Do you love me?
Yes!
(or: the ramblings of an adoring teenie, part 348,000)
You'll have to bear with me on this one. It's been three unbearably long years since I've written a review of a live Hanson show, and a lot has changed. But as my English teacher always said, cliches are cliches because they work, so I'll throw this one right out there: the more things change, the more they stay the same.
The beginning of the day may have seemed mundane: I got up. I got into the shower. I went to the car. I spilled half a cup of coffee on myself while attempting to back into traffic. Yes indeed, it was a morning like any other in the world of the llama. Who would have known that almost exactly twenty four hours later I'd be limping back to Massachusetts, blistered, bruised, and bathed in that peculiarly euphoric post-Hanson glow?
Despite the prosaic air of the morning even the untrained observer would most likely have been a little alarmed by the obsessive-compulsive rounds of "you got the tickets?" that resounded as our little entourage--Laura, Corinne, Stef, Megan, and I--made our way to my car. The sign clutched in someone's hand (the poster possessing culprit shall remain unnamed to protect the quasi-innocent) would probably have raised some eyebrows, too, most especially if anyone bothered to read its hastily scrawled words: "Honk if you love Hanson." However, in keeping with the theme of every Hanson article and review written this year--growth and maturity-- the sign went unused.
The Groton sub base is just as scary as it sounds. It's got a commissary, a gas station, some nuclear armaments, and field suitable for football. Or, if your tastes are so inclined, a rock show. This was where we arrived at about 11 am Sunday morning, only to find a hundred or more people already bunched near the still-closed entrance gates of said field. It could have been summer 1998: There were Hanson t-shirts and bucket hats and posters and body paint. But it also could have been May 1996: there was fried dough and rock climbing and porta-potties (nature's greatest wonder, I'm sure), along with displays set up by used car dealerships. The whole affair made the Tumbridge fair look impressive, and the coolest event that's ever taken place there was a Fred Tuttle autograph signing in 1995. Three years ago, Hanson couldn't have set foot in Groton, CT. Today? They filled the crowd with gleeful fans, most of whom left immediately after their performance, presumably leaving Billie Meyer and Blaque (yep, this station obviously got the cream of the crop this summer) to their own, audience-free, devices.
Hanson, being the young rock Gods that we all know and love, rose above their extraordinarily ghetto surroundings and played what anyone, fan or not, would have to consider a damn fine show. Although Hansonline mentioned only a three songs set, the boys went hog wild and we were lucky enough to hear Sure About It, If Only, Wish That I Was There, and Mmmbop.
Sure About It, perhaps the most unintentionally puzzling Hanson song ever, takes on a new life when she live. It's like Solider, I think; I don't really listen to either when there's a skip button nearby, but in person the boys' intensity carries them off every time. If Only was a whole different experience when I could actually hear it, let alone see more than one fifth of Taylor's shoulder. Not that I'm still bitter about @ MTV or anything. ::cough:: As for Wish That I Was Theere, I had almost expected it to be the Lucy of This Time Around--much loved but seldom performed. It appears, though, that Zac's "I'm a big boy now" voice can be trusted to hold out through the song, and hold out well.
Mmmbop, the song that started it all for a lot of people, was bizarre to hear live. It's changed with Hanson, grown up and grown rough around the edges. Apparently this was a spontaneous addition to the line up, judging by the fact that Zac was half-way off the stage before Isaac nabbed him and, after a brief conversation, they did their final song of the day. I found it gratifying that, while it is true that *everyone* knew the words to Mmmbop, the songs from This Time Around had just as much crowd response as those from Middle of Nowhere. The vast majority of the people around us at both shows sang along to everything, which to me means two things: 1) Hanson fans are some of the most thoroughly obsessed people in the world and 2) even though only 100,000 people own This Time Around, they love it well :)
Sometimes it's possible to forget to be awe-struck by Hanson. When they're far away; when they're silent; when they're silly little boys in wetsuits on surfboards. But when they're singing fifteen feet in front of you it's a whole other world. Those amazing sounds--the ones you listen to while you fall asleep, while you're in the shower, while you're driving to work, when you're reading a book--they're made by real human beings. Behind the perfectly raspy vocals of This Time Around exist three individuals, and any time you're forced to recognize this, the music seems all the more special.
