The Great Big Review (Kamloops and Red Deer)...

“But perhaps the evening’s biggest real crowd-pleaser was Hallett’s spirited version of Come and I Will Sing You, a call and a response invoking audience participation” by Lana Michelin from the Red Deer Advocate published 29 October 2013.

“A highlight of the evening included a rousing rendition of The Night Pat Murphy Died. Fans responded in turn, and nearly blew the roof of with their applause” by Jason Hewlett from the Daily News published 26 October 2013.

As the Great Big Sea tour travels throughout the US and Canada I found several great reviews and photographs in the local media from people offering a fresh, professional and inclusive perspective. Some of those from the Canadian leg are copied below. 

The first review “Great Big Sea show a Celtic celebration” is by Lana Michelin from the Red Deer Advocate in Alberta, Canada with photographs by Jeff Stokoe. 

A cold corner of the Prairies unofficially became a rollicking part of The Rock, when Great Big Sea performed a celebratory Celtic-flavoured concert at Red Deer’s Memorial Centre.

“Sounds more like a Friday night than a Monday night, hey Red Deer?” said lead singer Alan Doyle to a full-house crowd of about 700 people — everyone from children to seniors. Judging by the responding whoops and cheers, many transplanted East Coasters were undoubtedly part of the enthusiastic, party-hardy throng.

If these Red Deer-area residents were starved for hearty Atlantic musical fare, then the boisterous Newfoundland-based band was only too happy to serve up foot-stomping sounds from home.

Great Big Sea turned the Memorial Centre into something akin to a lively bar on St. John’s George Street by launching into some greatest hits and some recognizable standards: Fans leapt to their feet for Ordinary Day, followed by a clap-along version of Donkey Riding, done a cappella style to the beat of an Irish drum, and the infectious When I’m Up (I Can’t Get Down).

The group’s bodhran, guitar and tin whistle player, Séan McCann, showed off strong vocals on The Night Pat Murphy Died, about exuberant Irish wakes. “Some of the boys got loaded drunk and they ain’t been sober yet!” sang McCann, as fellow band member Bob Hallett, (also a guitarist, tin whistler and fiddler) accompanied him on the squeeze box.

The band, on its 20th anniversary tour, launched into Heart of Hearts, with the lyrics, “I drove a million miles with you, I broke a million smiles with you ... in my heart of hearts, I’d do it all again!” It was clearly a love song to the audience, made more apparent by the hearts suddenly appearing on a video screen behind the band.

The screen was framed by two large, neon-lit Xs, standing for XX, the title of Great Big Sea’s current greatest hits album.

Looking over the sea of fans’ faces, Doyle declared, “Sold out to the doors! Red Deer was the first concert to sell out on the whole tour.”

McCann joked that he’s always liked Red Deer as it’s Rudolph’s the Red Nosed Reindeer’s hometown, “And he’s Santa’s freakin’ favourite!”

After the two musicians somehow segued to the topic of naughty films shown on Petty Harbour’s first French-Canadian TV channel, and how a third X in the band’s album title would have led it to be stocked in adult video stores, Doyle decided “I feel we should sing something more wholesome now.”

A Boat like Gideon Brown proved just the ticket, with its happy flute solo.

The gifted band members played two sets with an intermission, pulling off great covers of Pete Townshend’s Let My Love Open the Door and Slade’s Run Runaway. Great Big Sea also performed the hit Consequence Free, When I am King, Goin’ Up, and the comical tunes Scolding Wife and Helmethead, about hockey.

As well there were Lukey, Penelope and a poignant acoustic version of Nothing But a Song.

Even more memorable was the haunting The River Driver’s Lament that started with just Doyle’s voice, but gradually included four-part harmony, thanks to Hallett, McCann and bassist Murray Foster. Drummer Kris Macfarlane kept the beat on the bodhran.

Safe Upon the Shore, a ballad that advises never asking favours from the heartless sea, was another shiver-inducing tune.

Additional powerful moments were provided by McCann’s performance of Far from the Shores of England — a tribute to the brave souls who sailed off into the unknown on wooden ships, and Doyle’s Yankee Sailor, about a poor Newfoundland lad whose girlfriend took up with a U.S. sailor stationed on a naval base on the island.

