The Time Being | Steve Kilbey

One of the biggest worldwide hits for Australian outfit the church was the jangling early ’80s confection “The Unguarded Moment.”

But for rapier-witted bandleader Steve Kilbey, there’s no such thing — even when his group was recently inducted into its homeland’s ARIA Hall of Fame, he was ready with an impromptu acceptance speech, a rambling 10-minute snark-a-thon wherein he wryly noted how he had been kicked off all the best labels and dropped by all the finest ­publishers in the land.

He ended the rant by thanking God for blessing him with so much talent, spurring the affair’s hostess to say, “Give that man a show!”

Kilbey came off good-natured and self-deprecating. And at 56, the Bondi Beach-based singer — who brings the church to  The City on Friday to perform three classic albums, back to back, “Untitled #23,” “Priest = Aura” and the 1988 breakthrough “Starfish” — also looked tan and trim, thanks to his daily workout regimen of yoga and swimming.

“It was a good night, and I was lucky that I thought of that speech on the spur of the moment,” he says of the prestigious ceremony. “And yeah, there was a bit of bitterness in there, but that’s only par for the course — if you hang around long enough, you’re going to see a lot of ups and downs.”

The honoree wasn’t always so Zen-like. Career regrets?

“I’ve got a million,” Kilbey says. “I was cruel, I was nasty, I was horrible, I was selfish, I didn’t listen. I was weak, I used people, I let people use me — I mean, everything you can imagine. I made all the mistakes.”

For example, he recalls an incident wherein he argued with a Melody Maker magazine journalist throughout a daylong interview. Eagerly, he awaited the cover story’s printing, which would vindicate him. ­Surprise!

“They didn’t put us on their cover — or in the magazine — at all,” Kilbey says. “I’d blown a front-page story, blew it into nothing.”

These days, Kilbey is more grounded. “We’re just a little obscure band, and it’s only about the music now for us,” he says. “All that other stuff has disappeared.”

To that end, the church is celebrating its 30th anniversary with the current Future Past Perfect tour, featuring a grand finale in April at the Sydney Opera House; a new two-disc singles anthology, “Deep In the Shallows”; and remastered reissues of its early catalog.

In concert, Kilbey says, “I don’t mind doing the old stuff — I kind of enjoy it.”

Everything, that is, except “The Unguarded Moment.” “I don’t know why, but I never really liked that song. I didn’t even like it when I wrote it!”

Read more at the San Francisco Examiner: http://www.sfexaminer.com/entertainment/music/2011/02/church-s-steve-kilbey-has-few-regrets#ixzz1CsEVOV00

http://www.tonedeaf.com.au/news/tournews/59036/the-church-the-thornbury-theatre.htm

The mood is celebratory as the church play the final show of a virtually sold out national tour, capping off what’s been a remarkable year for the band. There was the ARIA Hall of Fame induction and THAT amazing speech by front man Steve Kilbey, the release of a tie in best of record and a real feeling that after 30 years in the music industry, the band are in not only peak form but have few local peers in a stunning back catalogue.

Onstage in the dinner and show setting of the slightly faded grandeur of the Thornbury Theatre, the church are working their way in reverse order through their back catalogue playing one track from each release. Opening with ‘Pangaea’ off Untitled #23, the band appear relaxed and drummer Tim Powles steers the ship with his mallets on the kit. ‘Space Needle’ represents Uninvited Like The Clouds, while a smoky, almost jazzy version of Reptile represents the acoustic song re-workings of 2007’s El Momento Siguiente.

It’s at this moment that Kilbey’s increasingly shining reputation as a showman comes through, with guitarist Marty Willson-Piper playing Abbott in his correct pronunciation of the album’s title to Kilbey’s Costello. As much as ‘The Unguarded Moment’ may have been an albatross around the band’s neck in Australia, in this version off 2004’s second Liberation Acoustic series El Momento Descuidado album ,they now appear to play it without resignation; the occasionally gauche but nonetheless iconic lyrics a cipher for another time and place. Peter Koppes takes to the guitar to sing ‘Appalatia ‘off Forget Yourself, his smiling zen like manner contrasting against the exuberant Kilbey.

Introducing ‘Louisiana’ off 1998’s Hologram of Baal, Kilbey makes a sly reference to his then opiate addiction, and notes that the studio outside a Swedish country town in which it was recorded, ‘was near a train line and that ‘if you’re lucky you can hear the trains run over the tracks’. The pause prompting nervous laughter from the audience shows a deep vein of self laceration at the base of  the showmanship. ‘Comedown’ off 1996’s Magician Amongst The Spirits reflects a low point in the history of the church, where the band almost in effect split, and Kilbey declares it to be ‘an album [euthanasia campaigner] Philip Nitschke approached us about;’ while Willson-Piper declares it ‘the album that made Nick Cave seem like John Farnham … Whispering Nick.’

