"The Moment That We Live For" Part One - Happy Birthday, Dear Alan

Most sincere "Happy Birthday" wishes-in-advance to the two-thirds of the GBS Original Three who are still a few days away from becoming another year older, perhaps wiser as well; may health and hope join with happiness to make the year to come remarkable for each of you and those you love.

As for the remaining member of the Original Great Big a Trois, today is his day and he always gets the Full Birthday Treatment here. This is Part One of that Full Treatment; Part Two can be found below.

For Alan on his birthday:

Looking back over the past birthday-to-birthday year, several specific possibilities come quickly to mind in answer to the question of this year's greatest accomplishment, speaking in terms, of course, of those accomplishments which are public knowledge: The release of the excellent Southern Shore CD you produced for the Irish Descendants was a stellar way to begin your birthday year (also adding another well-crafted songwriting collaboration to your increasingly impressive tally with Not For The Money Alone), and your Genie Award nomination for "Young Triffie" was an equally impressive achievement. But even with as signficant and praiseworthy as these achievements are, still, they are bested by several even-more-admirable accomplishments your own hard work and determined persistence have earned you the right to claim your own fair share of.

The first such accomplishment is less a purely individual act and more one in the category of outstanding achievement while working within a larger group toward a common goal: In this past year, you have indeed become the public face of the continuing campaign to make Daffodil Place a reality and a respite for Rural Newfoundlanders; wherever I travel, be it on the Mainland or in Newfoundland, whenever the conversation with Newfoundlanders turns to Daffodil Place, there you are, again and always: Daffodil Place, sure, that's the charity Alan Doyle's supporting; it's got to be a good one if he's after putting his name and time into it.

In this as in so much of what you do, you are the unparalleled, incomparable, and quintessential Front Man; you stir and move and persuade solitary individuals into rare moments of perceiving, and on occasion embracing, a reality which is just a bit larger than their own self-boundaries. Few causes are more worthy than this one of that effect you have the unique power to engender, and your efforts are pivotal in laying the foundation of a legacy of incalculable worth.  You have worked hard for an excellent cause and you been instrumental in turning hope into reality; you, and everyone who cares about you, should be proud of those efforts and their success.

The second such accomplishment is somewhat more subtle, at least in process if perhaps a bit less so in end result, and it too is a high achievement of effort undertaken while working within the framework of a larger group, this group perhaps not necessarily completely like-minded nor always sharing a common goal.  Every acquiesence and accommodation, each compromise and sacrifice, all of the negotiations and capitulations you have made step-by-step along your own path to getting this new CD created and completed, as well as in seeing all of those calendar pages of the Tour Book inked in with upcoming gigs, is an accomplishment of the highest order - formidable challenge met head on and conquered in the name of heart's desire. 

Ruthless honesty in acknowledging need, keen intelligence in assessing cost, relentless determination in taking necessary action: your own efforts combining with those of others to bring about as much of what you most desire as is possible; whenever in this beautiful life any one of us reaches out and catches hold of as much of what we most desire as is possible, that is an accomplishment that merits equal measures of respect and awe. A very good year, Alan.

So much for the year that was; time to move on to the new year that begins today - to Here and Now, if you will. It's always so much simpler to talk about the admirable accomplishments that have already taken place than it is to take the risk of offering advice for how to deal with what is presently here and what lies ahead. I suppose I could take the easy way out and simply suggest with all honesty that in this next year you should continue allowing the genuine and dear good-hearted man you are to show - in all of his intelligence and wit and complexity and contradiction - even more than you increasingly have been as time goes by.

But even though that would be perfectly acceptable birthday advice, as well as something I do hope you continue on with, I think I'm going to opt for somewhat less caution and say instead that my advice to you for this coming year is that you seek out a reliable mirror, one that shows you a true and unwavering reflection of the beautiful man you are, both inside and out. Who you are is at the heart of what you write; you need to see that man clearly if you are going to write him as well as he deserves to be written. You need to see him clearly if he is to have a chance at getting so much of what he deserves.