Fans warmed up to the band’s rousing performance of early hit Wadd’ya At, which was used for a 1990s Newfoundland phone commercial that was shown on the concert’s video scene. Doyle later quipped, “For all you young people out there, those big boxes are telephones. One call at a time was all they were good for.”

But perhaps the evening’s biggest real crowd-pleaser was Hallett’s spirited version of Come and I Will Sing You, a call and response tune involving audience participation.

The largely upbeat concert that left fans standing, cheering and dancing wound to a regretful close with Old Black Rum and Live This Life — about appreciating every minute of our sad, happy, complicated lives.

“I’m grateful for this evening,” said Doyle to his fervent followers. A fan shouted back, “Many more years!”

Hopefully not too many more, though, before Great Big Sea returns to reindeer, I mean, Red Deer.

The second review “A great big two decades” by Jason Hewlett from the Daily News in Kamloops, British Columbia with photographs Murray Mitchell. (No copyright infringement intended for either the article or photographs).

Leave it to multi-platinum Canadian band Great Big Sea to celebrate two decades in the music business with an arena show that felt a kitchen party.

But that’s exactly what vocalist/guitarist Alan Doyle, tin whistle/bodhran player Sean McCann and accordionist/fiddler Bob Hallet did at the Interior Savings Centre Friday night.

Sure, Great Big Sea stood on a large stage backlit by twin Roman numeral Xs — representative of their recent compilation XX — but the performance evoked the band’s good-time drinking mood usually reserved for a more informal setting.

This, of course, is what Great Big Sea is known for, having garnered success by turning traditional Newfoundland songs into radio-friendly rock hits.

Signature song Ordinary Day kicked off the first of two lengthy sets along with a video highlighting Great Big Sea’s 20 years in the industry.

“It’s Friday night in Kamloops and it’s going off,” shouted Doyle.

The audience’s enthusiastic response set the stage for the rest of the night as people clapped, sang along to the lyrics and pumped fists in the air.

It didn’t matter if Doyle, McCann and Hallett played their big hits, original tunes or cover songs, Kamloops knew them all.

“Thank you very much,” Doyle said after a particularly impressive sing-a-long.

A highlight of the evening included a rousing rendition of The Night Paddy Murphy Died. Fans responded in turn, and nearly blew the roof off with their applause.

“This isn’t a disco. This is Friday night in Kamloops,” Doyle observed. “You’re looking very good tonight.”

There was also time for some joking around.

“We’re Great Big Sea and we’ve come all the way from Newfoundland, where the palm trees grow,” said Doyle. “Bring your bikinis.”

e said the concert was 20 years in the making, and that they’d do it all again in a second. Given the dancing, singing and general fun on display, no one in the ISC would be disappointed.

Great Big Sea first played Kamloops in 1993 at Thompson Rivers University, then the University College of the Cariboo.

Dear Readers...Taking a break.

Illegal downloading...

Recently a member of Great Big Sea made some comments about illegal downloading and viewing and accessing music. It is a great opportunity for all of us to get on board and discuss this and make ethical choices.

I am off to do research about Canada and illegal downloading/music and will be back soon with some info.

Smith Liz.

Lyndahere And What is an IGP?...Some thoughts.

In memory of the Indoor Garden Party Part One...

As Russell Crowe and the boys (Alan Doyle and Scott Grimes) reminded their Twitter followers they had planned an Indoor Garden Party in Australia in January 2014 @Lyndahere or Lynda Elstad retweeted links to her bootlegged videos of the shows in New York.

@lyndahere Favourite IGP @russellcrowe @alanthomasdoyle @scottgrimes @samathabarks @calfalkmusic @owenmoley @officialsting Youtube (with Sting) 13 October 2013

@lyndahere More IGP @russellcrowe @alanthomasdoyle @scottgrimes @samathabarks @calfalkmusic @owenmoley @realhughjackmam Youtube (with Hugh Jackman) 13 October 2013

@lyndahere More IGP @russellcrowe @alanthomasdoyle @scottgrimes @samathabarks @calfalkmusic @owenmoley Youtube 13 October 2013

@lyndahere Keep getting asked “What is an IGP” Think @russellcrowe @alanthomasdoyle @scottgrimes @samathabarks et all doing this Youtube 13 October 2013

