Tour Memories (and occasional musings)

I Got to Go Back to the Island I was last on the island in 2020 - it was my sixth stint as an ‘islander’ and my fifth time in Jamaica. You can see where this is going: a few weeks after we got home, the Covid pandemic hit and travelling became a distant dream.  Before Covid was even a thing, though, I was all set for skipping 2021: as I wrote in this blog post , BTTI 2020 had left me a little cold. I found the resort run down, the activities uninspiring and the concerts phoned-in. Little did I know that in less than a month, the whole world was going to shut down for a long, long time. Even when things began to reopen and BTTI 2022 was announced, I still found travel too daunting, and seeing pictures of people wearing masks at the resort stopped any possible FOMO in its tracks. I let the presale for 2023 come and go and focused instead on planning for Hanson’s extensive UK tour that summer. It was there, whilst doing what Hanson fans do best, i.e. sitting outside a venue, that I fo...

I was in my hotel room in Tulsa when I first listened to the EP. I’d ferried my trusted seven year old MacBook Air all across the Atlantic, complete with an equally old and battered external CD drive, with the sole purpose of ripping that CD the moment it was in my hands and listening to it in religious contemplation. Compromise The first song in the EP, "Compromise" starts with a piano and guitar intro, and instantly puts me in a state of acoustic bliss that reaches its nirvana as Isaac’s voice comes on some twenty seconds later. Before you can scream ‘Isaac lead’,  Zac takes over vocals on the second verse,  with the final part going to Taylor. After my initial split second of disappointment, it made complete sense: it’s a song about compromise, shared among the three brothers and layered with their trademark harmonies in between each verse. What is that if not a perfect example of musical compromise? Thematically, my first thought was that the lyr...

String Theory As readers of this blog already know, I had my reservations about the String Theory album, which had left me pretty underwhelmed. I figured that String Theory was a project designed to be appreciated as a live concert, with a full orchestra and the kind of acoustics that only a symphony hall can offer - not something cobbled together from mostly old recordings with the orchestral parts emailed over from Eastern Europe. A lot of my US friends had been to shows during the US leg of the tour and said the same: you have to see it live . I’d set out to avoid most spoilers - watching only a few seconds of clips here and there, just to get a sense of what to expect. I had to lift my self-imposed embargo for the String Theory show at BTTI, but aside from that, I made it to February with an open mind and my expectations still untainted. And so, on a cold Sunday afternoon, five days after returning from Jamaica and dragging a suitcase that was bursting at the seams, I boa...

Members Only Show Setlist The Members Only Show set is probably the BTTI ‘theme’ that gets the most votes every year because, well, when else do you get to hear those songs? For 2019, the Members Only set would fall on the final show - a momentous but inevitably bittersweet culmination of the event. I had high expectations: I’d loved the String Theory show and earlier in the day, I’d seen Taylor perform the best solo set I’d seen in five years.   Technical problems crept up two songs into the set. On my phone pad, where I keep a note of the setlist, I’d jotted down ‘sound!!!’ next to “Best of Times” . Shame, because the Isaac lead from the 2013 Sound of Light EP has become a kind of unofficial BTTI anthem and it’s one of those special ‘island moments’ that I always look forward to. Four songs later, the guys came to the front of the stage for “On and On” , one of the most visually striking songs in Hanson’s repertoire, providing a rare opportunity to see the three...

Please note: this post was written before I saw a ‘real’ String Theory show with an orchestra. Click here for the full setlist. If you read my two part review of the String Theory double album , you’ll already know that I am not a huge fan of the recorded project, mostly because of the recycling of old vocals and a sense that the orchestral arrangement didn’t really add much to some of the songs. However, I was very excited about the live experience, so when Hanson announced a String Theory shows at BTTI, I knew I’d be in for a treat. As it was confirmed during the “What is String Theory?” Q&A that afternoon, there would be no orchestra at the show, but instead, the band would play to the instrumental version of the album. It was no big surprise - let’s face it, how feasible would it be to get an orchestra on that small stage on the beach? Sure, it wasn’t going to be the real thing, but it was still going to be an upgraded version of the album, and I was all for th...

Reaching for the Sky Pt.2 The story continues: As the boy grew to a man He built tall ladders to ascend And those around him said with spite Risk of failure isn't worth the fight. [Full lyrics on Hansonstage] The song picks up from where Part 1 left off and tells us more about the boy, who is now striving against difficulties and fighting against all odds. This Time Around The general consensus is that the vocals were re-recorded for TTA - possibly due to the publishing rights still being owned by Def Jam. Isaac, in particular, sounds very much as ‘current’ Isaac as he belts out his verse. But vocals aside, I keep forgetting that there’s an orchestra playing - it’s very subtle in the intro and my brain just tunes out all the new stuff and fixates on the familiar: i.e. a track I’ve listened to a million times. As the orchestra kicks in properly halfway through, so does the horns section, and it sounds like everything was thrown in indiscriminately, favouring no...