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Wes Hayden from the Bachelorette and now Bachelor Pad played in Milton, ON last night, so Jessie, Alan, Shelley, Christine and some friends and I decided to check out the show… He was really good and we managed to get a little line dance party started…
I don’t want to dance, motherfucker… But you’ve given me no choice…
Here are some videos from last night… And here is a sample of the harmonies, but you need to experience them in the flesh… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUJaGxAUvUc I like seeing Hanson in play in theatres.. the acoustics in some of these old venues are incredible and help showcase their harmonies… here is a vid of them covering Rockapella’s Change In My Life acapella … i love to hear an audience go completely silent for something like this… Hanson is also my favourite cover band… (next to Dwayne Gretzky, of course..) and no offense to Hanson but their covers are their best songs… i dont mean to undermine their songwriting… i just think they do incredible covers… this is one they have been playing on this tour Dancing In The Streets… potentially one of my least favourite… i am a bit partial to Oh Darling… afterall, we were the ones that gave them the idea to play it… Rooney was opening for them on tour… I have been trying to see this band since 2003… they even drew me a map once and i was still late… Went to see Crosby, Stills & Nash open for Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers last night… I love the audiences at old man band shows… it is such a mix and its hilarious to watch the interaction… I love this song… here is a little bit of CSN playing Love the One You’re With last night… Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were phenomenal… I’m really glad that I got to experience seeing them live… he is still an incredible live performance… though I was a little disappointed at the omission of American Girl, the show was still wonderful… Here is Free Fallin’ from last night’s show… Sweet Thing played at the CNE on Saturday as well with Down With Webster… Tonya and I made a brief stop… Here is a video of their cover of Kanye West’s Love Lockdown… They’re my fave…
Give a little heart & soul… Let your body lose control… Give a little… oh oh ohh… Give a little….
I have been neglecting the updates for a few weeks, so let’s get to it..
But I did go see Crosby, Stills & Nash with Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers and it was an incredible show… i didn’t have one of those pivotal concert moments the way I did when I saw CSN with Neil Young in tow in 2006… twice… I remember being one of the youngest people there and Tonya and I having our collective minds blown, not only by the music, but by the audience… the atmosphere was incredible… you had the old men in the business suits getting hammered and passing a joint to a 17 year old in a Nirvana tshirt… and when we left the ACC that night, there was a man busking, playing guitar and singing old protest songs and this impromptu sing-a-long, dance party, love fest started… and it was such a cool experience… I really felt like I had witnessed something amazing… and even though I had an amazing time at the Petty/CSN show, it wasn’t the same… the crowd wasn’t the same… I mean, it was amazing to look around and see so many people in tune to the same moment, but you can get that at any popular performance… the audience didn’t ooze the same camaraderie that they did at CSNY… but maybe that’s just me… The show was amazing… CSN were incredible, but there was still a little void left by Young’s missing harmony, in my opinion… Stills is looking a lot better than he was… lost some weight… could stand up on his own… last time, he fell over on stage, and sliced his hand open on Keep On Rockin In the Free World… and played the rest of the song with his hand gushing blood and wrapped in a towel… and Nash is totally underated… and Crosby… he’s like Santa, but he winked at me once… and I completely understood why all the lesbians want him to father their children… Petty was amazing… that man doesn’t seem to have aged… usually you can hear it in their voices, but not him… he was amazing… I was only extremely disappointed that he didn’t play American Girl… I know you’re in Canada… so what?! Play my GD song!
