In a city of Normandy where resounded the church bells sound, I breathed only anonymity and loneliness, the urban spaces without behaviour were cold with their white light. While I felt unfamiliarity for the surrounding environment, warmness and originality of eighties music flooded me, remaining in my memory and my veins. Heavenly and dreamlike, The Church play the depth of this sound, with unaffectedness and distortion. Under the milky way for instance.

The Church band has been founded in Sydney during 1978. A song that has impressed me so much is their more famous one: Under the Milky Way (album Starfish). All the album expresses poetry, through resolute beat and guitar delay. Under the milky way communicates energy thanks to the guitar rhythm (I like playing it by myself).

A consideration of mine is that Oceanian roots shall imprint a peculiar and unique feature to Australian bands. As New Caledony or Livourne in Italy, Australia is a former penalty colony. Therefore the spirit of people goes on feeling the past rebellion and produces creative bases. Indeed the places of exodus and alienation, though not desirable for anyone, as a paradox it may happen that these negative conditions manage to improve people creativity.

Similarly, an other example of this processing has been acted by the American black people, that have created blues though they were slaves, and have managed to impress a music revolution. My leitmotif is a verse of a blues song registered by Alan Lomax in 1959, John Henry singing:

“ A man ain’t nothin but a man, but before I’d let your steam drill beat me down, I’ll die with this hammer in my hand”.

I have not been lucky enough to attend any concert of The Church. Steven Kilbey is a fully artistic person, as he writes music, poetry and paints. He expresses with humor and without politically correct restriction his opinions. He has left The Church band for 2012 year -till late 2013 – once he has discovered how poor were the royalties paid to the band by the American record industry named Second Motion Record, comparing to the lots of discs they had sold.

For instance the Vinyl film represents very well how the record industries have lived on musicians shoulders. By the way, the film protagonist Richie Finestra is a visionary scout as well as an intrepid founder and president of American Century Records since he has discovered and launched innovative rock bands, punk ones. Unfortunately Vinyl, cult television series with Mick Jagger and Martin Scorsese as creators, hasn’t been published any more.