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.
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.
