The Church - C or D/S&D/CB&TT

I watched it in three sittings. haha

Your comment above about it being made for/marketed to fans is spot-on. As a massive fan... it's just the kinda fly on the wall thing I've always been curious to see.

It's also fascinating as a portrait of a band with a certain level of fame. They were well known, but not famous.

Anyone who doesn't have it should acquire the Goldfish (Jokes, Magic & Souvenirs) DVD. Apart from collecting their '81 - '90 videos, it features a lot of great candid-camera footage from, IIRC, the Starfish tour. Much of it is comedy gold.

would sit through 3.5 hours of jumpy VHS for live footage and also to stare at <3 marty <3

I would love, even for one day, to know what it's like to have the effect on women that MWP had back then. I took a girlfriend to see The Church about ten years ago and all she could talk about afterwards was "that unbelievably handsome guitarist".

his frock coat, skinny jeans and beatle boots really did flatter him

I hope that's the one you are all talking about.

Oh stop being coy -- you know who he is! He's the one with the ridiculously beautiful face! (Although Peter Koppes gets a shout out for being muuuuuch more appealing in moving pictures than he is in still ones).
I'd like to know what it's like to be that irresistible/talented/good looking too. Some people are just born with a gift. It must be absurd and probably not as awesome as it seems.

MWP is also damn charming and just naturally inhabits the rock star role. I've chatted with him several times over the years and he can instantaneously switch from music/guitar nerd to Coolest Guy In The Room. I don't know how he (or anyone with that kind of presence) does it.

I think of the Church like ILX, as a gestalt entity with shadowy, changeable faces that speak as one in a multitude of voices. Sometimes Steve, sometimes Marty, and then when you think you have the rhythm of it, Peter Koppes appears and sings As You Will or Transient. And you're unsure of anything again.

Looks like Marty is out of the band... at least for now.
That's a drag.

http://musicfeeds.com.au/news/the-church-announce-addition-of-powderfinger-guitarist-for-new-album/

Oh no! What happened to Marty?!

From Steve:

hey guys
this has been hard to broach and it has been hard to announce.
this is the simple truth.
marty was/is unavailable.
after having secured the funds to make a new church record, marty was not available to make it.
so i asked ian haug from powderfinger if he would like to play on this record and do the subsequent tour. he said yes.
we have begun the new album and let me reassure you it is magnificent. otherwise we wouldnt be doing it.
i will never say anything more about this subject. marty is not available. ian was. and i needed to make this album because we havent done anything for so long.
you'll have to trust me. this step was not taken lightly.
ian is a brilliant guitarist who brings years of experience and a new fresh enthusiasm with him. this is no second rate deal. and nothing is chiselled in stone.
if you cant dig it i'm sorry. this is my fucking band after all and it has existed at times without peter and in the beginning without marty. and for times in between while he went AWOL.
i love the guy. his musicianship is undeniably good. but its over now . the church will have to move on without him or have no church at all. which one did you want?
i am sitting here right now with 16 new incredible songs that we just wrote. its frustrating that it will be a while till you hear it. but the church will ride on. and i hope that when i fall off my perch that someone else jumps in and keeps it going. this is what i was writing about the other day. the church is an ideal that produces a certain type of music. regardless of individuals.
the church will prevail. and our new music is very very fucking cool.
and thats it!

Ya know, Marty always does the things on each of the recent records I'm not as crazy about... all the progginess and whatnot, but this is still mega blah.

Sounds like the new record will be good though. I wonder what is keeping Marty so busy?!

Him and Steve butting heads is what's keeping him "busy," I'd guess?

Hm. That's unfortunate. I love Steve Kilbey's attitude.

Without getting too far into NDA territory, I'm not surprised by this development. I had a feeling the U23/P=A/SF shows were going to be it for the band - even before Steve went public about the financial rift with Second Motion.

