Se press Release hd steve Kilbey (The Church) New Zealand tour July 07
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gent : Arts/Entertainment | gmusic : Music | gcat : Political/General News RE austr : Australia | ausnz : Australia and New Zealand PUB F2 Australia & New Zealand Limited (Fairfax) AN Document NEHR000020041209e0c900013 HD The Church, After Everything. BY By Noel Mengel. WC 703 words PD 16 February 2002 SN Courier-Mail SC COUMAI LA English CY (c) 2002 Queensland Newspapers Pty Ltd LP
The Church, After Everything ... Now This (Cooking Vinyl) **** EVERY band with a long history goes into the studio wanting to make an album that's every bit as strong as their stuff when they were young and hungry. Not many achieve it. TD
But several years of sporadic recording at various points around the globe has done the trick for The Church with an album that can stand proudly beside '80s high-points like The Blurred Crusade and Heyday. Fans, of course, have always found something to enjoy on Church albums, even when the line-up in the '90s was reduced to the core of founder members Steve Kilbey and Marty Willson-Piper. But there never seemed to be the chemistry that crackled when the band were on a high in the early to mid-'80s, when I saw them play some of the finest live shows I've seen by any band, anywhere. However, a spark seems to have been rekindled since founder guitarist Peter Koppes returned permanently to the fray and the line-up firmed with drummer/producer Tim Powles. There was promise of better things with the 1998 album Hologram of Baal and it has certainly been delivered this time around. The difference isn't in the sound. After all these years, it's still elegant, shimmering - rippling like a cooling summer breeze through a soft curtain. The difference comes this time with the quality and depth of the tunes. If other Church fans are like me, over the past 15 years they will have become used to making do with a couple of strong tracks on each new release. No such problem this time. The filler never arrives. Like all the best rock albums, the sum is greater than the parts, each song in its proper place and flowing seamlessly into the next. It's hard to pinpoint reasons for this return to top form, but inspiration seems to have come in the form of their last studio project, the covers collection Box Of Birds. This was a record that found the common ground between tracks as varied as Iggy Pop's The Endless Sea, Neil Young's Cortez The Killer, David Bowie's hit for Mott The Hoople, All The Young Dudes, and a song which could have served as the blueprint for their sound, George Harrison's psych-pop masterpiece It's All Too Much. The band usually pieces its songs together from lengthy studio jams. They might not have changed their method, but the Box Of Birds interlude seems to have focused their their minds on songcraft again. Opening track Numbers sets the tone, with muscular guitar riffs providing the counterpoint behind one of their most appealing melodies in years. And slowly it rolls, each song murmuring into the next, the guitars of Koppes and Willson-Piper building a warm, rich bed of sound. The guitars soar to a high on the majestic Chromium, the kind of tune that would sound superb on radio. Surely somewhere there has to be a place for it between Creed and Cold Chisel. Perhaps no one will ever really now why After Everything is a great Church album when so many previous albums only hinted at former glories. It just is. Enjoy. Also available: Sing-Songs/Remote Luxury/Persia (EMI). Some of The Church's best material in the '80s didn't appear on albums but on these three EPs, especially the 1982 collection Sing-Songs. Several of these tracks have never been available on CD but aficionados and new fans will be impressed by A Different Man, a bright pop-rock number with classic descending riff and Byrds-style jangling guitars, and a version of I Am a Rock that sounds as if Paul Simon had them in mind when he wrote it. It's a surprise to hear these songs almost 20 years later: They gallop along compared with the more leisurely pace the band now favours. It's a pleasure to hear them available again, especially in a country that hasn't been very serious about looking after its rock'n'roll history. Music this good deserves to be looked after. NS
GCAT : Political/General News | GENT : Arts/Entertainment | GMUSIC : Music RE AUSNZ : Australia and New Zealand | AUSTR : Australia IPC Bam
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Document coumai0020020215dy2g0008z HD Prayers and linked hands on stricken jet. BY By Charles Miranda. WC 320 words PD 28 November 2001 SN Courier-Mail SC COUMAI PG 5
