As an observer of this fandom I always find the announcement
of any Indoor Garden Party concerts and the events that follow interesting. So
I went in search of information about the concerts by amateur and professional
concert goers. The first IGP concerts in Newfoundland have been reported on
another post. I was interested in two things the role of the concert goer in
the reporting of a current event and the collaboration of a celebrity and fans
using a concert bootlegged videos and fan blogs to generate publicity rather
than the regular means of the paparazzi. Through fan reports I have found out
that Russell Crowe was filming and there were bag searches conducted on video
cameras. However, @lyndahere has managed to escape these and recorded despite
their wishes. I have attached two articles one by a fan Byran Kremkau from
JunkRead.com who takes wonderful concert photographs and was denied permission to photograph and film. The other article is by regular
Russell Crowe and Alan Doyle concert goer Jaime Lubin from the Huffington Post
about one of the concerts at the Gramercy Theatre that united fans throughout
the world. There were no photographs or bootlegged videos attached to this article.
To me there are six fandoms that form this group (although I have moved on from the Russell Crowe fandom and the
Indoor Garden Party fandom a while ago). There is the Russell Crowe fandom, the
Indoor Garden Party fandom, the Scott Grimes fandom, the Great Big Sea fandom, the
television show Republic of Doyle and Allan Hawco fandom and more recently the
Cocksure Lads fandom that all link fans and the artists and musicians in them.
Each fandom has it’s own group of fans including big name fans and own rules
and ways of operating that are controlled by the artist or musicians concerned.
Many of the fans move across the fandoms, although many
don’t. Fans are known to each other mostly through social media in particular
the big name fans and have different levels or participation including going to
concerts and participating in social media. It is always interesting when
concerts and events like this are announced and to follow the discussions about
who goes and doesn’t, the meetings, the concerts themselves and what happens
afterwards in particular the sharing of information.
Fandoms connect people around the world as people travel to
fandom events like concerts as mentioned in Jaime Lubin’s article from the
Huffington Post article attached below. But how does this affect those fans who
cannot go through no fault of their own may be excluded unintentionally. Many
of the fans in all these fandoms go to concerts on a regular basis in Canada
and America. I am wondering can a fan who doesn’t go to concerts and events actively
participate in these fandoms with what is provided and shared amongst social
media and the Internet? (We are allegedly covered by fans @lyndahere).
When Russell Crowe’s Indoor Garden Parties moved
from St John’s to New York they opened up a whole new level of access of people
to attend including professionals and fans, reporting, taking photographs and
bootlegged videos. The wonderful thing about exploring the information
and bootlegged videos was the stiff competition from professionals and big name
fans from all the fandoms including Great Big Sea, Scott Grimes and Russell
Crowe alike as both concerts became more accessible in particular to American
fans. The regular Russell Crowe and Scott Grimes fan sites now recognised and
include the fan stories and photographs as a legitimate source of information
and part of the story.
I didn’t see anything unethical in watching some of those
bootlegged videos as they were from fans who were not professional bootleggers
and bootlegging is part of the concert experience. The quality of them varied
from absolutely dreadful with little or no editing that are poor quality
material to exceptionally good from seasoned concert goers. Many of the videos
had an exceptionally large number of hits due to being placed on Youtube
immediately after the concert as social media exploded with the news of special
guests and celebrity attendance.
The Hugh Jackman’s surprise visit to perform a Les Miserable song at the Indoor Garden Party at Joe’s Pub in New York was recorded not only by @lyndahere but by others and circulated within minutes on social media sites that generated thousands of hits and an incredible publicity all for free. The fans if they are in the right place at the right time can make money via Youtube and have their 15 minutes of fame as an Internet sensation. Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman and the others involved receive a considerable amount of publicity without having to pay anything for the service. The ultimate win win situation. The fan bootlegged videos now provide the basis of many news and entertainment stories.
It was clear from the fan blog about the Gramercy
Theatre concerts Russell Crowe did not want fans making bootlegged
recordings however, @lyndahere went ahead anyway. Her long waffly titles and
the time it takes her to edit photos and write make it difficult to locate
anything on her blog. While she did write a little about the shows at Joe's Pub
I found it difficult to locate information about the concerts at the Gramercy
Theatre. It is unfortunate for a person so concerned with sharing what happened
at the concerts through photographs and bootlegged videos, they are done so long
after the event and people have missed their opportunity to participate in the
fandom experiences on social media. She ignores the wishes of the artists and
musicians as it was clearly being filmed. Then those people who do the right
thing and only record on their phones mostly for personal use, and apply for permission and @lyndahere
sneaks in her camera. @lyndahere while willing to share other people’s work
does not allow people to download pages from her webpage Between the Rock.