‘Metropolis’ still retains its beauty from 1990’s mixed Gold Afternoon Fix, while ‘Under The Milky Way’ off 1988’s Starfish is introduced as the ‘song they HAVE to play.’ In many ways they’re right – a ‘song about nothing’ has become an Australian icon that the church merely remain parents of. It’s long grown up, moved out of home and taken on a complete life of its own. After a hilarious false start involving a note from a fan being thrown on stage informing Kilbey that he had a shirt button undone, the song is given a nice bluesy twist, with harmonica replacing the infamous e-bow guitar solo.

‘Already Yesterday’ features off Heyday, a period of which Kilbey isn’t afraid to lampoon the band’s fetish for paisley shirts, pointy boots and Persian carpets, while by the time 1982’s The Blurred Crusade is reached, contemporaries Hunters and Collectors are ragged on for their sudden rise to fame. Single ‘Almost With You’ off the album, with its simple yearning ‘I’m Almost With You – is this the taste of Victory?’ refrain amplified by the bass anchor is a highlight of the night. The show proper is completed with ‘Tear It All Away’, a curious choice as it was not included in the Australian release of Of Skins & Heart, rather appearing on the now hard to get EP Too Fast for You.

Although the band have performed two sets in an epic night, they return for their now oft covered version of The Smashing Pumpkins’ ‘Disarm’, a song perhaps originally covered in return for the Pumpkin’s cover of ‘Under The Milky Way’, with Kilbey’s rich timbre far more dignified than Billy Corgan’s now middle aged whine.

There’s a real sense that the church – having ably proved that they are still a creative force over the last few years – are now undergoing a renaissance with the gig going public , who are lapping them up. The transformation of Steve Kilbey into a powerhouse showman and entertainer is welcome and as they prepare for another US tour which is creating much media and fan interest, you could be forgiven for feeling that 2011 will be 1981 all over again, and they’re suddenly one of the hottest bands in the country.

Jim Murray

http://www.bmamag.com/articles/features/20101123-church/

Hallowed Halls

the church were recently inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame. On the evening of the ceremony, the band’s lead singer, Steve Kilbey, stole the show with a rambling and hilarious 30 minute speech that even managed to prompt Tina Arena to heckle from the floor. At the conclusion of Kilbey’s show-stealing performance, Marty Willson-Piper – the man largely responsible for the band’s signature ethereal, chiming 12-string guitar sound – mock-chided his colleague for destroying the mystique they had worked assiduously at developing over their 30 year career. As for the award itself, Willson-Piper is gracious but wary; “Awards are a funny thing. The problem with awards is in the end they have no bearing on what you do creatively. I mean it’s great someone has come along and said ‘you are worthy’ and it’s nice to have people show their appreciation. But it has no bearing on what you do.”

Walking ever more delicately around the subject the guitarist concludes, “You don’t want to be ungrateful but you can’t really incorporate it into your work. The thing with awards is you just have to treat them with a healthy distance. You just say ‘thank you for bestowing the honour upon me’ and just leave it at that. It has nothing to do with how you move on as a band.”

And they have been doing plenty of moving on over the last 30 years. Willson-Piper joined Kilbey and guitarist Peter Koppes in a lineup that would eventually morph into the church in early 1980. Little under a year later they scored their first major radio hit with the pysch-pop jangle mini-anthem The Unguarded Moment. As the decade wore on, the dream-pop neo-psychedelia scene, of which the church are widely regarded as one of the most influential flag bearers, even secured its own media friendly label – Paisley Underground. Then there’s the ghostly Under The Milky Way (from 1988’s Starfish) – a song that kicked down many a door internationally and was recently voted by The Age newspaper as the best Australian song of the last 21 years.

For a band with such a nigh-on unimpeachable legacy, you could probably forgive them for dwelling on the past and perhaps even allow a surrender to the now drearily inevitable ‘play the whole album all the way through’ thing. For Willson-Piper and co. that’s on the agenda. “No it’s not, really. That’s the thing we have to be careful of; things like that they tend to suggest. And it’s just like the Hall of Fame thing, when you get honoured at a thing like that it’s like a full stop, it means it’s the end. And it’s not really. We’ve continued making records since we started and we’ve never stopped.”