LA English CY (c) 2001 Queensland Newspapers Pty Ltd LP FOR 10 terrifying minutes, passengers aboard a Sydney-bound flight prayed, closed eyes and held hands with strangers when an engine failure forced their aircraft to make an emergency landing. Qantas Flight 426 from Melbourne was 30km into its flight when there was a loud bang, lights went out and a large hole appeared in the casing of the port engine. TD
Passenger Cathy Bickford, seated over the engine in row 26A, gazed mesmerised at the hole as the Boeing 767 made a slow turn and headed back to Melbourne airport. "There was an enormous bang - and I looked out and saw this huge hole in the left engine casing," she said. "Then the captain comes on and says `we're safe' and in the meantime the engine is making this horrendous grinding noise. "I thought about what had happened in the United States with that engine falling off and thought: `God, don't fall off, don't fall off'." Mrs Bickford regained her composure enough to photograph the damaged engine. Husband Marshall praised the captain and crew for keeping people calm. "He came on and just said: `This is the captain speaking', and there was a pause, `the aircraft is safe', then another pause ... `we've had a catastrophic engine failure'," he said. Steve Kilbey, frontman of rock band The Church on a three-day Sydney tour, said everyone just held on as the plane went eerily quiet and returned to safety. "It will affect our performance tonight," he said soberly. Qantas spokesman David Forsyth said the plane was able to land safely. "This is something the aircraft is designed to withstand and the engine itself is designed to withstand. The crew are trained to deal with these emergencies," he said. "The aircraft itself can fly capably on one engine, which it did." The Australian Transport Safety Bureau will investigate. NS
GCAT : Political/General News | GDIS : Disasters/Accidents | GMMDIS : Accidents/Man-made Disasters | GRISK : Risk News RE AUSNZ : Australia and New Zealand | AUSTR : Australia IPC News
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Document coumai0020011127dxbs000mu SE Metropolitan HD Church Reward The Faithful BY Reviewed By Bernard Zuel WC 397 words PD 29 November 2001 SN Sydney Morning Herald SC SMHH PG 15
LA English CY Copyright of John Fairfax Group Pty Ltd LP Maybe a small point first. This visit by the now-expatriate quartet is called the Acoustic Tour, the first by the Church in their 20-plus-year career. Now, call me picky, but if you have an electric bass, a full drum kit and an electronic keyboard alongside two semi-acoustic guitars, can that really be called an ``acoustic'' show? Maybe it should be called the Sitting Down Tour, given that guitarists Peter Koppes and Marty Willson-Piper played sitting on stools (the bass-playing singer Steve Kilbey mostly stood). Or the We're Playing More Quietly Than Usual Tour. TD
The evening is divided into two parts: eight songs from the coming album, After Everything Now This, and, after the interval, a light skip through the back catalogue. To be fair, it's not a big ask of Church fans to absorb a solid block of new material. Not because they're any more accommodating than other fans necessarily but because this new album is an extension of the style the Church, once the country's premier jangly guitar band, developed through the 1990s: a mix of Pink Floyd slightly countrified and Bob Dylan in a post-lysergic state. While a couple of new songs failed to impress, others such as Night Friends and Radiance had an alluring dreaminess that hovered near narcotic but was propelled by the characteristic insistent bass and the equally distinctive interplay between Koppes's languorous style and Willson-Piper's more fluttery picking. Song For the Asking suggested a similar mellowness in its guitar glissandi and piano but there was a muted throbbing underneath that offered a darker interpretation. For all that, it was still the likes of a rousing Myrrh and a forceful North, South, East and West that earned the night's biggest cheers from fans. And Metropolis reaffirmed its status as a fine pop song from the last days of their Roger McGuinn decade. While the first encore, 1996's Magician Among the Spirits, brought us full circle to the first set's subtly shifting (and sometimes menacing) passivity, there was a bonus prize for later stayers. The night ended with a 13-minute escalating romp through Neil Young's Cortez the Killer that bucked and floated in equal measure. It was strangely appropriate. The Church play the Basement tonight. RE
