THV11

There were songs, and there were songs. There were the ones that shaped the way we thought, or the way we interpreted the quirks and bumps of adolescence. There were the ones that would get stuck in our heads for days at a time. There were the ones that would make us forever fans of the musicians who wrote it. These are the ones that are remembered. For me, as a 30-year-old woman unashamed of her love of music, no matter the band, there’s Hanson’s “Mmmbop.”

The first time I heard the song, which in its original form turns 20 years old this week, I was a fifth grader.  A fifth-grader who hadn’t had many crushes on boys yet (unless you count JTT on Home Improvement), a fifth-grader who really only listened to the music her brother or parents listened to.

“Mmmbop” appeared on MTV’s Total Request Live one afternoon and when my older and way cooler teenage brother and I heard the song begin, we both just stared at the tube TV in our living room. We listened to the entire song and I was hooked.

With a few pokes and prods (read: years of teasing) from my brother about my sudden and unashamed obsession over these three brothers, the CD was mine as soon as I could make it so, and posters and cutouts from Teen Beat magazines laced every inch of my bedroom walls.

For me, working my way into teenage-hood, there was something more than just a catchy chorus that drove most adults insane.

It was hope. Hope for me, as a creative, quiet kid who dreamed of being known for something at a young age. Three kids under the age of 16 were following their dreams, and doing a really good job at it.

I didn’t stop at Hanson’s first album; I’ve followed them ever since, and have even met them a few times.  It was an admitted obsession as a child that turned into just simply being a fan.

With nine studio albums under their belts, three live albums, six documentaries and live performance films, these guys seem to really know what they’re doing. They skirted out of the incredibly bright limelight around 2000 when they began releasing music on their own label and snagging positions on the independent charts.

The entrepreneurs brew their own beer (Which, by the way, my now-husband drove to the brothers’ hometown of Tulsa to pick up for me one birthday a few years back, just so I could have the bottles), and even host a yearly event called “Hop Jam,” set for next weekend. This year’s headliner is Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes.

They’re advocates of the fight against in HIV/AIDS and poverty in Africa, and host one-mile walks to support the cause in every city they tour. …I’ve been on a couple; they’re really quite fun!

To learn more about what Hanson is up to, click here.

If you haven’t heard their recent music, I think it’s worth a listen.  I put together this playlist for anyone who is curious what Hanson’s like these days.

BINTANG

(Translated using Google Translate)

NewsOK

TULSA – The Bob Dylan Archive announced today that Tulsa’s iconic Cain’s Ballroom, 423 N Main, will host a concert celebrating Bob Dylan on Friday, May 20.

Produced and curated by renowned Oklahoma musician and producer Steve Ripley, “On a Night Like This” will feature 30 artists who will perform some of Dylan’s greatest hits. Tickets go on sale Friday.

“I’ve been fortunate to have worked with a lot of great people in the music business,” said Ripley in a news release. “The Tractors project was by far the biggest success of the things I’ve done, but, for me, all of that pales in comparison to having played guitar with Bob. The show at Cain’s will be an evening of celebrating Bob’s music. We’ll be there to serve those songs. I can’t imagine any other thing that would have pulled me ‘out of retirement’ from down on the farm.”

As previously reported, The Bob Dylan Archive was acquired in March by the George Kaiser Family Foundation and The University of Tulsa under the stewardship of TU’s Helmerich Center for American Research. Comprised of more than 6,000 items spanning nearly 60 years of Bob Dylan’s unique artistry, career and worldwide cultural significance, the archive includes decades of never-before-seen handwritten manuscripts, notebooks and correspondence; films, videos, photographs and artwork; memorabilia and ephemera; personal documents and effects; unreleased studio and concert recordings; musical instruments and many other items.

Catching the attention of fans and media worldwide, The Bob Dylan Archive and Guthrie Green teamed up to develop the concert as a way for fans to experience a Dylan-filled night and fulfill the appetite of many who are anxious to be a part of this historic event in Tulsa.

