Tour Memories (and occasional musings)

A Preamble This is a blog post I’ve been wanting to write for a while, but which I have resisted until now. I already have a reputation for being outspoken and I know that some fans consider that a Crime Against Hanson. In some circles, simply being critical of the band will brand you as a ‘negative’ person. But being a fan of a band is not a paid gig, and I have no editor to answer to, or corporation to please. I’m only a fan, without any sort of special status in exchange of which I could reasonably be expected to toe the 3CG party line. My 7-Year Musical Ride So Far 6 years, soon to be 7 I joined the fanclub in April 2012, completely unaware that 2012 was going to pan out as a very difficult year for the band, with the notorious ‘near-split’ happening, with an album that was proving difficult to finish and a whole load of tumbleweed standing in for content on the website. Not knowing, however, any better, I threw myself into the fan experience with the recklessness and ...

Somebody That Wants To Love You Who are you? When I first heard this song in “The Making of In Color” stream, I knew it reminded me of something. A famous song from the 1980s...another soft-rock anthem. Finally, it came to me: it was Berlin’s "Take My Breath Away ", only slowed down. Try and sing the verse from one song to the other’s melody and it almost fits perfectly. (Don't call your copyright lawyer though: by the time the chorus starts, STWTLY is a totally different song.) This 80s pop/rock vibe has become Hanson’s predominant style in the last 3 EPs - Loud, Play and In Color: it’s upbeat, it makes for catchy songs and the fans’ reception has been consistently positive. STWTL could almost be a companion to "Stop Me in My Tracks" from last year’s Loud EP, with its powerful guitar riffs and sing-along-able chorus, not to mention the universally pleasing Taylor vocals. Let’s delve into the lyrics now: Long before the spotlight You were part of my...

CH-CH-CHANGES The programme landed in our inboxes in mid-December to a mixed reaction. The schedule was substantially different from previous years: the shows (with the exception of the welcoming show) would start a lot earlier, and two out of three ‘activities with the band’ would take place afterwards. The activities would be Cards Against Humanity and Family Feud - i.e. different kind of party games to what some fans had been hoping for: sack races, egg and spoon races and other such games of the type I’d endured at church group trips in my childhood*. As we already knew, there would only be one ‘craft’ type of activity, tie dye, with a notable change: all three Hanson would take part at the same time. [*I believe these games, when forced upon an adult in the captive-like conditions of a youth camp or, equally, of all-inclusive vacation, openly contravene the Geneva Conventio n: Convention I: the Convention prohibits [...] assaults upon personal dignity.] The news about the ga...

“One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.” - Bob Marley “Rock’n’Roll stops the traffic.” - Bono In my 30-odd years of being a music fan - I’ve had many of those moments when music punched me in the guts, when something told me to listen up and pay attention. One such moment was probably in 1991 or early 1992 - in a clothes shop, of all places. A song that sounded like nothing I’d ever heard before came on the radio. “What is this?” I asked the shop assistant. “It’s a band called Nirvana .” she said. I’m not ashamed to say that something similar happened when a friend of mine introduced me to Hanson back in 2012, when she handed me that unmarked DVD which we subsequently jokingly referred to as ‘The White Album’ (to preserve my reputation), and which contained a couple of gigabytes’ worth of Hanson discography. Age is no obstacle when you’re a music fan and the magic can strike again at any time. Only last week, in fact, my fi...