December 13

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

December 13, 2005

Not exactly a $30m gig but it suits Russ fine
By Bernard Zuel

Russell Crowe in a suit, a pinstripe one at that, may look more like an impeccably dressed man about town than a down and dirty rock singer. But when the actor-cum-singer/songwriter played the first show of his nine-week Tuesday residency at Newtown's Vanguard late last month, jeans and beer-stained T-shirts were nowhere to be found on stage.

Instead, Crowe and his new backing band, The Ordinary Fear of God, (not coincidentally with the same initials as his old band Thirty Odd Foot of Grunt - Crowe has joked that he wanted the same initials so he could save money on already initialled crew gear and equipment) were smartly dressed in sharp suits.

Of course, the Vanguard is no sticky carpet pub. The small room at the city end of King Street has a small stage framed by lush red curtains and seats a good number of its customers at tables where food and alcohol are served. It's also made for artists for whom volume is not necessarily a calling card.

All of which suits Crowe, whose preferred form, as shown on his most recent album, My Hand, My Heart, is the husky ballad.

It also suits his fans, who filled the room that night, repeated the dose last week and are expected to return for the rest of this run. Fans such as a woman called Lynda who has flown to Australia to follow the band, posting her thoughts on a website.

"If I had simply been walking down a street and heard the muffled sound of their music, I would have been drawn in by how good that music sounded," Lynda gushed.

To play at the Vanguard Crowe must pay a fixed $150 in hiring costs. He would also be paying the venue a cut of $2 per head of the $22 door charge. With a venue capacity of 160, Crowe would be clearing about $3000 a night, out of which he must pay his band and crew. Not exactly Hollywood money, but after nine weeks he may be able to afford a down payment on a new suit

Source: Drum Media via Murph's

December 13, 2005

He's No God-Fearing Man - Russell Crowe
By Christie Eliezer

There are enough people who dismiss Russell Crowe's music as the indulgence of a rich actor. But some musicians don't agree. Billy Bragg wrote to him about his song "Raewyn," how hearing it for the first time "brought my morning to a halt, leaving me gazing out at the winter sun on the ocean," and adding, "It's a beautiful, intimate song."

An avid Bragg fan whose records he learned from as a songwriter, Crowe admits, "that was a special moment for me." They'd once tried to write a song together, but Bragg was too jetlagged.

Crowe and Sting have exchanged emails in recent years. "But our friendship went into a different place," he says, after Sting wrote to him about the song. "You're a very enigmatic man. This is not what I was expecting. Your song is a royal gift to [Crowe's son] Charlie, beautiful photographic images, a surprisingly tender voice..." Sting asked rhetorically "But will it get on the radio? Not a chance mate."

Crowe's old band "Thirty Odd Foot Of Grunt" plodded a bit and dumbed down his songs. But Crowe didn't twig until their tour in 2003, when he'd given up drinking.

"We'd slotted into a comfortable stage," Crowe agrees. "We hadn't written a song together for quite awhile and I realised something had to be shaken up. You do something in the same context for a long time that you start crimping your edges. Sometimes Thirty Odd Foot would get into a groove and not necessarily finesse it into a complete idea. That's the major difference between them and this album where the songs were lovingly nurtured."

His new band, which has some members of Thirty Odd, is "The Ordinary Fear Of God." Don't read too much into it. It's got the same TOFOG initials, which saves a fortune in re-stencilling tour cases.

Making films doesn't give Crowe the chance to interact with his audience the way his music does. At recent club shows to promote his solo album "My Hand, My Heart," he joked, lit fags, swore, urged people to sing along and dance, explained the stories behind the songs, and threw in a version of Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues."

The band includes singer-songwriter Alan Doyle, of the Canadian Celtic rock band Great Big Sea who co-produced the album, long time friend Dave Kelly, Stewart Kirwan, Paul Berton, former Midnight Oil bassist Bones Hillman ("I knew him way back in the Auckland days when he was a bouncer at Liberty Stage where you went on Sunday nights to hear new bands" and Stuart Hunter. The energy they put on stage is totally different to Thirty Odd Foot, says Crowe.

"There's significantly less anxiety," he counts off. "Functionally there's more listening going on, both in the room and to each other. These are pretty tricky songs to stand up in a pub to do a complete song with in a concert, there's nothing to drown out the punter if they don't want to listen. So performing them as musically correct as we can is the goal. The harmonies are quite intricate, so everyone's got to be on their game. Having said that, it doesn't create any anxiety because the personalities [in the band] are together, there's a confidence in the material that wasn't there before. We've done half a dozen shows, man, and the leap between the shows was encouraging."

Music, he says, is not about selling units. It's about collaboration. He rejected the advances of major record companies who wanted to sign up Russell Crowe, the celebrity, and instead sells the bands records through a website (www.myhandmyheart) or via the indie Df'rent label.

So does Crowe's fame get in the way of the music? "It creates a huge amount of problems with the music [laughs], there's nothing I can get away from it. There are theories you can do it anonymously but it doesn't hold water. People have to accept I have a complex life that has nothing to do with being an actor or a famous person. But you know, I'm still doing it. People tell me not to do it or they try their best to denigrate it. I stand back and think, 'It's just a fucking song, mate!". There may be a time when I don't want to do it any more. But at the moment this is the most effective means for me to express myself creatively.

"Being an actor is one thing and it's satisfying within what it is. But these [songs] are stories that come from my inquiry into life."

Source: souths.com.au

December 13, 2005

Young Bucks Concert with Russell Crowe a Roaring Success

The one-off Russell Crowe concert held at South Sydney Juniors last night (Monday) was a roaring success with 100% of the proceeds from the concert going to the Rabbitohs' Young Bucks Development Program.

600 fans filled the Souths Juniors Auditorium to hear Russell and his new band perform songs from their new album My hand, my heart.

Young Bucks sponsor Peter Holmes Court introduced the event, with comedian Mikey Robbins warming up the hundreds of fans in the audience with the help of Charlie Rabbit.

Russell and his band played a two hour set with Rabbitohs Head Coach Shaun McRae rounding out the night, thanking Russell and Peter for their support of the program and Souths Juniors for their help both in organising the concert and in the development of the future footballers of the NRL.

Everyone had a great night and all money raised was a for a great cause, the future stars to wear the red and green.

Source: Moviemorlocks.com

December 13, 2008

Excerpt from an interview with actor Christopher Plummer

TCM: I'm going to jump ahead to something more recent, your performance as "60 Minutes" Reporter Mike Wallace in The Insider. Was that intimidating to play someone who is still quite active and visible in their profession and would probably see your performance?

CP: Well, it was kind of dangerous and I like danger because, you know, I think you have to go in where angels fear to tread. And I met Michael and have even been interviewed by him. And I watched him when I was a youngster ... and he was barely a youngster too then ... as the angry young man of television. So I didn't have to do much research because I remembered very well how his voice sounded ... and how he attacked everybody and was an extraordinary, probing commentator. No, that was wonderfully challenging and greatly helped I was by Michael Mann [the director] who kept me from imitating him. He insisted that I put some of my own personality into the Mike Wallace character which is correct because otherwise that's just a simple imitation of the man and that's cheap. So he guided me very well though that and I admired him. And of course my friendship began with Russell Crowe and Al Pacino, both of whom I admire enormously. It goes without saying about Al Pacino and Russell Crowe, who is probably the most talented leading man that Hollywood has had in a long time.