Yet for all these years of activity, critical adulation, commercial success and touring, life in a Hall of Fame band isn’t as financially rewarding as you’d expect. Statues and industry votes don’t pay the electricity bills. “No, not particularly. Everybody’s always hurting for money. It’s an expensive world we live in and I find that everyone’s trying to find ways to pay bills… to buy that CD… to go out to dinner … to go to the movies and even buying your kids a present and eating! People think that bands like us run around flush, just because we’ve been around for a few years.”

For the current 30^th anniversary tour, the band decided on a small scale, acoustic approach eschewing larger plugged-in theatre shows. Each show will be a reverse overview of their career where they play a song from each album in reverse chronological order from the last album all the way through to the beginning. Willson-Piper is happy with this compromise. “It’s a cool thing and it’s a good overview without it being too bombastic and self-aggrandizing. We just felt a low-key version of what we had done over the years is the best approach.”

This approach means we’ll be getting a unique perspective on how the band themselves see their place in the recent history of Australian rock, and you’ll also get at least one song from the oft-criticised – especially by the band themselves – Gold Afternoon Fix, the 1990 album that represented the church’s big chance to capitalise onStarfish’s international success and also saw the departure of drummer Richard Ploog and the arrival of drum machines. Willson-Piper is currently writing the liner notes for the album’s pending re-release and fronts up to the challenge.

“It’s gonna be a difficult one to write because it was the album where Richard parted ways with the band and it sounds like a drum machine and it really ruins the songs – all you can hear is that stupid drum machine which is so frustrating and I don’t know how the hell we let it happen. Whether Richard was going to be in the band or not is another issue… but you know why didn’t we get another drummer? Why were we doing it with a drum machine? For all the sadness of Richard not being in the band and whatever the reasons were is irrelevant. The point is if he wasn’t going to be in the band why didn’t we get another drummer? Why did we substitute him with a crap drum machine? So that is always eternally disappointing for us that it ended up being that way.” So in a few weeks time when the church play at Tilley’s, come see them kick the boot into drum machine once and for all.”

http://www.last.fm/user/MaxFactor81/journal/2010/11/26/42g8t4_the_church_@_judith_wright_centre

Tonight’s sold out show sees Australian legends the church take us into An Intimate Space, playing one song from each album in reverse chronological order as befits the opening of their 30th anniversary acoustic tour. The band – currently riding a new wave of recognition following Steve Kilbey’s notorious ARIA Hall Of Fame acceptance speech – are having a ball, engaging with the audience in a warmer-than usual manner and playing their hearts out (later, we even get a non-rehearsed Girl From Ipanema).

Starting with Untitled #23’s Pangaea, the song selection is near-impeccable, spanning acoustically re-envisioned fan favourites and certified classics including the jazzy Reptile, The Unguarded Moment, Under The Milky Way, Metropolis, Fly, Almost With You and the church‘s first EP highlight Tear It All Away. In great spirits tonight, Steve’s banter brims with trademark comedy gold (“That T-shirt design and the church condom were a mistake”, he quips before launching into Hologram Of Baal’s Louisiana), with Marty Willson-Piper and the normally-reserved Peter Koppes not far behind.

Yet it’s the four-piece’s stellar music that ultimately steals the night. A stone-cold cult gem, Ionian Blues is given a stripped-down piano treatment; Peter sings the mantra-like Appalatia and Steve takes After Everything Now This’ Invisible to the moon and back. From 1992’s “magnum hopeless” Priest=Aura, Mistress tugs on the heart strings while an upbeat Comedown and the gorgeous My Little Problem get respectively plucked from the mid-’90s “wilderness” albums Magician Among The Spirits and Sometime Anywhere.

As we enter the pre-Starfish domain during the second half, a magisterial Already Yesterday takes hold of one and all. With drummer Tim Powles unleashing some levitating percussion work, Marty and Steve create a dense 12-string storm on the former’s 10,000 Miles. Because we don’t want the the church to leave just yet, we get a killer cover of The Smashing Pumpkins’ Disarm, a rocky Space Saviour and the cathartic, “Elizabethan” Grind for the encore. A truly magical evening at the Judy.

Rave magazine

The uncut acceptance speeches and  live footage of the church performing Under the Milky Way and a rockin’ Tantalized following our induction into the ARIA Hall of Fame (on the 27th October 2010)  are now viewable via  our Video page!  On keyboards is Craig Wilson and backing us was the George Ellis orchestral strings. With thanks to Rebecca Shaw for the uploads to YouTube.

Click : http://www.thechurchband.net/video/the-church/

28 October 2010
by Jason Treuen
The Music Network

“How do you squeeze 50 years into five minutes?” music/television icon Johnny Young wondered aloud upon accepting his ARIA Hall of Fame induction.