Oh yes, you should also take each and every opportunity you get to sing Where I Belong. And you could grow that gorgeous beard back too. Then there's the matter of that solo CD, and writing more tunes with Russell and producing CDs and hosting events. Always writing, in any genre, as well as...I suppose I had better stop before I get carried away with birthday advice.

Happy birthday, Alan. I hope this year brings you all that your heart desires.

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A few (comparatively speaking, at least) photos of some of the best and brightest (as well as sweetest and sexiest) of Alan's performance moments over the course of this Birthday Year. Quite a few in this entry - 39, to be exact, and for good reason - might make this a bit slow to open.

The first  GBS show of the year (of Alan's Birthday Year, that is) for me was Edfest in late July. There were also shows in Calgary and Fort MacMoney, and I think one in Grande Prairie too, but I  went to EdFest and then to the ZooTunes show at home. At EdFest, the crowd was given exactly what it wanted, and that big screen behind the stage made for a fascinating double perspective.

ZooTunes in Seattle at the end of that same late-July weekend, a sweet and silly show blessed by the glow of lovely afternoon light caressing and causing an even-lovelier man to shine more brightly.

The next set of shows was in August: Ridgefield CT, Hyannis MA and Lowell MA (to which I went, though only a few of the photos from those three shows have managed to get edited so far), and Northampton MA and Freeport ME, to which I did not go. The choice of Lowell paid off like the lotto: Not only was it a thoroughly enjoyable show with a great crowd on a balmy summer night, there was also the lovely bonus of Alan's coming out for soundcheck looking, appropriately, spectacular in his glasses; the soundcheck wound up being nearly as much of a delight as the show itself would be. Rather an epiphanic evening in the pub following that show too. I have a few photos of the charming fellow at soundcheck, plus one photo from that night's encore.

The entire Loch Ness experience was without a doubt the most miserably uncomfortable of any show I have attended thus far (it's now routinely known as The Day Of The Flood in Runrig circles); all I really need to say is that it rained so much, it washed some of the colour out of my hair, that and to add that we were out in that Flood for 18 hours straight. One more thing that must be said: It was worth every single miserable second. Seeing GBS come out and electrify a  sodden, huddling crowd of some 20,000 - the vast majority of whom had never heard their music and who had come to see another band - would have been worth a week spent in that great big puddle of mud.

Two from the English shows, the first from the Beautiful Days Festival near Exeter and the second from London's Borderline. Beautiful Days was fascinating, though I lack decent photos to show why, since I nearly fried my camera by getting it so wet the day before in Loch Ness. The Borderline show was fiercely played, but equivocal and a little unsettling; as I said in an earlier entry, one remark Alan made there is still haunting me, still waiting patiently alongside his most-recent such comment for their moments of refutation. In advance of those anticipated moments, all I can say for now is that opportunity and backstage passes need have no numeric limits, and that while I think the polar bear is both magnificent and majestic, I would still say the true metaphor will always be the lion...and also that Hawksley was spot-on with his initial response of "Awesome". Awesome, indeed.

Tonder was an utter and unmitigated delight, and these photos (one of these days I will finally get the rest of the Tonder pictures edited) document two of my favourite moments of the entire year. At the very least of the entire year.

The Rogers show at the Glacier in Mt. Pearl at the beginning of September, another well-played show but also a jarring return to the "normal" World of GBS.

Part Two of The Very Good Birthday Year Of Alan Doyle to be found below.

Comments

[Ellen]

Alan looks fantastic...beautiful photos! I hope he has a wonderful day today and GBS has their best year ever! I think Alan's work for Daffodill Place qualifies him for hero statuse and I know the people who eventually stay there are going to think that too! If he doens't already see himself that way he really does need to because it's a shame if not.

