Search Party / St. Pius X Seminary Choir

Search Party / St. Pius X Seminary Choir

The News Is You: The Sacred & Secular Music Of Nick Fruend

Lion Productions

***Recorded at the San Francisco Theological Seminary’s own Montgomery Chapel, acid-folk-rock psychedelic gem SEARCH PARTY Montgomery Chapel was the brainchild of (then Reverend) NICHOLAS FREUND. Having left Wisconsin in the late 1960s to join a burgeoning West Coast religious scene, Freund spent considerable time in Sacramento before making his way to San Francisco in 1968 to lay down this one-off with some students of his. The result is a spooky, metaphysical trip that’s equal parts God and acid-dripped mind expansion. Laced with haunting vocals and dreamlike passages, Montgomery Chapel is psychedelic music at its most evocative, and most spiritual. Original copies (only 600 were pressed on the custom Century label) carry substantial price tags. The recordings released by the ST. PIUS X SEMINARY CHOIR were made in the year or two which led up to the recording of the Search Party album. Not only did the three St. Pius X Seminary Choir records showcase the first work by Nick Freund, but they also were the first recordings of Search Party guitarist and vocalist PETER APPS. As one of the press clips regarding the Choir stated, “The choral treatment was electrified by a few phrases sung solo by Peter Apps, who is also the lead guitar. If Apps has not already formed a folk-rock group around that voice, he should. It is rich, deep, and ringing.” Luckily, Freund and Apps heeded their advice, and the Search Party was the result. But nothing could have prepared listeners for the bizarre avant-garde (in...