So I went in search of information about the Indoor Garden Parties and in particular the first one in St John’s. It lead me on an interesting journey through a range of information. I have many questions, for example, how does an ordinary person or even the professional journalist with an interest in these events find information. What is the role of the ordinary person in recording the daily events (ordinary and spectacular) across our world, the validity of their knowledge and their experience (as against a journalist) and our need to be critical of what we read? What is happening to journalism and reporting as they turn more and more to ordinary people for their information from social media pages and their home made videos and even illegal bootlegged videos to support their story? I am not the first to ask these questions and they have been discussed elsewhere.

After visiting a range of fan blogs that collect information on Russell Crowe (and reading reviews of the concert one by an American who couldn’t even spell the name of the place where she was Newfoundland (she spelt Newfoundland New Foundland all the way through her review…but hey we all make mistakes and I have made plenty) I visited @lyndahere’s blog Between the Rock and A Hard Place and her post “Preamble Indoor Garden Party Crowe/Doyle Songbook” published on the 9 August 2011. It contained a lot of gabble about how sick she was and drugged up during the concert and how long it would take to sort it all out and write about it. Those comments didn’t leave me having much faith about what was going to be written. She did however manage to mention the cast and a bit about the Crowe/Doyle Songbook Vol. 3 released on a range of digital download sites and where the words were available. Instead of writing about the performance she used it as an opportunity to attack the fandom as she often does.

@lyndahere doesn’t discuss what lead to these comments in the main part of the blog post but maybe it had something to do with the availability of a limited amount of tickets. A lot of fans were upset because to be honest they didn’t have the time or money to go to St John’s Newfoundland and stand outside the venue to get tickets as she had.

Here are some of her comments copied from her blog post dated 9 August 2011… “Thanks for all the comments made here and messages sent over on my You Tube page. Informative, enlightening, and occasionally hilarious. There are clearly some great tales for the telling over in Croweland, and I hope someone decides to share them publicly one day. But not me I shouldn’t even post any of these comments publicly, for fear of sparking World War Whatever in Croweland…speaking of trying not to cause controversy.” (When looking for information on blogs I found out many of the superfans got tickets and wrote blog posts and took videos).

Though I did appreciate those comments, and, for all the admittedly scant comfort it is worth, I can offer an assurance that the desire to create and then cling to the illusion of an “exclusively” of Celebrity Possession is most definitely not unique to any one fandom. Quite the contrary.

I will take this occasion to repeat one of my two personal mantras: Who owns the Band? The Band does. Applies equally well to musicians/actors. And then there’s the primary mantra. Which applies even better and works wonderfully well, when I have the sense to remember it: It’s about him, not about me…

Thanks again for all those who made comments here. These are all I am going to put up right now, for the sake of peace, but all were read and appreciated. Even the snarky ones. There is always something to learn from the snarky ones.

It is now a couple of days later and @lyndahere has attempted to write another blog post “Heart of Darkness...” posted on the 14 August 2011. I have read several paragraphs about the Newfoundland Chocolate Company and the truffles made in their honor but I have yet to find out about anything that happened and losing hope fast. The paragraphs continue with an analogy only she understands about chocolate, Partridgeberries and Kiwi fruit.

One of the first points she wrote about the concert was…”The content of each show was basically identical. Thought the tone of each show varied somewhat from each other, a variance most notable in Alan’s own performances. The audiences were different too, subtly but noticeable too, those differences played their own role in affecting Alan’s performance later…More on that later… Each show was unique, as shows always are. But the setlist order – ‘And This is What Happened” of the show remained the same”. Yet she has loaded nearly all of her bootlegged recordings on to Youtube from St John’s and New York. This philosophy runs in opposition to the views of Russell Crowe and Alan Doyle and can be seen in the way they presented the Crowe/Doyle Songbook Vol 3, the demos offered and the range of official videos available on the South Sydney Media Youtube site.