{{{birthday hugs}}}

[Laura]

Happy birthday to Alan, Sean, and Bob on all their days. The older he gets the better Alan looks. That really isn't fair to the rest of us.

I noticed you linked Sean's blog here. That's so cool! I love seeing all three links right there together. :)

Whenever I buy a new CD of a band I like I wonder how much went into making it and who had to deal with whatever happening to this song while someone else had anohter song wind up another way. It's got to be hard work and then when you finally get done it's time to buck up and go sell it to the world. Good on them for getting it done again. I hope it's a great big hit for them.

You know...last year you did a birthday photo post for Sean too. Any chance of a repeat? :D

Let the King eat cake!

L.

[Barb]

I really enjoyed my 39th year. It felt like I had finally grown up in some lasting way that I was comfortable with. I liked it so much I decided to stay 39 for awhile. Why give up on a good thing? LOL!

I'll second Alan working with Russ again. MHMH is the best music he's made and I love it all the way back to the earliest TOFOG days. But something special happened when he and Alan wrote together. I still wish I could have seen those shows. Too bad Alan didn't make it to the LA show.

Hope springs eternal. Happy birthday AD!

[lynda]

Hello, Barb. You're right about the MHMH music being special, some of the best for both Russell and Alan. I think both of them wished Alan could have made it to those last few shows; plenty of people who had not had a chance to see Alan play with the band in Australia wished the same. I still believe they'll reprise their collaboration, someday. Maybe not someday soon, but someday.

Laura, perhaps Alan is much like a fine wine - richer and smoother in taste and more sophisticated and priceless as time passes. All I know is he's always looked good to me; I expect he always will.

As much as I miss hearing from Alan on his own blog, I'm also looking forward to where Sean decides to go with his writing. As I said before, it's an interesting premise with as many possibilities as challenges. He's already gotten past the first big hurdle of writing anything: He's come up with an intriguing central idea.

What you said about CDs goes along with something I was thinking about while watching the canada.com studiio videos again the other day. If it really is true that the CD is a dying art form and the move toward individual digital songs released periodically all year round is inevitable, one of the many things I am going to be losing from that change is being able to see the group of songs on any one album as a measure of who the members of a band are and where they are at during a given point in time of their career.

Even though the songs on a CD may have been written over a long period of time - anyone who thinks Alan's point of view is the same today as it was back in the Fall of 2003 when he wrote Walk On The Moon with Gordie is simply not paying attention - the actual process of putting an album together (all of that having to accept what does or doesn't happen to your song on its way to getting onto the CD) takes place (most of the time) during a finite period of weeks, maybe months, in the life of a band. Everything that is a part of the current dynamic of that band at the time - where the band members are at in their own lives, the state of their relationships with one other, internal and external musical influences of the moment, the impact of a particular producer - will fundamentally shape the CD that is the end resultof all of the efforts for those weeks or months, making that CD a reflection of those elements and interactions, not all that much unlike a class photo for the particular year in question. Fortune's Favour is going to be Great Big Sea In 2008, when listening it this year and when listening to it 15 years from now.

But if/when musical output becomes a series of singles recorded God knows when and released in whatever scattered order best goes along with current marketing trends, that class photo is going to become something quite fragmented, those individual tunes the result of an effort much less intensely focused and perhaps even less collaborative. Give and take, as well as give and give and take and take, is more likely to happen as part of a series of compromises and conquests over the course of recording a number of songs at the same time. It seems likely that a good deal of that interactive, synergistic process could be lost.

Not much of a bother, I suppose, except to those of us who like to try to understand where the music we love comes from and what it might mean to, and say about, those creating it - the Big Picture, so to speak. I think I am going to miss my CDs. I have a persistent affection for the Big Picture.

I'm sorry, but I don't think I'll have time to do a photo entry for Sean's birthday, partly because of all those still-unedited photos (some shows all I ever got done was a handful of pictures of Alan) and partly because I have to go do something Big And Really Scary tomorrow afternoon, and directly after that I am heading off for a few days to some place I have never been before. I'm planning on spending all my time there 'sploring. Maybe next year I'll be organised enough to do one for Sean too.