“The staff of GKFF and Guthrie Green are thrilled to work with Steve Ripley to produce this concert,” said Stanton Doyle, senior program officer at the foundation, in the news release. “As curator, he has put together an incredible house band and, combined with the lineup of the best Oklahoma artists, the concert should truly be remarkable. We anticipate this concert will draw an audience from around the region.”

The concert has a talented lineup of artists from across the region:

• The House Band including Steve Ripley, John Fullbright, Fats Kaplan, Davey Faragher, Pete Thomas, Terry Ware, Daniel Walker, Jimmy Karstein, and the McCrary Sisters
• Special performances by John Fullbright, Jimmy LaFave, J.D. McPherson, John Moreland, Elizabeth Cook, Red Dirt Rangers, and many more

“To sing Bob Dylan songs just blocks away from his hero Woody’s words and in soulful Tulsa, Oklahoma makes for a pretty potent rock and roll cocktail,” said LaFave in the release. “Mama take this badge off of me. I am honored to be a part of the tribute.”

Doors will open at 7 p.m. with the show beginning at 8 p.m. Tickets cost $30 in advance and $35 on the day of the show. Tickets will be available at the Cain’s Ballroom box office and at www.cainsballroom.com.

About Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is one of the world’s most influential and groundbreaking artists. In the decades since he first burst into the public’s consciousness via New York City’s Greenwich Village folk music scene in the early 1960s, Bob Dylan has sold more than 125 million records around the world and amassed a singular body of work that includes some of music’s most popular and acclaimed songs and recordings. He continues to traverse the globe each year, performing nearly 100 concerts annually in front of audiences who embrace his new creations with the same fervor as his earlier work. Bob Dylan was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States’ highest civilian honor, in 2013 and the National Medal of Arts in 2009. He was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for “his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.”

He is also the recipient of France’s Officier de la Legion d’honneur, Sweden’s Polar Music Award, doctorates from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and Princeton University, as well as numerous other honors. In recent years, his success as an author and visual artist has further burnished his popularity and acclaim. For more information, go tobobdylan.com.

About The Bob Dylan Archive
In 2016, George Kaiser Family Foundation and The University of Tulsa acquired The Bob Dylan Archive. The Archive is permanently housed in Tulsa, under the stewardship of TU’s Helmerich Center for American Research. Comprised of more than 6,000 items spanning nearly 60 years of Bob Dylan’s unique artistry, singular career and worldwide cultural significance, the archive includes decades of never-before-seen handwritten manuscripts, notebooks and correspondence; films, videos, photographs and artwork; memorabilia and ephemera; personal documents and effects; unreleased studio and concert recordings; musical instruments and many other items. Ultimately, a permanent exhibit space for the archive will be designated near the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa’s Brady Arts District, which houses a museum dedicated to American folksinger and Oklahoma native Woody Guthrie. Guthrie was one of Dylan’s most significant early influences, even inspiring one of Dylan’s first tracks, “Song to Woody” on his 1962 self-titled album. To learn more about the Bob Dylan Archive, go to  bobdylanarchive.com.

-BAM

Rolling Stone

Hear Cheap Trick drummer Bun E. Carlos and Guided by Voices singer/songwriter Robert Pollard team up on “Do Something Real.” Mike Graham

Cheap Trick are all set to celebrate their history at tonight’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, where the Illinois power-pop legends will take the stage to play a few of their classic songs. If all goes as planned, the performance will feature a reunion with drummer Bun E. Carlos — who hasn’t toured with the group since 2010 — but the nostalgia trip ends there. Cheap Trick, sans Carlos, hit the road April 10th in support of their new album; Carlos, meanwhile, is set to release his first solo LP, the guest-studded Greetings From Bunezuela!, this summer. Below you can stream the first single, “Do Something Real,” written and sung by Guided by Voices mastermind Robert Pollard.

