YNN Hudson Valley (Video at the source)

If you’ve heard of “MMMBop,” you’re probably familiar with this band of brothers. Vince Gallagher spoke with the band “Hanson” before their concert at Northern Lights on Tuesday.

 

If you’ve heard of “MMMBop,” you’re probably familiar with this band of brothers. Vince Gallagher spoke with the band “Hanson” before their concert at Northern Lights on Tuesday.

 CLIFTON PARK, N.Y. — You may have heard of the pop rock band from Tulsa, Oklahoma, formed by the three brothers, Issac, Taylor, and Zac: the trio known as Hanson. We caught up with them before their show at Northern Lights on Tuesday. The concert was actually for a show that had been postponed.

Isaac Hanson said, “We actually very rarely cancel a show but got really sick at the end of last year, but this was part of another U.S. tour and so we just finished a whole run of shows across Canada.”

They then made their way back to this area. They’ve been going now for more than 15 years, as a band and a family, which can help when it comes to carrying the same tune

Zac Hanson said, “There’s probably some genetic assistance in there somewhere. I think vocal cords probably sounds more similar and blend better, but we’ve only been in a band with each other, so it’s probably hard to know.”

Hanson’s popularity exploded in 1997 with the release on “MMMBop,” but they’ve really had a combination of a solid fan base and critical acclaim.

“We do it first for ourselves and secondly for the fans hoping that they love what you do, and then you just stay focused on that every night,” said Isaac.

And yes, they’re still popular today. Outside Northern Lights, fans waited for hours to get first row seats, based on the number in order of purchased tickets.

“They are to help us stay in line so when the doors open, we can all proceed in to the show,” said fan Colleen Bridges.

In the meantime, there’s a bit of camping out, but it was all for the songs they hope to hear

“Never Let Go, Crazy Beautiful, Give a Little, In the City, MMMBop, everything,” said another fan.

Hanson also is in the business side of the music business; they run their own label, 3CG Records – a move based on the response to the state of the music industry these days

“You’ve seen massive shrinkage of every different side of the music business just because of the way that the culture is being spread and shared and those things, and I think as a band, we just found that the best place to be was running our own label, doing it ourselves and finding those partnerships we could rely on,” said Zac.

And as Hanson had a successful night here in the Capital Region, that continues with more scheduled sold-out shows.

Have you seen this video of a three-year-old weeping over Justin Bieber? It became an internet phenomenon, culminating in Jimmy Kimmel flying the toddler to his show so she could sit on Bieber’s lap. A lot of people thought it was pretty cute. Others found it disturbing, lumping it in with the broader societal problem of the sexualization of increasingly young girls.

This particular example may be a little extreme: she’s three. But there’s a general feeling out that girls are crushing way too hard, way too young, on the boys they see in magazines. Look around, and you’ll find no shortage of six-, eight-, ten-year-olds in the grip of a pretty serious Bieber fever.

I’m here to tell you: don’t worry about it.

Remember Hanson? For about five years of my life, they were my life. Them, and another band, The Moffatts. The Moffatts were the Canadian Hanson: an all-brother band that sang and played instruments and had hundreds of thousands of utterly rabid, scarily desperate young girls tearing their hair out over them. It’s not an exaggeration to say that I spent the years between the ages of thirteen and seventeen doing very little aside from obsessing over these two bands. Or that between 1996 and 2000 I went to well over a hundred of their concerts, television spots, autograph sessions, radio interviews, and other public appearances. That I followed them around most of Canada and a good part of the United States. Or that I spent, in total, probably about sixty nights sleeping in parking lots, on sidewalks, in decrepit motels, and in the back of a minivan. My friends and I once spent four nights in a Walmart parking lot, in the rain, just to be first in an autograph line.

Yes, I had friends. I had a posse, and we were famous in the world of band fans. We were interviewed in newspapers and by radio and television stations everywhere we went. The Life Network did a special on us called The Things We Do For Love. When we showed up at the Sally Jesse Raphael show in New York, to see The Moffatts, the fans waiting outside the studio screamed for us, asked us for our autographs. We were famous for loving famous people. Continue reading →