Ellen, "hero" works very well for me, for Alan as well as all the less-upfront others who have put in countless hours and tireless efforts to make the dream become a reality. I love the thought of Alan seeing himself as he truly is; yet another dream I hope to see become a reality.

[alicia]

Do you think I'll get to meet alan if I go on the curise?

[Barb in Minn.]

Lovely birthday tribute to Alan, Lynda.
I had to pause and gaze longingly at the photo from the Lowell show. That mini-concert that was the soundcheck was icing on a most excellent day. [btw, hi to Jenn, who I assume is here somewhere. You were right: I’m hooked on Carbon Leaf too, now that I’ve seen and heard them.]

I finally got caught up on reading the last few posts, so am just bursting with comments.

I too felt a voyeuristic reading Sean’s twitter postings, but got hooked on reading about Tosh’s life as a rockstar dog and the Battlestar Galactica references. Having now watched a couple of the webisodes on Canada.com, and seeing some of Sean’s goofiness when he’s bored, I’m thinking the rest of the b’ys encouraged him to twitter to keep him occupied.

I too had a bit of a wtf? moment hearing the album version of Walk on the Moon. I’ve pondered whether I’d like it better if I hadn’t already heard it live several times. I’m with whoever said it now sounds over-produced in comparison to the GBS sound we're used to, and that it might work better if the triumphal chimes were only used later in the song instead of at the beginning.
On the other hand, Love Me Tonight is one of those rare songs that I became instantly obsessed with. So glad that the album version isn’t too much different. Love it paired with Here & Now. [btw LMT can still be heard on the GBS facebook page.]

LOL – you’re so right that Sean could sing country music. Hmm…just had scary vision of what would happen if Sean and Alan let loose on a rollicking version of “Friends in Low Places.”

Bonus pre-sale songs: I was disappointed that Gallows Pole and Belong didn’t make it onto the album, but figure that if a song didn’t make the cut, I’d rather have access to them this way than not at all. Will pre-sale purchase arrive at my door on June 24? Being in the U.S., I doubt it. But it beats the July 8 release/delivery date that Amazon.com lists. (Amazon.ca does show the correct June 24 date.)

Cheers.

[lynda]

Hey Barb, nice to hear from you, and I'm glad you enjoyed the AlanDay entries. I thought the Lowell show was one of the best shows of last year, with that great soundcheck (and those hot-substitute-teacher glasses) going a long way toward making it so.

I'm really glad you got to see CL. They are such nice guys and their music is so good; I keep hoping and hoping they'll get more of all the good things they deserve. You might not get a chance to see much of them for awhile since they're working on a new CD (they are going on The Rock Boat, if you are interested in that), but eventually they should be touring nearby.

Yeah, I've decided I'm not putting up any more of the ragging on Sean about the Twitter/Tosh stuff, at least not the ones that are based on nothing beyond "I don't like him that way". If something has some substance to it, a matter of how something is written or what's actually said, that's another matter, but not the "Sean's not being who I think he should be" crap. I've been through way too much of that kind of self-centred bullshit in regard to Alan. As far as I'm concerned, they get to be whomever they want to be, and they get to show whatever facets of themselves they choose to show when it comes to their public personae.

My own opinion, and it's no more than that, is that Sean's recent forays into being more public and interacting with fans originated as business decisions - Alan and Bob each have their public blogs and I'm guessing that it was determined that it would be smart business for Sean to do something along the same lines. But I think it was up to him to decide how to go about establishing that public voice, and it looks as if Twitter was his choice of method.