I"m also encouraged. I can't think of many other people from Kilbey's generation who've found such creative engagement in middle age. The Kilbey-Kennedy albums are all worth checking out and generally if he's bragging about something on his blog it does live up. Plus if it gets Peter to do more, then I'm all for it. The RefoMation album is very very good,

The three times they came through New England after U23 were three of the best shows I've seen from them.
Nice that they at least ended that phase on a high.

Kilbey is a talented dude. I'm sure the new record will be more than worth a listen. It's still sad though!

i keep reading that piper is a douche.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Marty's got a new album on the way too. He's over at http://indeepmusicarchive.net now - writing about his favorite albums.

He's also offering Skype guitar lessons. I am very tempted by the idea, I must say.

You could learn from R Lloyd and MWP in the same day!

omg can i pay for a guitar lesson and just make him talk to me for ___ minutes?

Just £35 buys you an hour of his time. I'm sure he'd be happy to simply shoot the breeze...

(x-post)

Maybe I could set both lessons up for the same time and we could all jam on See No Evil. ＼(◎o◎)／

one laptop with lloyd, another with MWP, them facing each other...

i'm gonna set up my laptop in the basement and marty can accompany me for an hour
that seems worth the cash tbh!

play a song, talk for 10 min, play a song, talk for 10 min, repeat
with marty!

Maybe Lloyd and Marty can get together with Bruce Gilbert and form a band called the Estranged Band Members.

The Wiresque Church Of Television

FB page teasing some kind of 'big announcement' this week.

New song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujvVk_RDpZg

And new album next month. Works for me!

I can't even parse kilbey's blogs. so he's back in the church? are they putting this out themselves?

He's in, Marty's gone, and it does appear to be a self-release.

so they're done with second motion? whatever happened with that, did they sue them?

what's marty up to these days?!

Oh wow, why did Marty leave? Hate to be this kind of fan (or this kind of listener in general) but Marty not being there sucks a lot of the excitement out of this

I will defer to Elvis T on all these points.

well, it's relatively straightforward (for SK anyway):

we realise people disappointed cos MWP not there
he literally never got back to us when we wanted to do a new record
he never even left
he just became unavailable
well thats that
we had a coalition of the willing who did
and ian came onboard
exceeding all expectations one could possibly have
what we have now is all that could have ever been
forget the what ifs
i understand you may be disappointed if MWP was your favourite
it was not my idea for him to not be there
however seeing he wasnt and he isnt
shortly therefore
and in spades to boot
Further/Deeper will be with you soon if you want
after all its only rocknroll nothing to get hung about

I forgot how fun it is to read his blog!

Not saying anything until the album is out.

Yeah, I'll withhold judgement. And my expectations for any band that's been around this long are very low anyway. But this lowers them considerably. Just compare the last Church album, which was incredible, to all the Steve Kilbey solo records released around the same time, which were not. There were some OK cuts on those records, but the spark just wasn't there.

Not as broken up about MWP being gone as I thought I'd be.

Kinda feel like he was responsible for most of the lowlights songwise/soundwise/bv-wise for the last 20-odd years.
Starting with Sometime Anywhere, he started feeling a lil too comfortable showing off his progginess for me. YMMV though, of course.

Still would've liked him to be in the band (and boy will this be interesting seeing them live w/o him), but what can ya do...

i just want to know what he is so busy doing that he can't respond to sk's messages

maybe he's still trying to decipher them?

haha
i like to imagine him being super perplexed for months on end

i still think that long boring live documentary of their gold afternoon fix tour was the best thing ever

me too

I like this band but to be fair all of their albums from the past 15 years sound the same to me. So if this sounds different, that might be good. That new song isn't very good though.

kinda wish they'd have stayed with Second Motion long enough to re-release the Sing Songs/Remote Luxury/Persia comp on CD... ah well.

Priest=Aura'ing it up this am, so fkn good

Dunno. While they're all certainly The Church, there is a bit of variety in the years since Hologram of Baal.

After Everything is chilled out, opiated... Forget Yourself, quite a bit more rough around the edges... Uninvited drags a bit more pop action back in... Untitled cuts back on the prog (mostly)... maybe these are minor differences though? They probably are. haha