Her post continues. I was interested to read her description of the national anthems and in particular the absence of the Australian anthem. She had decided an anthem that she did not know the name of and I suspect has never heard (Advance Australia Fair), nor Waltzing Matilda the unofficial Australian anthem did not measure up to the occasion in St John’s Newfoundland. “And then it was Russell’s turn. After deciding neither the Australian Anthem nor Waltzing Matilda measured up to the occasion, he instead chose a heartily vigourous –so much so as to be wee bit daunting –Aussie folk song” for which I did not know the name of until I spotted the video ‘Click Go The Shears’. This was a different interpretation from another superfan report stating Waltzing Matilda was too “depressing”.

A couple of years later we found out Russell Crowe is not an Australian and does not have citizenship. Breaking out in an anthem that goes something like “Australian’s all let us rejoice for we are young and free” would have been a little out of place because well he is not an Australian even though his wife Danielle and children are. The New Zealand national anthem God Defend New Zealand has two parts one in the Indigenous language Maori and the second in English and would have been quite a challenge. Plus Russell hasn’t lived in New Zealand for years. A wise choice made by Russell Crowe not to include an anthem that would have come back to bite him in the end.

There was little reference in @lyndahere’s blog page to the story about the song Raewyn “Raewyn seems to me to possess very much of a kiwi flavour, sharpened and defined by the partridgeberry, but still kiwi predominant. And a wonderful beginning for all that would come after” (14 August 2011). (Perhaps this is somewhere else). The story told by Russell Crowe behind the song Raewyn was beautiful and sad about the death of two of his family members. It was obviously very difficult and painful for him to talk about it and share with an audience. Maybe this story was on her bootlegged video but I didn’t watch it as there was an official video on Russell Crowe’s South Sydney Media Youtube site.

After checking several fan pages that collect information about Russell Crowe and local newspapers in St John’s there does not seem to be any official reviews of the concert by any of the local media only superfans. There was one brief mention (but not the story) of beautiful moments like this one between an artist/musician and the audience on their blog posts. The problem with superfan blog posts is that on one hand they may record an event in the absence of journalists and the other hand they may not contain significant information about what happens. It is frustrating leaving reporting to supersfans as it may only contain a personal perspective of what is significant to them rather than significant events of the overall performance. There is lots of other trivial information that someone has to wade through to get to that.

We do have several official videos recorded and available on the South Sydney Media Youtube site which I have watched many times. I can’t do long waffley paragraphs about songs or music like @lyndahere that in the end don’t really say anything. Perhaps what I love about the legal videos made by Russell Crowe is the quality of the sound in particular the sound of the harmonies and Alan Doyle playing guitar. Every time I watch them they leave me wanting more rather than feeling full and complete. It is so easy to be gluttonous and feed our wants on illegal bootlegged recordings such as those @lyndahere but I shall resist the temptation.

While there is no professional review I could find of the concert there is a lovely review of the Crowe/Doyle Songbook Vol. 3 in the Newfoundland and Labrador Independent newspaper in St John’s around the same time as the concert. There definitely is a place for professional reviews, short sweet and to the point with a bit of honesty thrown in for good measure. 

I haven't included any photographs from the performances. There are some great photographs taken from the videos of the Indoor Garden Pary onYoutube but were most likely done without permission and infringe copyright legislation. So they have not been included. 

Some images from the star.com.ca and offtheleash.com.ca of Russell Crowe and Alan Doyle in St John's Newfoundland. (no copyright infringement intended) 

(no copyright infringement intended). 

Russell Crowe & Alan Doyle The Crowe/Doyle Songbook, Vol. III

Collaborative effort evolves from side-project to serious endeavour

By Ryan Belbin on the 4 August 2011

It’s easy to take the collaborative friendship of Great Big Sea frontman Alan Doyle and Oscar-winning actor Russell Crowe for granted, particularly with the former’s role as a minstrel in Robin Hood last year, and the latter’s highly publicised visit to St. John’s. Outside of the spotlight, however, the two initially bonded over music, writing and recording songs together over the last number of years.

The Crowe/Doyle Songbook, Vol. III is Crowe’s most recent foray into music, since the Doyle-produced My Hand, My Heart in 2005. Whereas that record was clearly based around Crowe’s band, the Ordinary Fear of God, the Songbook is all about the duo.