AUSNZ : Australia and New Zealand | AUSTR : Australia AN Document smhh000020011128dxbt00012 CLM POP MUSIC | DATEBOOK SE ENTERTAINMENT HD The CHURCH takes up a COLLECTION of covers BY Jeff Niesel CR Jeff Niesel is a Cleveland-based writer. WC 796 words PD 16 September 1999 SN The San Diego Union-Tribune SC SDU
ED 1,2,3,7,8 PG 15
LA English CY (c) 1999 San Diego Union Tribune Publishing Company. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All Rights Reserved. LP Most rock stars won't confess to reading reviews of their records or even caring what critics think. Not the Church's Marty Willson- Piper. Near the end of a half-hour phone interview, the cordial guitarist wondered what I thought of the band's latest album, "A Box of Birds," a wide-ranging collection of covers by artists like David Bowie, Neil Young and even the Monkees. When I tell him I like the way the Church has left a distinctive mark on the originals and chosen a diverse selection of songs, ranging from relatively obscure tracks like Kevin Avery's "Decadence," a song about Nico, to Television's "Friction," he seems pleased. TD
"I hope people will hunt down the original versions of the songs," said Willson-Piper, who brings the Church to the Belly Up Tavern tonight. "Do you like our cover of `Friction'? I wonder if (Television singer-guitarist) Tom Verlaine is going to like it. He's the kind of guy who nobody buys his records, but everybody likes him. But if Tom Verlaine released a record tomorrow, I wouldn't think twice about it. I'd just go out and buy it." As much as he's a musician, Willson-Piper is a fan of music. His record collection (mostly vinyl) totals nearly 20,000 titles -- not a bad thing to have around if you're thinking about putting out an album of covers. In fact, the Church initially intended to release its version of Hawkwind's "Silver Machine" as a maxi-single (with David Bowie's "All the Young Dudes" as its b-side) for fan-club members only. But when it decided to scrap plans for a live album and opted to record other people's songs, the group delved into Willson-Piper's stacks of albums for ideas. "As usual with the Church, everything happens by mistake," Willson-Piper said. "I had bought this old-fashioned guitar pedal in Portland, Ore., last year and I just started playing around with it -- I'd do `Silver Machine' at sound checks and it sounded brilliant. We just started doing it as an encore after that. Of course, no one will admit that they like Hawkwind, but we're the band that has no fear." Formed just as the punk movement was subsiding, the Church's lineup solidified when Willson-Piper, the lone Brit in the Church, joined the band in 1980. At that time, the Sydney, Australia-based group had played only a few shows together but hadn't recorded any albums. Willson-Piper described the experience of coming from a different country to play in a rock band as "totally weird," but said that a mutual affinity for bands like Ultravox and Be Bop Deluxe united the musicians despite their geographical differences. "We weren't really into the punk and new wave thing," he recalled. "I liked the Pretenders' first album as much as anyone and I liked the Sex Pistols, but I also liked different things, like Hawkwind and Kevin Ayers." After 1988's "Starfish," the band's biggest commercial success, which yielded the hit "Under the Milky Way," the Church started to feel the pressures of stardom. Eventually, drummer Richard Ploog and guitarist Peter Koppes left the group. As a result, singer- bassist Steve Kilbey and Willson-Piper were the only remaining members, and they recorded 1994's "Sometime Anywhere" with a drum machine. In 1997, Koppes returned and drummer Tim Powles joined the group for "Hologram of Baal." With a greatest-hits album and both a new studio release and a Willson-Piper solo album in the works, it appears as if a Church revival is in the works -- not that Willson- Piper would admit to such a thing. "The public is a fickle beast," he said. "Church fans who will always buy our records just like what we do . . . where are the people who bought `Starfish'? If they only bought `Starfish' because it had a hit on it, does that mean that we have to have a hit for them to buy our record? "Of course, in a perfect world, we'd make really interesting, super-innovative, fantastic records that also sell 80 million copies. That's sort of an unrealistic attitude, but you just have to do what is you. That's the secret." DATEBOOK The Church 8:30 tonight. The Belly Up Tavern, 143 S. Cedros Ave., Solana Beach. $13; (619) 481-8140. RF