Some of the entertainment sites on the Internet were totally
frustrating and wasted my Internet download capacity and time as they contained
nothing more than a brief mention of the Indoor Garden Parties and a connection
to a lot of @lyndahere’s illegal bootlegging videos and fortunately some other
fans who went. These places are nothing more than spaces for advertising on
Google. How the information and links get there I do not know. The benefits of
having a concert in New York City is that there are many experienced amateur
concert reporters willing to get information up fast and so that everyone who
is interested in can participate.
The first article was by a concert fan who reported on the
event to JunkRead. Byran Kremkau was surprised at the lack of paparazzi that was
there. This seems to be a common theme that runs throughout the Indoor Garden
Parties regardless of where they located. The paparazzi is replaced with reporting
by big name fans on fan blogs.
The second article I found was this well circulated article
by experienced Russell Crowe and Alan Doyle concert goer Jaime Lubin from the
Huffington Post about the concert at the Gramercy Theatre in New York city in
2012. Always a pleasure to read Jaime but just one correction Russell Crowe is
not an Australian as mentioned in your article. He has not taken citizenship.
Indoor Garden Party (Russell Crowe, Alan Doyle, Sting) Gramercy
Theatre New York on the 12 October 2012 (no copyright infringement intended) by
Byran Kremkau from JunkRead.com.
Published October 13th 2012
Other Performers: Samantha Barks, Scott Grimes, Kevin
Durand, Size2Shoes and others (no copyright infringement intended).
It was an all-star night last night at Gramercy Theater for The Indoor Garden Party in New York City. Actor Russell Crowe and Great Big Sea’s Alan Doyle performed many songs off their album The Crowe / Doyle Songbook Vol. III, but they got help from their friends & colleagues Samantha Barks, Scott Grimes, Kevin Durand, and Irish group Size2Shoes. Oh yeah, and Sting made an appearance at the end too!!!
The show was sold out (I felt like I was youngest one there haha), and the club had a weird setup. I had general admission tickets, so my wife Kristen and I had to stand up in between the stadium seating in the back and the seats down on the ground. I wanted to sit on the side but apparently that wasn’t okay. Most people had seats and there wasn’t many people standing. We ended up being close to the bar. Camera crew was around including a big crane and tons of video cameras. I can see why I was turned down to shoot this.
Russell Crowe came out with a wireless mic and was leading the crowd in vocal warm-ups and making everyone sound like horses. It was weird and funny, and he performed a “Ol’ Man River” from Showboat. After that he asked Alan Doyle, Scott Grimes and others to come out and explain how they warm-up and get ready. They decided to sing “Hit The Ground and Run” from the latest Great Big Sea album to warm up to. After that, Russell and Alan went through their Songbook III album with the help of Samantha Barks on vocals. She’s also going to appear in Les Misérables as well, and had a beautiful singing voice not to mention she was just beautiful as well. They played songs like “Love is Impossible,” “Perfect in Your Eyes,” “Killing Song,” “Disappeared” and “Too Far Gone.” I particularly liked hearing “Killing Song.”
Throughout the night, others took the stage to sing as well like the Irish group Size 2 Shoes who were really funny & entertaining. Kevin Durand did some poetry jam type of thing that was kind of funny, Scott Grimes played keyboards and sang. Never really knew he had such a great voice. At one point, Robin Hood and his Merry Men performed Sean Kingston’s “Beautiful Girls,” which they did a lot of when they were promoting that movie. Besides what happened later, that song was the highlight for me. I was cracking up at the banter Russell and Alan were giving. Russell called Alan a 5 dollar whore because she’s always off writing with someone else. Alan said 5 dollars is too much, he’d do it for a bag of chips haha.
Middle of the show, Kristen tells me that actress Emma Watson (Harry Potter films) was like 5 feet from me. She never gets starstruck but when it comes to Harry Potter things, I guess she does haha. Actually, it wasn’t just her we saw, we were probably sitting next to at least 5 or 6 other cast members of the upcoming Russell Crowe movie Noah. They have been filming in Iceland and New York. I wasn’t surprised to see celebrities at the show, I was more surprised to have not seen any paparazzi. Guess they don’t read Russell’s twitter feed at all haha.
Towards the end of the show, everyone was just playing songs and coming back for encores. Russell played Bruce Springsteen’s “Highway Patrolman”, Scott Grimes did a few awesome covers of Michael Jackson’s “Man in The Mirror,” and Marc Cohn’s “Walking in Memphis.” Russell said he was kind of stalling because one of his friend that was coming down from the ’60s to play a song for us. He said it’s fucking New York so who knows if he will get here in time. Well that friend ended up being STING! Yes, that Sting. The crowd went nuts and Sting played “Every Breathe You Take” with Scott Grimes on the keys and Alan on guitar. That made the night for me! What a way to end the evening.
