meat on Friday. Everyone must eat meat every single Friday, including Christmas Friday and people should eat fish every other Sunday of every other January of odd even years.”
(The Pope Goat had some serious words with those fish. "Flopping fish/flying fish!" -Sir BtP)
09. Goat 3:16 - Keeping with His philosophy of straddling extreme Good and extreme Evil, The Pope Goat channeled this amazing psalm through us. One of us reads from the Bible, and the other from the Necronomicon. Who’s reading which?
(I read the erotic parts of The Song of Solomon. "Your hair is like a flock of goats streaming down the mountains of Galaad...Your breasts are like twin fawns, the young of a gazelle that browse among the lilies." Oh yeah, that's romantic. -Sir Btp)
10. Decapitation - Oh the glory of decapitation! Our favorite method of murder, and also torture, when it’s done meticulously and slow. I like the huge evil note we hit towards the end of the psalm. It’s the audio equivalent of a giant, double-blade ax swinging down upon an unarmed peasant, slicing through his jugular and spine. Pure bliss.
(Off with their fucking piece of shit heads! -Sir BtP)
Pope Goat VII
Book of the Headless Goat CS/CDR
(MPAE/Hummer Productions)
1999
note: the .zip file includes booklet and tray-card inserts so you can make your own PG7 CD!
Visit Pope Goat VII on MySpace!
I cannot express how happy I am to be posting this on MPAE.
I first heard of Sleestak from Mike Desert of The Jack Saints. He told me about his friend's band that was just out-of-control noise and if I liked Slug, I should check them out. As soon as the CD came out, I hunted it down, bought it and listened to it with a group of friends while we all wondered what the hell to make of it. Seemed like I was the only one who liked it, so I was glad I bought it.
The first time I saw them was at a coffee house in San Pedro (I've forgotten the name) where there was an annual noise rock festival. I met Eddie of Leopold there for the first time, too. Sleestak's set was strange. They seemed really unhappy, probably because of the rain outside, but I enjoyed the set, strange as it was.
I came to realize that all Sleestak sets were unique, like jazz sets. Then, when I joined Leopold, Sleestak became family, as they shared a practice space, so I got to know them a bit. At one point, I asked Anthony, the bass player, how they wrote their songs. "We jam them out," he said.
I really think that they never got their just due in that Downtown LA noise scene when they were around. Quite frankly, people never knew what to make of them. It was sludge-y power violence, with a brutal artistic mindset that just seemed to be a contradiction. I think that's why I liked them so much.
As horrifying and uncompromising as this CD is, it brings back good memories, and it remains a favorite of my collection. By the way, Sleestak were a HUGE influence on Pope Goat VII.
Sleestak has now morphed into the mighty Geronimo.
The images and music were uploaded with Anthony Francoso's full consent. Thank you, Anthony!
Sleestak