I think he's done well with it, and I'm glad too that once the fans started to pile on he adjusted his subject matter accordingly, I suppose by moving the more personal comments over to his other Twitter identity. Now, he strikes a nice balance between coming across a genuine while still maintaining reasonable privacy. Whether he actually does or not, he gives the impression that he pays at least some attention to responses, and I'm sure that keeps the people following him very happy, to put it mildly, which is the point of the whole endeavour and the ultimate measure of its success.

His DogBlog is just starting up and it's hard to tell yet what he might or might not make of it. There have been a few moments of honesty and good writing so far, more to come I hope. But if he chooses instead for his own reasons to go with purely silly, that's up to him too.

I still think if many of us had heard the living-room Sea Of No Cares for quite some time and then the CD had come out with the recorded version of the song, there would be a need for an adjustment much like what we're having to do with Walk On The Moon. I love the CD SoNC, and it was the biggest hit GBS has ever had. That said, I'll also say the song is at its most honest and strong in the living-room version. I tend to think the same about Walk On The Moon, though the difference may very well be that the live performance of WOTM will not be the CD version for the first few years, as it was with SoNC.

The more I have listened to WOTM in the CD version and the more objective I have tried to be, I've come up with only a few clear-cut criticisms of the song: I think the lead vocal should have been pushed up a bit more because it tends to be overwhelmed by the bells at a few points, which is an utter shame because it is such an excellent lead vocal; and I do think the bells - the whole atmosphere of triumph - begin too soon in the song. The sound of the song done this way is more "Was it just me or a message from above/Bells were ringing, push had finally come to shove" - more of a "looking back on the struggle from the perspective of victory" - than it is music that sounds like what the lyrics are actually saying. But that puts WOTM in very good company with quite a few other GBS songs.

Oh yes, one more issue - I miss some of Kris's drum parts is this version, especially the run that sounds like the pounding of a heart both excited and terrified by what is on the verge of happening. It was so cool to hear those parts live the other night.

I'm in full agreement about how wonderful Love Me Tonight is. That was love at first listen, even while hearing it all muffled on the other side of a closed venue door. But then, I felt the same way the first time I heard WOTM. For that matter, it was the same response the first time I ever heard Alan sing anything at all.

I'm no country fan, but I do think they could all do that genre well. I've always thought Jolly Butcher could be great played very straight C&W.

Wow - Amazon has Fortune's Favour up as a July 8 release date? It was supposed to be released in both countries on the same day, but now I wonder if maybe that got changed. That's the usual lag time for non-concurrent release. I hope the CDs get delivered promptly...if GBS and gbs.com want people to keep on buying through them and paying those S&H fees, it's what needs to happen. Though I'll confess to not planning on leaving it to chance - I'm in Victoria on June 24th and will be picking up a copy of FF there, just to be sure.

I can see arguments for leaving both Gallows Pole and Belong off of the CD. I tend to agree with the arguments in regard to Gallows Pole. I do not agree when it comes to Belong. On the surface it looks like a solid enough business decision, all proper caution and fiscal prudence and the like. But as an artistic decision, it is not defensible.

What matters the most to me, though, is - and again, this is nothing more than my admittedly cheeky opinion - that I think it would have been better for them, better for the men who make up Great Big Sea and most of all better for Alan, for Belong to be on their CD, better in terms of how they see and feel about themselves and what they are accomplishing as Newfoundland artists...the kind of "better" that's good for the heart and the soul. And I think it would have been better for that collective thing that's called GBS too, if a collective thing can be seen as having a heart and a soul.

But if business decisions had to prevail, I am so glad and grateful that a way was found for the song to be heard regardless. I still have every faith that this song will find its own audience, in its own way and its own time.

Hello, Alicia. I honestly can't say for sure if going on the cruise would mean for sure that you'd have a chance to meet Alan. I think that would probably depend a little on chance and a lot more on how much effort you put into making it happen. If it's your main reason for wanting to go, I have to point out that it's an awful lot of money to spend to meet Alan. That's still all your choice if it's worth it to you. I hope this helps you at least a little with your decision.