Carlos’ friendship with the famously prolific indie-rock songwriter dates back to 1999, when Cheap Trick opened for Guided by Voices at several East Coast shows. “Cheap Trick and Guided By Voices have toured together,” Carlos told Rolling Stone. “I’ve played cowbell with GBV four shows in a row, and I DJ’d at GBV gigs in Chicago a couple of times.”

Like all the tracks on Greetings From Bunezuela!, “Do Something Real” is a remake of a previously recorded song, and the drummer knows Pollard’s vast catalog well enough that he chose to revive a relative obscurity: The catchy, hard-driving cut originally appeared on Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department, Pollard’s 1999 album with multi-instrumentalist Doug Gillard. “I’m an average GBV fan with about 200–300 of their songs in my collection,” Carlos says. “I had about 15 GBV songs I thought about covering, and ‘Do Something Real’ kept coming back to me. … I could have done an entire album with Robert Pollard alone.”

Pollard is clearly flattered to have been tapped for the project. “It was a pleasure,” he told Rolling Stone of working with Carlos. “Secondly, it was an honor. To me, it’s like working with Ringo Starr. That’s how important Bun E. Carlos’s work with Cheap Trick is to me. It’s like I’ve been included in to rock royalty.”

The rest of the album features a revolving cast of frontmen, an intriguing assortment that includes Wilco bassist John Stirratt, Soul Asylum’s Dave Pirner, roots-rock luminary Alejandro Escovedo and original Cheap Trick vocalist Randy “Xeno” Hogan, among others. “I pretty much own the catalog of every singer featured on the album,” Carlos says, “and I’ve recorded or toured with every singer on the album.”

Some of the guests, such as Pollard and Escovedo, sing their own previously recorded songs on Bunezuela!; others, like the brothers of Hanson and Eleventh Dream Day’s Rick Rizzo, reinterpret vintage tracks by the Who, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Them, and others.

According to Carlos, the concept for the record has been in the works for decades. “I talked about a covers album since 1978,” he says. “After 35 years, I’m finally making this record.” Accordingly, he took an old-school approach: “I made the album like people made records in my childhood. I cut two tracks at a time.”

Greetings From Bunezuela! will be out June 24th. You can view the preliminary list of tracks and guest vocalists below.

1. “Do Something Real” — Robert Pollard (Robert Pollard solo)
2. “Him or Me” — featuring Hanson (Paul Revere and the Raiders)
3. “Armenia in the Sky” — John Stirratt (The Who)
4. “I Love You No More” — Alex Dezen (The Blackstones)
5. “Tell Me” — Alejandro Escovedo (The Rolling Stones)
6. “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry” — Dave Pirner (Bob Dylan)
7. “Let the Mystery Be” — Xeno (Iris DeMent)
8. “Idea” — Robert Pollard (The Bee Gees)
9. “Le Cactus” — Nicholas Tremulis (Jacque DuTronc)
10. “I Can Only Give You Everything” — Rick Rizzo (Them)
11. “Slow Down” — Alejandro Escovedo (Alejandro Escovedo)
12. “Count on Me” — Xeno (Fra Lippo Lippi)
13. “I Don’t Mind” — Alex Dezen (Alex Dezen)

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/hear-cheap-trick-drummers-new-song-with-guided-by-voices-robert-pollard-20160408#ixzz45Iftyhbt
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook

Gazette Review

“One-hit wonder”, the term most people I talked to used when describing Hanson, usually invokes images of an obscure musical act hitting it big and then fading into the oblivion of average, everyday, non-celebrity life with the rest of us. However, as illustrated by the careers of the Hanson brothers, the fact that they will never likely be as famous as they once were doesn’t mean that they have given up on their trade.