For information box see end of text. ART 1 PIC; Caption: The Church is touring in support of a new album consisting of cover versions of others' songs. [JOE DILWORTH] NS gent : Arts/Entertainment | gmusic : Music | nitv : Interview | gcat : Political/General News | ncat : Content Types | nfact : Factiva Filters | nfcpex : FC&E Executive News Filter RE usca : United States - California | namz : North American Countries/Regions | usa : United States | usw : Western U.S. IPD ADVANCE INTERVIEW ARTS/ENTERTAINMENT/THEATER Marty Willson-Piper The Church Willson-Piper Bowie, David PUB Union-Tribune Publishing Company AN Document SDU0000020070602dv9g006k0 SE Agenda HD A Cummings, Of Age BY Shaun Carney WC 1679 words PD 25 July 1999 SN Sunday Age SC SAGE
PG 15 LA English CY (c) 1999 of John Fairfax Group Pty. Ltd. LP
THE first time I saw Stephen Cummings, it was a Friday lunchtime in 1978 and he was upstairs in the student lounge at Monash University out front of a new band, the Sports, belting out a spirited cover of the Searchers' Every Time You Walk Into the Room, a bunch of Graham Parker songs and some originals. He was dark-haired, intense, focused. He seemed especially annoyed that a stage backdrop, a canvas sheet depicting a sneaker, kept dislodging and slumping into a heap behind the drummer. TD
My impressions: great voice, cork screwed in a bit too tight. As it turns out, there were good reasons for Cummings to behave like that. For one thing, he can see now that he basically wandered through life in a quasi-adolescent haze until he made it into his 30s. For another, he was uptight because he really didn't like being in a group anyway. When the Sports fell apart in 1982, Cummings knew it was the last time he would ever be part of a band. Since then, his life has been one long attempt to unravel the mysteries of the heart - his heart - not just through music but through the written word. Now, in what amounts to a piece of marketing serendipity, Cummings has an album and a novel coming out virtually simultaneously. Cummings' ninth solo album of new material, Spiritual Bum, is out tomorrow and his second novel, Stay Away From Lightning Girl, will be published early next month. Over the years, Cummings and I have formed a friendship. One day in early 1988, I expressed a passing interest in his music to a colleague. Soon after, I found myself sitting in an Albert Park cafe talking to Cummings about his third album, Lovetown. He was close to the bones of his backside. A contractual implosion had left him without a recording deal, so he had recorded Lovetown, a brittle collection of acoustic songs, in a friend's loungeroom and released it independently. He was then 33, with an infant son and an unravelling domestic situation, which seemed to find its way into his material. Cummings was friendly but edgy. His demeanor seemed jumpy, uncertain and occasionally a little bit paranoid. Having tasted national fame and then been on the verge of maybe doing something internationally, he'd fallen a long way. He had it in for the music business and talked about his disillusionment. From then, we kept in touch, having lunch from time to time, talking regularly on the phone, taking our kids for a day at the football. This seems to be a point worth noting because obviously by getting to know someone personally the distance between interviewer and artist shortens and blurs. What struck me most of all back then was how tenaciously Cummings clung to his natural need to express himself. Even when he was struggling to keep his musical career going, the songs still came through and they were superb. This was not a guy who needed a comprehensive, record label-funded support system to keep his art at a satisfactory, satisfying level. The move into fiction as a sideline to his musical work and the inexorable move towards middle age (he turns 45 in September) has produced a milder, more equable Cummings. His first novel, Wonderboy, seemed to be a voyage not just through elements of his own childhood but of his evolving relationship with his first son, Curtis. The follow-up, Stay Away From Lightning Girl, begins with a central character, Robert Moore, who just happens to be a rock singer, telling the story of his life, ``a remembrance from a boy who didn't want to grow up''. Robert was good at art and music as and an adolescent, and had a fractious relationship with his father. If it holds that first novelists generally write from what they know, in this case it holds for second novelists too. Cummings confesses that spreading himself across two media simultaneously has sapped him and left him wondering if he has anything else to offer. ``It's made it harder. It's harder, yeah. I just feel like I've exhausted all I've got to say. Like, on this record, I