Here’s a few photos taken with my crappy Droid phone:
Russell
Crowe at Gramercy Theatre by Jaime Lubin 17 October 2012 in the Huffington Post
(no copyright infringement intended).
It's 2 a.m. in New York before the last Russell Crowe fans finally vacate the Gramercy Theatre. Representing a wide variety of states and nations -- Texas, Canada, Israel, Indonesia -- many had been there since 6 p.m., eager to share an evening of songs and stories with the Oscar-winning Aussie and his assembled colleagues. What they got was a night of pure joy.
The Indoor Garden Party saw Russell once more reunited with his Merry Men from 2010's Robin Hood: Scott Grimes (ER, American Dad!), Kevin Durand (Lost, Real Steel), and Alan Doyle (lead singer of iconic Newfoundland band Great Big Sea). Bonded by their stunning artistic talents, an undying love of performance, and the perpetual search for a good time, the foursome has, over a decade of friendship, built one of the most enthusiastically prolific creative communities in recent history.
"It's just a wonderful thing," says Alan, "to get together and sing a few songs. And I'm so happy that we've come to a place, all of us, in our different careers where that's enough."
Enough, apparently, to persuade fellow performers of every stripe to join the fun. Guest artists continually upped the ante on the pleasure scale. Les Miserables ingénue Samantha Barks, making her American debut, charmed the crowd with her soulful voice and insouciant sense of humor. (Appearing barefoot onstage midway through the show, she joked, "The shoes are off, so it's serious business.") Between numbers, Irish duo Size2Shoes drew laughs with their rationale for "sampling" ("We use bits from other songs in our music so you'll think we're famous!") And, at the height of universal excitement, Sting suddenly emerged from the wings for a surprise serenade of "Every Breath You Take." Cue excitement tipping over into cloud-nine ecstasy.
But all roads lead back to the Merry Men. At its core the Indoor Garden Party celebrates their incredible chemistry. Watching each member of the quartet showcase his own unique abilities (you kill that keyboard, Scott Grimes!) and then blend seamlessly into a four-part harmony for a rendition of "Beautiful Girls" is a thrill beyond words.
It's a miracle of, to use Alan's phrase, "circles connecting" that four such seemingly dissimilar men became friends in the first place: "Russell, Kev, and Scotty met while filming a movie in Canada [1998's Mystery, Alaska]. They got on like a house of fire because they're like-minded fellas, and the soundtrack for most of their parties was Great Big Sea." In 2004, Russell and Alan met while presenting at the NHL Awards and decided to start writing songs together. Since then they've released three official albums and countless tracks for movies and other bands.
"I know I've become better at my job since I met all those guys," Alan notes, "because we come from different parts of the earth and our early musical skill sets were so different."
That diverse mélange of elements reflects the guys' "gypsy" philosophy -- an artistic existence based solely on insatiable curiosity about the world and its stories. Alan admits that Russell is "one of the most curious people I know," but he gladly gives him a run for his money: "I always want to see what's around the corner; I always want to meet one more person, sing one more song. Stay up the latest. Get up the earliest. I want to be the guy who lived the most."
Ultimately "living" for Alan comes down to entertaining the audience. "Once eight o'clock comes, I can't help it. The moment the curtain rises, I want everyone in the room to have the greatest night of their lives. I'm lucky that most times people are satisfied to hear me sing. But in truth, unlike most of the greatest artists of our time, I would abandon them all if I thought it wasn't working. My desire to leave everyone panting at the end of the night is too strong."
Panting literally occurred at the Gramercy Theatre, thanks to Size2Shoes including that action in one song and encouraging full participation. "Communal" was the night's keyword, as a bushy-bearded Russell -- fresh off the set of upcoming epic Noah -- engaged the audience in pre-show vocal exercises and Scott's version of "Man in the Mirror" brought all present to shout the chorus. "I want you to take this away when you leave -- you made this show tonight!" the golden-voiced redhead enthused.
If you've read this far, you might be wondering whether the event had any negatives. Only one -- that it had to end. But with Russell as their guide, the boys are always searching for the next adventure. (Alan asserts, "There's nobody in my professional life, anywhere, who's as ready to start work as Russell Crowe.") Thus the fans wait, wrapped in the intoxicating haze of happiness, for the gypsy drums to pound again -- and soon.