Of course, it’s an impossible task for an awards ceremony but last night’s event, overflowing with rich rock ‘n’ roll stories and candid anecdotes, got as close as it could. As fellow inductees, ‘60s icons The Loved Ones, observed in their speech: “The true beauty of the Hall of Fame is the history it brings with it.”

Moving from its traditional home of Melbourne to Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion, the ceremony combined a new Rockwiz format with a night of touching speeches, live tributes and standing ovations. Lots of standing ovations and deservedly so.

After a quick trivia game hosted by Rockwiz’s snappy duo of Julia Zemiro and Brian Nankervis, the night officially opened by ARIA Chairman Denis Handlin (AM) who welcomed the night’s inductees – Young, The Loved Ones, The Church, Models and John Williamson – as artists who “have truly taken their place in Australian music”.

Models kicked things off with a gritty version of their hit I Hear Motionbefore being inducted by former bandmate Wendy Matthews. She recounted meeting them for the first time playing indoor cricket in the studio, that they were “exquisite to look at” and deemed them her “merchants of happiness”.

The band (sans Jame Freud who’d had another “bicycle accident”) took the stage, acknowledged the traditional owners of the land and thanked pretty much everyone – former band members, former labels, media, roadies and the public – before playing their songEvolution.

Industry icon and promoter Michael Chugg spoke candidly about his love for The Loved Ones, confessing they were the reason he moved to the mainland from Tasmania aged 19. “They grabbed me by the balls!” he proclaimed.

The band accepted the accolade, thanked many and oddly argued for a better broadband network in Australia. Diesel saluted them with a rocking version of their seminal hit The Loved One.

Sara Storer performed John Williamson’s Mallee Boy while Greens senator Bob Brown seemed more nervous than his usual self as he inducted his mate. “His music makes us all feel good under the Southern Cross,” Brown declared.

Williamson was equally edgy on stage, stating: “I didn’t think I’d be shaking as much as I am” as he praised the music industry he’s spent 40 years in. He performed Raining On The Rock with the “best guitarist he’s ever played with”, Col Watson, and then did his classicTrue Blue solo, urging the audience to sing along.

Short Stack rocked out Johnny Young’s 1966 hit Caralyn. Amusingly, the Budgewoi pop-rockers were born more than twenty years after it was released.

Tina Arena flew in from Paris just to induct her Young Talent Time founder, mentor and “adopted father” Johnny Young. In a tender and teary tribute, she quoted ‘60s English icon Lulu, asking “How do you thank someone, who has taken you from crayons to perfume?”

A visibly touched Young spoke of length of his long career, a recent interview with a young journo, his favourite film (As Good As It Gets) and Eckhart Tolle’s motivational book The Power of Now. Then ‘Tiny Tina’, as she used to be known on YTT, sang Here Comes The Star, the 1969 song written by Young for Ross D Wylie.

Last but not least came The Church. Megan Washington joined the Rockwiz Orchestra to perform their classic, Unguarded Moment, while SBS presenter George Negus spoke highly of the band who’s “supplied thirty years of memories.”

“Wow, thanks George,” said Church frontman Steve Kilbey. “Next time I appear in Waverly court can you be my character witness?” referencing his recent court appearance after a domestic dispute.

Kilbey spoke animatedly and passionately about the many Aussie bands that came before them and heaped praise on his fellow inductees. About The Loved Ones, he said “even though I was 12, I knew there was something rude going on.”

Enthralling the audience for over twenty minutes, he also recounted great rock ‘n’ roll stories about signing with Chuggi in 1981 “because they were too scared to say no”, black eyes and getting flashed with “Tassie tits”.

“And I’m still amazed by Richard Wilkins‘ hair,” he beamed. “From behind, he looks like a schoolboy!”

“Well, that’s really demystyified us,” said bandmate Marty Willson-Piper when he finally got to talk. “For thirty years, we’ve tried so hard to be aloof.”

And lastly we’d like to thank God,” said the show-stealing Kilbey, reclaiming the mic, “for giving this country so much unbearable talent”. The band then hit the stage to play Under The Milky Way andTantalise before Johnny Young closed the night with his traditional send-off “Good night Australia”.

Watch the SBS RocKwiz ARIA Hall of Fame show here here

Our now infamous induction acceptance speech at the ARIA Hall of Fame last Wednesday night – enjoy the unedited speeches here –http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=158396410867957

Full Speeches :-

Part 1 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXym18r5dAA
Part 2 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EezurXZ4pk 

We would whole heartedly like to thank everyone for all your support and good wishes!