got (Melbourne singer) Chris Marshall to write the lyrics on two songs and I just wrote the music. ``I'm just expressed out. I just haven't got enough ... I'm sick of myself. ``You get sick of thinking of yourself, going back over what you've done, working little things into songs. You think about odd things anyway. When you get into your 40s, for no reason you think about stupid things you've done or stuff just pops into your head.'' But coming up with material has been only one of Cummings' preoccupations in the past couple of years. Basically, he's been working to gain control of his career. In a small way, he can thank the National Australia Bank, which employed Toni Childs' version of Many Rivers to Cross in an advertising campaign in 1996. The public reaction to the ads meant enormous sales for Childs' greatest hits album. Childs and Cummings were both at the time signed to what was then Polygram Records. The label got Childs to record a Cummings song, added it to the album, and the subsequent royalty payments headed straight into the garage at the back of Cummings' Caulfield home in the form of newly-purchased recording equipment. ``I thought this at least was going to allow me to own the means of production no matter what happens in the future. I've got a good recording set-up now. I can always record my own stuff. When you're a recording artist, you're always working for the man, always watching the clock - I talk about things like that in the book. ``You basically have no control at all, the audience has all the power. You don't have any really. They can withdraw it. It does get a bit scary over the journey. So now I've got this set-up, I've got some money. At least with this, in the future, with all the Internet things happening, I don't know if this is going to work out with (new label) Festival, I'm going to be able to keep going no matter what. It gave me a bit more control. I've invested back into my own sort of thing. I'm not so beholden." SOMETHING else that has kept Cummings' head above water financially is his intermittent flirtation with the advertising industry. He recently leased his ``I Feel Better Now'' jingle for Medibank Private for another couple of years, which is a tidy earner for him; a new jingle for, of all things, an armed forces recruitment campaign is in the works. The most cherished by-product of this patchwork quilt of work, the new album Spiritual Bum, is a stark work, almost exclusively acoustic and devoid of percussion - a dramatic contrast with his previous two albums, expansive soundscapes highly produced by Steve Kilbey. ``I just wanted to strip everything back, try again, see where it goes. I actually like working with fewer people. There's quite a few things I'd like to do but it involves too many people for me. It's too much, not just financially, but my attention gets scattered by too many people doing things all around you.'' There's a sense in Cummings' music and his fiction that he is sometimes making a desperate lunge to untangle his feelings and thoughts, possibly as a result of what, he says, is his delayed entry into the world of adults. ``I seriously didn't have a thought in my head until I was about 31, I'm embarrassed to say. Musicians and entertainers and people like that are very insular. ``Suddenly, probably about then, I was thinking `black holes are these things in space!' Those things that other people probably would have thought about when they were much younger, I thought about all those then, at the wrong age. Being in music, it was just a long, delayed adolescence from about 18 to 30." And he's had to grow up all over again in the past year as he and his partner have found themselves raising a baby, his second son. ``It makes you really tired. Physically. It puts you in a good mood. It's 50-50. I'm so tired, incredibly snappy, because I say `I'm doing more than any other guy because I work at home' - I'm older, I'm more tired - but on the other hand, he's such a nice baby, walking around and talking at 14 months, it makes you feel good towards the world.'' And is he a calmer, less uptight fellow than the lead singer of a pop band from 20 years ago or the pained independent recording artist of 10 years ago? ``Definitely. It's still hard to keep it all going, especially when you find yourself saying `why am I doing this?' But by just stupidly keeping on going, I've done something and it all works out. You can be down to almost no money but then the phone rings and it's someone asking you to do something and so you get some money and that allows you to do something else.'' 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