The album, which exists solely as a digital record, can best be described as a singer-songwriter collection of tunes. Doyle’s band is a good starting place in describing the sound, particularly with its contemporary folk vibes, but that doesn’t quite cut it. There are influences of rock (“Perfect in your Eyes”), old-school country (“Killing Song”), heraldic folk (“Queen Jane”), and even R&B (“Love is Impossible”), but the production and mouthfuls of poetry are what stand out. The nine songs on Songbook are denser in subject matter, music, and lyrics – don’t expect any breezy pop songs, but don’t misinterpret the album for pessimistic or cynical.

Take the chorus from the leading single, “Too Far Gone,” about a doomed relationship: “Your fingers tear at my skin / Release the blood, let the feeding begin / Your intentions will never be blamed / We’re both too far gone to be saved.” The word that immediately comes to mind is sophisticated, and any concern that this project is just a novelty ought to be dismissed.

The two musicians are joined on most songs by Danielle Spencer, an Australian recording artist who also happens to be married to Crowe. With three distinct voices at their disposal, the opportunities for interesting arrangements and nuances are numerous, especially considering that Great Big Sea have turned harmonies into a trump card. However, the performers share the mic more often than not, usually singing the same melody line, reminiscent of a few friends having an impromptu jam. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the lyrics and the music are at such a high calibre that you can’t help but wonder how the songs would have sounded if they had taken the effort to explore the vocal arrangements. There are glimpses of this, where the voices become distinct and offer different perspectives to a single song – the bridge of “Sadness of a Woman” does it best – and they make the melding all the more conspicuous.

Crowe himself has been performing music since the ’90s, but it’s tough to picture the Gladiator with a guitar, and begs the question of whether or not he can actually sing. His growl is so similar to Doyle’s baritone that the two voices gravitate towards a single entity, and when one stands out it’s usually Doyle, so we never really get to hear him alone. Still, he’s not sitting on the sidelines or ridding any coattails (or, even worse, lending his famous name to the project); the partnership demands the two musicians complement each other, and that’s ultimately what happens.

Also noteworthy, The Crowe/Doyle Songbook includes the original demos of all the songs. Although the final versions are stronger, these tracks offer the bare bones of the lyrics and instrumentation, and suddenly the “friends having a jam” image becomes “friends having a jam, and you’re personally invited.” With the release of this album coinciding with Doyle and Crowe’s intimate and informal shows at the LSPU Hall, the duality makes sense: two experienced artists at the top of their games, crafting quality songs that, when the lights go down and they abandon their egos to embrace acoustic vulnerability, are still capable of standing on their own.

By the sounds of it, neither is too far gone yet:

Lyndahere And Testify...A reflection.

@lyndahere to @alanthomasdoyle They edited you. And no Testify. Friggin’ time constraints. Sure am glad there’s a video 18 September 2013 (Definitely Not The Opera: It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time: Hosted by Sook-Yin Lee, with guests Alan Doyle and others).

The song Testify is perhaps one of Lyndahere’s or Lynda Elstad's most bootlegged songs on her YouTube site Between The Rock. On a search of her YouTube site I found no less that thirteen bootlegged copies of the song in the last year or so. There are the Alan Doyle solo versions, the Alan Doyle Band versions, the Russell Crowe and the Alan Doyle Indoor Garden Party versions over the last couple of years in different spaces and at different times. There are copies not on her site the official video with Alan Doyle and Russell Crowe filmed in Iceland, the Russell Crowe and Alan Doyle original version with Russell Crowe singing in the Ordinary Fear of God, and Russell Crowe singing Testify with Marcia Hines and Alan Doyle at the Australian Film Industry Awards in 2007. Then there are various copies by a whole range of other bootleggers available including those who attended a performance in Iceland. My favourite is the bootlegged copy made of an Alan Doyle solo performance in Halifax on the tour to promote his solo album by a bootlegger for personal use. I also enjoy the version on Alan Doyle’s solo album CD and Russell Crowe’s version at the Australian Film and Television Awards in March 2007 also with Alan Doyle and Marcia Hines.  

Lyndahere was obviously upset Testify wasn’t included in this CBC radio special. On her blog post Between the Rock and a Hard Place on 27 September 2013 she wrote “I'm including a CBC audio link (listen and download) to the broadcast version of this DNTO episode. Time constraints led to a sizeable number of edits from the live performance, the most significant of which (certainly to me) was the exclusion of Alan's first song, Testify - which can be both seen and heard (along with an utterly charming intro) in the video posted a bit farther down below”. No reason was added to the post as to why there was such a significant exclusion other than time constraints.