So what else… Im sure I mentioned a couple of these things, but I went to see Hanson play a couple shows… I think its pretty ridiculous that I’m still a fan… 13 years or something stupid like that… I remember my mom saying that it was a bad idea for me to use a glue gun to put posters of taylor hanson on my ceiling.. (im not ashamed to admit that I did in fact cover every inch of wall space in my room with posters of hanson) … she informed me that young girls are fickle (trust me, old girls are too) and that I probably wouldn’t like them come September.. this was in June of 1997… my mother still questions me, being a grown-ass woman going out of her way to travel somewhere to see Hanson play… I can’t help it… Now the thing about Hanson is… I think they are collectively very talented musicians… they should be… they are uneducated and have spent their entire lives (entire being the operative word) playing music… besides getting married and procreating and changing religions like they should be changing their clothes… music is all they know… so just based on odds, they should be pretty good by now, they have had enough practice… and their harmonies are pretty impressive… brother harmonies are hard to achieve if you don’t come from the same womb and considering all three have very distinctive and different voices, its actually quite impressive that they are able to blend as well as they do…
I think Taylor Hanson has an androgynous beauty that very few men or women can even imagine competing with… and I think he is a charismatic frontman… I do think they have written some very impressive, lyrically intricate songs (MMMBOP is not an example of this..) and I do think that some of the musical progression is really quite beautiful… but I will also say that in their later years that I feel the “skip” urge… with Middle of Nowhere, This Time Around and Snowed In(despite the fact that they didn’t write the majority of the songs)… I didn’t feel the urge to bypass any of the tracks on the album… I loved it in its entirety on repeat for YEARS (maybe I just took the time to develop a relationship with the music because it took 4 years for anything else to come out… but I don’t think that’s the only reason)… I just think the songs were better… every single song was worthwhile… there wasn’t any filler really… And then with Underneath… it just wasn’t quite up to par… and I know they fought long and hard to get the music released, but to be honest, I understood where the label reps were coming from when they kept insisting that Hanson didn’t have an album yet… I don’t think they did either… and the “leaked” demos that came out of that time were an embarrassment… If as a label rep, I was presented a song from Hanson that included a rap breakdown in the middle, I would have sent them on their way too… But then again, I do find a lot of the time that it’s their unreleased music that I appreciate more… songs like End of the Line, Breaktown, Never Let Go… songs they released as b-sides like Every Word I Say.. easily better than the good majority of the album material… and that’s what always threw me for a loop… because it wasn’t that they didn’t have it in them to create something incredible still… they just have terrible taste in their own music, if that’s even possible…
With Underneath, I will also take into consideration that by the time we had built up the hype around the impending release we were all expecting something monumental… and then we had Underneath served to us 6 ways from Sunday… we went on the acoustic tour… and because this was the first time they were accessible in years, we overdosed… I must have seen 20 shows on the acoustic tour… and then they toured what must have been 30 legs of some variation of the Underneath Tour… and that’s not to say that I didn’t love every minute of it… enough to go to as many shows as I have… but it wasn’t the album that held anything for me… it was their live performance… And its all kind of a blur after that… I often forget that the Walk exists as an album… mostly because the song itself was a key fixture on the Underneath tour… that by the time it made it to an album, I was well over it… the Walk had some songs that I loved, but it also had bullshit like Running Man… and that kind of sums up Hanson’s inability to make it big with the mainstream audience again… They need an album that you can present to an outsider in its entirety that you first of all, wouldn’t be embarrassed to be caught listening to if you were stuck in traffic with your window down… and im sorry… Running Man is not something I would be able to blare unabashedly… that and hip hop… but that’s mostly because im a white girl, insecure and I figure you’re judging me harshly and assume I wear Baby Phat…
Hanson is cheesy… and in a lot of way that’s what works for them… and I think theyre starting to realize that with their new album Shout It Out… they went all out with their first single… they made the video a tribute to the Blues Brothers… the song is catchy and cheesy, and so the video went viral online… everyone loved it… people liked the song… and yet the music still isn’t the right kind of cheese to make it successful in a top40 sense… does that make sense? You have the scene kids digging all the autotuned trash emo bands that use double-entendre lyrics, anything remotely shock factor… (Whoa Is Me, She Only Likes Me When She’s Drunk) any of the Disney stars turned singers, the Jonas Brothers, Selena Gomez… Katy Perry, Ke$ha… its all cheesy but the kids don’t realize it, so it works… or they realize that it’s a purposeful cheese… Whereas Hanson, at their cheesiest, they don’t seem to realize that they’re being cheesy… and when they make the concentrated effort to play it up, then it works briefly… but not enough for a total mainstream comeback… not that I would want that for them anyway… (PS its also a good thing you cant get in trouble for plagiarizing yourself…) I think the greatest attribute to Hanson’s musical talent are their covers… I know its probably offensive to commend a songwriter on their ability to play someone else’s music, but I think it’s a huge feat… to take a song that has already been performed to what is perceived as perfection and then to be able to do it justice or even surpass the original is an accomplishment… that being said… besides Dwayne Gretzky, Hanson is by far one of the greatest cover bands I have ever seen… We originally suggested they cover Oh Darling in July of 2007… Taylor told me he thought it was a great song but that he didn’t think they would ever even attempt to cover the Beatles… low and behold, 2 or 3 weeks later, they play a show with friends as their alter-ego cover band and fucking played it… and it has gone on to be one of their best covers… a fan favourite… yeah, you’re all welcome… and on that note, I think they should give the Rollingstones’ Sweet Virginia a try… I think they would kill it… in a good way… I’m sorry I rambled.. I will get to the updates later… I will eventually get on with the updates since December… but in the meantime, I went to see Bob Seger the other night… I checked him and the Beach Boys (with John Stamos) off my list of old man bands to see while they’re still kicking… He was awesome… his voice is still holding up pretty well, he looks like Santa and he and every drunk old man in the audience had the whole “drunk-old-man-bent-at-the-waist-bent-knee-air-guitar-leg-slapping-modified-fist-pump” down pat… It was great… I put up a few videos… they take a little bit to focus… here is one of my fave songs… |
