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: