Church: "Warm Spell" (1988)

I was going to post this when in Australia, but I never got around to it. Now's good a time as any, even though it starts out strong but kind of peters out. Still love it, though.

"Warm Spell"

Steve Kilbey: "Othertime" (1987)

Here's a song from one of the early solo albums by The Church's Steve Kilbey. Amazing talent. Too bad he's done so many drugs that he now only writes psychedelic music.

"Othertime"







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Monday morning, a writer I published, James Cain, picked me up at the hotel around 9 a.m. to tour his homeland, The Blue Mountains, which is about two hours outside of Sydney. On the way we made a couple pit stops for food.

In the early afternoon we hit a zoo. It was awesome! I got to feed a kangaroo and a baby emu. I also had my picture taken with a kola bear as I petted it. What else did we see there? Oh, a wombat. There were dingos and Tasmanian Devils, too, but they hid in their caves.

From there we stopped to see the Three Sisters, a popular landmark. It was raining, but that was fine. I took some cool pictures of the forest with mist rising from the trees.

Eventually we reached James' house. He lives across the road from a 19th-century court and jail. It's all housed in one building and has received historical status. Pretty crazy. They squeezed 35 men in a cell about 10 feet by 6 feet. There was another cell for women, but the park ranger thinks they threw men in there as well. And here's the appalling part: fines were quite Draconian. If your employer thought you were faking sick, you got 50 lashes. Blimey!

For dinner we had Thai takeout. James has a pretty big family. At the house were five kids (ages 11 to 1). I think he has one or two more with an ex.

It was pretty funny, his one daughter, Sharif (age 8, I think), asked why I didn't like children. I was a little confused at first. Apparently, the Cain clan were looking at my Facebook profile where I said I didn't want kids. I may have to update that part.

Another amusing anecdote concerned James' son Solomon, who I think is a little younger than Sharif. First question out of his mouth was, "Why do you talk so funny?" Ah, youth. . . .

Before James and his family dropped me off for the 7:20 p.m. train, we went to some little park. It was so high up that I could see my apartment from there. Seriously though, in the park there had been lots of bush fires a year or two ago; most of the bark on the trees are still black. Fascinating.

The train ride back to Sydney took a little over two hours. I walked the mile or so back to hotel and crashed around eleven.










The Three Sisters in the Blue Mountains.

Church: "One Day" (1983)

I'm still on the plane on the way to Australia for my vacay. Here's an Australian band who I dug until their drummer (Richard Ploog) left around 1992. "One Day" is from their best album, Seance, in my opinion. Love the the line at the end: "I go back to my blindness so that I may see again".

"One Day"

Snow Job: Jack Frost (1996)

I finally got around to getting a hold of this 1996 album -- a side project from The Church's Steve Kilbey and The Go-Between's Grant McLennan. I really enjoyed their first album, 1991's self-titled CD, but I waited until now to get a hold of Snow Job for two reasons: a) it was only available as an import, which meant a high sticker price, and b) I heard it sounded very Church-y, which I wasn't too excited about because I loved The Church in the '80s when they were a great pop-rock act -- I'm not a fan of their work since the '90s . . . too psychedelic. Fortunately, Snow Job isn't too psychedelic. McLennan's pop sensibilities are in there as much as possible. Good stuff if you're a fan of these two songwriter's main bands.
"Cousin / Angel"