To find out why a bootlegger feels it is necessary to make so many copies of the same music I returned to some of my previous posts on bootlegging and went looking for some new perspectives. Personally I still don’t understand why people would prefer a bootlegged performance over a professionally recorded version. I don’t mean any offence to Alan Doyle and Russell Crowe but perhaps the reason it wasn’t included is that are so many versions available on YouTube and to add it into the special didn’t really tell us anything new about the evolution of the song. Lyndahere wrote on the same blog post “I find it fascinating to compare the effect of listening to Alan tell his tale via the radio medium to that of  being able to watch him tell it - a delightfully whole-body telling, as he does - in the video. Radio performance has got to be a challenging gig, all the more so when the artist must balance that audio-only challenge with the requirements of performing effectively in front of a live audience; DNTO host Sook-Yin Lee is, not at all surprisingly, a master at maintaining that balance”. It certainly makes it more challenging for musicians and artists when bootleggers like her are constantly in their face recording every syllable that comes out of their mouth and taking photos and videos of every movement and then loading it up onto YouTube.

Perhaps the real interest in this song lies in the relationship between the co-writers and performers Alan Doyle and Russell Crowe and the evolution of the meaning and performance of the song. In 2006 the song Testify was written and performed by Russell Crowe although he admits he had some help in writing it. In an interview in the Australian newspaper The Age in March 2006 to help advertise some pub gigs he was doing wrote “That song, Testify, was first performed at the AFI Awards by Crowe and Marcia Hines…The lyrics compare his situation with Ned Kelly's: "When they hang me from the gallows tree/'Such is life,' they'll hear me hiss".. Crowe is performing songs off his first solo album, My Hand, My Heart, with his band the Ordinary Fear of God. He had a lot of help composing the songs, but the sentiments expressed in numbers such as Land of the Second Chance reveal Crowe's affinity with the land and for the common man, like an Australian Bruce Springsteen”.(The Age April 5 2006). Although he admits he had some help with writing the song he did not say where from.

It has been seven years since that interview and his relationship has changed with Alan Doyle moving from band member and co-writer to fully fledged music partners. What is interesting is how the song written with Russell Crowe (and associated with Australia’s most famous outlaw) came to be ‘owned’ and performed by Alan Doyle ,a Newfoundlander from Canada several years later appearing on his first solo album Boy on Bridge. Alan Doyle has truly put his own stamp on it. The booklet in the CD describes how the song was recorded at the ‘Warehouse studio in Vancouver, a hotel somewhere and his basement in St. John’s’. There are two other songs written with Russell Crowe Lover’s Hands and Where I Belong also on the album. It provides an insight into the friendship and business relationship between the two men but it doesn’t provide insight into how the song became Alan Doyle’s and what it means to him as a performer.   

I found this interesting blog post titled ‘Getting the Pen to Paper’ from 2007 by Tim Rostrum on Blogger describing a performance of the song Testify at the Australian Film Industry awards in March 2007.

Russell Crowe and his band, the Ordinary Fear of God sing Testify to grab the attention of his audience who are not the church going types. He does through his fun lyrics and the stage setups. He creates a great party atmosphere by doing so.

The stage props are of religious icons. He has stain glass up which is well known to mostly be inside of churches. He has lights that show crosses. He wants show the people these things to remind them of what they think about church. To most not church going people these are things that make them think of how a preacher has said how damned they are if they don’t get saved. They also think of changes that they must make in their lives.

With the great setup of the stage his words take greater strength. His words are of a man who recognizes the eternal damnation of his soul and fakes his way through the cleansing process of baptism. His words describe the man being anxious to be baptized to be cleansed, but just for that point. He makes not mention of wanting to follow Christ or any other motives other than be cleansed so he is clean. The second he gets cleansed he shoots off though the water. This appeals to those that want the good thought of being cleansed without any responsibilities attached.

All in all it is a song that reaches those that want to be free of moral responsibilities but want to be good. The thoughts that come from the setup of the stage and the lyrics that he sings all appeal to those people.