So it was on Sunday. Hanson climbed up on stage, amidst many cheers and even a few boos, and they sang their butts off, radiating an energy and confidence that shut the dissenters up in no time. The random little moments were the best, methinks. Mr. Hanson was in the wings, ardently filming every move his sons made. Some fans had a gigantic blow-up Shamu, covered with Hansony sayings, and before leaving the stage Zac was passed the leviathan, perhaps by now the Hanson family's newest pool toy. Taylor wore aviator sunglasses, apparently all the rage these days, and when he took them off he hung one arm of their frame from a necklace for safe-keeping. Isaac was like a new person, beautiful, capable, and, heck, a *man.*
While it's definitely sad to see Hanson reduced to playing these radio station shows, especially under the current circumstances (as in, Hanson gets publicity for the stations by being at their shows, yet the stations don't feel obligated to return the favor and play any of their recent music), it's also a great experience to see them in a much more intimate environment than ever before. We weren't aggressive about where we stood, preferring to be a little further away from the stage rather than swelter in the sweaty teenie pit that was forming directly in front of it, but we could still see that Zac's hands were bandaged, presumably from too much drumming of late, and that the tiniest shadow of a white wife beater was exposed by Isaac's partially buttoned white dress-shirt, and that Taylor Hanson is a god. Well, you probably could see that from anywhere in the audience, but really.
The only salvageable non-Hanson band at the Bash at the Base was Train, who were very much not bad. I was impressed to no end when the lead singer in all of his swaggering, purple velvet-pants glory, climbed the scaffolding that supported the stage and sang several lines of "Meet Virginia," the only song anyone in the audience knew, balancing about twenty feet above the stage. Well...I was impressed until told, "he did the same thing at Mix fest last year." This phenomenon of prefabricated gestures by prefabricated bands was very much the order of the day, running from Train's high-wire escapades to B.B. Mack's stunning new boyband accessory: guitars (straight from Claire's in the mall, I bet. Probably has a spot to store your eye-liner in the neck and everything).
The boys' performance at the Bash at the Base would probably be the most recognizable of the day to old school Hanson fans. We have, after all, watched Tulsa, Tokyo, and the Middle of Nowhere a thousand times, and the acoustic Hanson, other than the deeper voices and the new-found poise, hasn't changed so much. But the plugged in show, oh the plugged in show. The Providence Civic Center was more the kind of place we like to see Hanson, including such new-fangled devices as "seats" and "security guards." They were the fourth act of day, a perfect segue from the blah boy-band nothingness of Westlife (well, they say it was Westlife. I can't believe that the band we saw is successful anywhere in the world... I think they pulled a fast one on us and we were actually at the taping of the sequel to Together) and the blah jam-band ramblings of Train to the high energy theatrics of Bon Jovi and the Goo Goo dolls.
Some review of This Time Around listed off the various things we could be grateful that Hanson hadn't done during their time off: buy wind machines, dance lessons, or matching white jump suits. And yes, these things are indeed suitable to invoke grateful heavenward glances, but are absolutely nothing compared to the things we have to be thankful that Hanson *did* do--like learn to rock.
They played fewer songs at the Rhode Island show than many of the earlier radio station concerts, only weighing in at five: You Don't Know, If Only, This Time Around, Where's the Love, Mmmbop, and In the City. The thing was, at the end of the set I think I speak for everyone when I say that we felt like we had just bounced through two plus hours of any other band. And to the cynical amongst you: my heart rate wasn't at 2,000 beats per minute just because of a cameo appearance of Taylor's underwear, peeping up above his nearly-falling off lace-up leather pants. That, admittedly, most likely accounted for 1,000 beats per minute of it, but the rest was all about the stage show.
Remember the days of yore when Isaac stood behind his mic stand, occasionally thumping a foot or taking a calculated hop from Zac's drum riser? Remember the days when, even though it looked like he was enthusiastically grooving with enough force to achieve Earth orbit, Taylor stayed in one square foot of space for 99.9% of the Albertane tour? Well, kiss those days goodbye. They're long gone. The two oldest Hanson brothers of 2000 are all over the stage, running from one end to another, sharing mics, bouncing like a House of Pain video, and just generally enjoying themselves. It's a beautiful sight to see, and if you have a chance to do so run, not walk, to the nearest ticket outlet. In the City live performed live is not an event to be missed; it's the centerpiece of a new Hanson stage persona. We all knew that slightly forceful, slightly suggestive lines like "do you love me?" would go over well live, but I don't think anyone really expected quite as much frantic furor as they actually evoked. The audience went crazy, the boys went crazy, everyone went crazy.
It was amazing. I was speechless then, and I'm speechless now. Except for one thing: If Hanson don't tour this summer, it will be a literal tragedy. For awhile during the recent New York Times inspired tour crisis, I heard a lot of people talking about how Hanson loved to tour, how they love to make music, and how they'd never stop. Maybe I doubted this, instead focusing on how painful it must have been to see the seemingly perpetual downward spiral their careers were taking. But no more. There's no way they were on that stage, doing what they did, and didn't enjoy every minute of it.
What caused this newfound stage presence, I couldn't say. Did someone at the record label set up an on-stage intervention? Did they just grow into themselves? Did they get lessons from Jon Bon Jovi, whom Taylor will no doubt become in fifteen years' time? All I can say is that whatever happened, it was a very, very good thing.