The Beginning of Hanson

The Hanson trio of Isaac, Taylor and Zac, three siblings, began their professional music careers in 1992, while the oldest of them (Isaac) was only 11, and the youngest (Zac) being at the tender age of 6. They performed at different venues and gained a moderate level of notoriety not only due to their youthfulness but also their genuine talents since, in addition to being able to sing, the boys were also skilled in musical instruments – with Isaac playing guitar, Taylor keyboard and Zac drumming – and all three having a background on the piano. While shopping for a record deal they were turned down by a number of companies due to a general lack of faith many people have in child bands, as some suspected them of being “either a novelty or fraud”, but eventually, after a couple of independent album releases and staying diligent in touring and doing live performances, Hanson finally scored a contract with Mercury Records in 1996.

This deal turned out to be a major, perhaps unexpected-in-magnitude success for all parties involved, because Hanson’s first album under Mercury, Middle of Nowhere (1997), featured the remake of a song, MMMBop, that Hanson had previously recorded on their own but redid to be featured on this new, mainstream project. MMMBopwent on to become one of the biggest singles of the 90s – amazingly reaching number 1 in 27 countries – and was the primary impetus behind Middle of Nowhere, an album that, including their smash hit, was “written entirely by the (very young) Hanson brothers”, selling over 10 million copies worldwide and receiving three Grammy nominations. And the Hanson boys, who favored a long-hair, rural look (hailing from Oklahoma, a place more associated with farms than music) instantly became pop icons and actually performed on America’s biggest music stage, the Grammy Awards, in 1998.

The Fall of Hanson

It’s easy to argue that Hanson’s dip in popularity was due to what seems to inevitably happen to all mega-successful boy bands, in that they started to age, and fans started to lose interest. However Hanson never had a legitimate chance to perpetuate their standing at the top due to internal issues at their record label, which is perhaps the worst nightmare of any popular music artist. Hanson re-released an indie album they put together in 1996, this time under Mercury Records in 1998, but by the time they had completed a collection of new material in 2000, entitled This Time Around, Mercury had merged with the Island Def Jam Music Group, and Island Def Jam apparently were not overly interested in promoting Hanson. As such album sales were low, and the label even refused to fund Hanson’s accompanying tour, which of course didn’t help in bigging up the album nor the group in general. However Hanson still went on tour to push This Time Around in 2000 – using their own money – and this state of affairs pretty much set the tone for what was to become of the rest of their careers.

What’s Hanson Doing Now in 2016? Recent Update

Hanson is a group that, despite striking gold at an age when most of us were in middle school and now being grown men, are still dedicated to the passions of their childhood. The Hanson brothers went from being an unsigned pre-pubescent boy band to reaching a level of success so significant that they even have an annual holiday in their honor – that is still practiced to this day – in their hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma, to once again being independent artists, though now signed to a label that they founded and own. It’s improbable that Hanson will ever reclaim the level of phenomenal success they had in the 1990s, but since then they have amassed a catalog consisting of 8 albums that were able to make it onto the US Billboard top 40, even though most of those projects were independent, including their most recent one, Anthem (2013), as well as maintaining a robust and devoted fan base.

Hanson still tours, most recently in 2015 during the Roots & Rock N’ Roll Tour which they headlined. Despite the fact that they are only in their 30s, Hanson has been around for so long that some of their current fans weren’t even born when MMMBop was released and don’t even know how the song sounds. Hanson has also put their previous writing success to use by co-writing the songs of other musicians and have also been featured on a couple of albums by popular artists in 2015, in addition to regularly making television appearances and staying devoted to promoting international charity events, some of which they established themselves.

However at the end of the day being devoted husbands and fathers, with all of the brothers now being married and having a total of 11 children between them, as well as ever-diminishing popularity has minimized Hanson’s involvement in the music industry. In spite of this they have been able to capitalize on their notoriety in recent times by using their already-established brand to delve into other business ventures, selling products as diverse as guitars to board games to beer, and we can expect going into 2016 and beyond that the trio will remain at least marginally active in the music industry, as there has even been talk of the sons of the Hanson brothers eventually forming their own band.