This blog gets me crossing paths with individuals who have something to add about the world as they understand it. Like the Discover feature on TikTok, imagination is an alluring quality.
Jim Adams is a writer with a fascination for music, who concocts prompts for a blog. He thinks of words for participants to find in song titles, or lyrics, in a blog format.
Participants discuss the songs with a common element, the writing prompt, as it appears in the lyrics, or in the song title.
I have read some of his participants’ blog discussions and I have followed along some of what is new with Jim. He publishes the prompts carefully, only a few at a time, to let his followers know what is coming.
For November 8, Jim prompted “days of the week,” and the song I thought of is Monday Morning, by the band The Church. It has taken me a good deal longer than I anticipated to get this post ready and finished, but I thought the finished post might be good enough that I should go ahead and post it.
The Church is a rock band with a dark flavour for their music, rarely undemanding, weird at times, and atmospheric. It’s not from my part of the world, but I like it.
The Church in the year 1990 wrote Monday Morning, singer Steve Kilbey, drummer Richard Ploog, guitarist Marty Wilson-Piper, and, guitarist Peter Koppes, for the record Gold Afternoon Fix.
At the time, The Church excused the completed collection as an innovative disappointment. The percussion on the melodies didn’t turn out.
One of the songs for Gold Afternoon Fix is entitled Disappointment. “Late for an appointment, clothes everywhere/I cannot find my memory anywhere/Ah disappointment just doesn’t care,” Kilbey sings.
I think Monday Morning is a song that initially appeared only on the CD release of the album, not the LP. For me, The Church is a charming band, and I believe founding songwriter Steve Kilbey has since allowed that his original opinion about the album needn’t have been so critical.
The Church began in 1980 as a new wave band, a music genre emerging after the punk rock scene. The Church was pretty noisy, good, though. By 1983 they were making more experimental music.
By creative failure, I only mean music that lacks integrity, bad music. That’s not The Church. They are a band I quite like.
The chief problem with Gold Afternoon Fix is really that the personnel couldn’t come to an agreement about the percussion. The melodies are very acceptable at any rate. For example, I like the tune Monday Morning.
Perhaps the song is about a weekend fling, the freedom of time spent away, as from office life, when a free heart gets heavy again, when Monday morning arrives, and the weekend has dispersed.
The Church was in L.A. and the culture of the day must have touched on the lyrics Kilbey wrote for the record. The air was full of energy.
As far as the discography by The Church, Gold Afternoon Fix followed their record Starfish, their 1988 album, which was a major achievement for them, and which contains the exemplary melody Under the Milky Way. The record Priest = Aura followed two years after the fact, in 1992. Steve Kilbey recalls fondly the 1990s in Sydney, Australia, he’s said on Twitter.
Gold Afternoon Fix is an album I like. The band did have trouble getting the percussion for Gold Afternoon Fix correct, and drummer Richard Ploog only plays drums on four of the songs on the album. The other songs have the beat of a drum machine.
Other than Steve Kilbey writing occasional new material with a drum machine, the band had never considered using that kind of percussion on an album. They’d become known for being a great beat. Richard Ploog, the drummer, couldn’t finish recording the drums for Gold Afternoon Fix, however.
Mr. Ploog’s interest in music had stopped meeting the vision the other members of the band had, for the songs. Ploog’s energy was turning into contention, with the interest in music the other three artists had.
Ironically, one of the first songs The Church did, in their early years as a band, is called Too Fast for You. “Oh, and I hope I’m not going too fast for you/And don’t believe it when they say it’s over,” Kilbey sings.
Wikipedia says drummer Nick Ward played on their first collection; through the 1980s the band’s steady drummer, for a very long time, 1982-1990, was Richard, who left the band after Gold Afternoon Fix. Mr. Ploog withdrew from The Church around 1990, to invest more energy with his better half.
In Marty Wilson-Piper’s blog, Wilson-Piper wrote in October 2011 that Monday Morning is one of the four songs that Mr. Ploog is playing on. Marty Wilson-Piper is one of the founding members of the band, along with Kilbey and Koppes. He calls attention to Peter Koppes’ mandolin, on the melody, and that is enough to appreciate the tune.
Monday Morning is one of the last songs Mr. Ploog played on while The Church was a big commercial act. They continued to make records for years, but after 1990 they weren’t the same band, however good Priest = Aura turned out to be (a good album, too).
In my first year of school, 1996, I read a gathering about The Church. There were some jokes about The Church’s concert film for Gold Afternoon Fix turning up in retail discount bins. It was a joke about Gold Afternoon Fix not being their best album.
All things considered, fans’ excitement for The Church was unmistakable, and Richard Ploog got a ton of regard from audience members. Gold Afternoon Fix also sold very well, commercially successful. Ironically, the commercial rock was hard to combine with artistic integrity, Wilson-Piper’s comments reflect in his blog.
The difference between Gold Afternoon Fix and some of the earlier music by The Church, like Remote Luxury and Persia may be that the band’s vision for their music came across loud and clear on releases like the aforementioned, and was more subdued, so to speak, by 1990. To tell the truth, I don’t know that the meaning of a song like Shadow Cabinet is clear to me; however, Shadow Cabinet was the name of one fan webpage. Though years ago, I am sure it would have seemed to be quite a simple page compared to how it might have been today; pictures and blocks of text.
I sat in one of the rooms of the home of one of my uncles looking for The Church on AOL. The Church was one of my very first Internet searches ever, and certainly the first band that I researched on the Internet.
The meaning of the lyrics for Monday Morning are clearer for me than words like “Queueing in the ruins in the wake of the gale it’s/Harmony I say” in Shadow Cabinet.
These days both Koppes and Wilson-Piper have moved on from The Church. Koppes continues to write and record music; both Kilbey and Koppes had new albums in the autumn on 2020.
Fans of The Church are sometimes referred to as their Army.
Thank you to Jim for his prompt, “days of the week.”
https://jimadamsauthordotcom.wordpress.com/2020/11/07/a-week-is-a-unit-of-time/
As well, you’re welcome to like, follow and/or comment here.
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Monday Morning
Beyond the city, and evening dust
Dreams and thunder rattle the rust
You had an idea that you won’t have again
She’s forgotten your name and hopes you’ll do the same
Start of the ash, and the end of the flames
Burning you turning you
There was a lifetime spent in the sun
Hundreds of chances, blew every one
Dice rolled, double six, double six, double six
Owner of trouble, flesh blood and bricks
You had an idea that you won’t have again
She’s forgotten your name and hopes you’ll do the same
The start of the ash and the end of the flames
Turning you burning you
Oh Monday morning, the cracks become quite clear
Oh Monday morning, take me back, leave me hare
Beyond the city, and evening dust
Dreams and thunder rattle the rust
You had an idea that you won’t have again
She’s forgotten your name and hopes you’ll do the same
Start of the ash, and the end of the flames
Burning you turning you around
//genius.com/songs/1178162/embed.js
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