June 19, 2009: Tinted Windows at the Highline Ballroom

I hope to post a real review at some point, because this show deserved one, but for now I just wanted to post a few seconds of video from the Tinted Windows show at the Highline Ballroom in New York City, which was as wonderful and overwhelming as the show at The Bamboozle was soggy and low-key.

If you get a chance to see them at some point, go. They are a hoot, and, suddenly, a really amazing band.

Also, an aside: I've heard this a few times now, but someone commented on my Bamboozle photos that they were surprised to see Taylor looking so thin. Recent fan chatter, apparently, has focused on Taylor putting on weight or getting a belly, which is hilarious on about four levels. (1. Taylor is 6'1" and by most standards, a rail. 2. I love that the fans are so quick to point out the flaws in someone so attractive. A belly would make him... what? More like you? 3. Where are people even talking about these things, and who has time to do so? 4. I love that we're still talking about this. Taylor Hanson has four die-hard fans left, and they're all talking about his weight. Poor guy.)

Anyway, my point here is to say that Taylor is looking amazing right now, which is just as shallow and stupid as talking about his imaginary belly, I recognize. But even the dudes in the audience seemed a little taken aback by him. (To quote one: "Yeah, he is like. He is very. He is very good looking.")

But yeah. That's my update for today. The music is still good. Taylor is still dreamy. Carry on with your day.

Labels: concerts, fanhood, taylor, tinted windows, video, weight

Posted by Laura Motta | 7:13 AM | 4 comments | link |

May 9, 2009: Taylor Gets Wet: Tinted Windows at The Bamboozle

At some point, I promised myself that I would never stand in line for Hanson. I would never sleep on a sidewalk, or forgo bathing for any amount of time, or stand in the rain with my teeth chattering, or risk disease or financial ruin or even tiredness. It's not because I lack devotion. (I mean, keep reading this blog. Seriously.) But what I really lack is patience and any tolerance for being uncomfortable. And let's be real here. You simply don't need to sleep on a sidewalk overnight to see Hanson anymore. In fact, I'm not sure you ever needed to. This is the miraculous truth my friends and I sorted out around 2001: If you show up 10 minutes before the show, showered and with a full stomach, they still let you in!

And because we're talking about Hanson here—my favorite band and yours, the one known for being thrown off the stage by the venue six songs into their set for violating curfew—they often still let you in if you're an hour late. In short, I don't fuss over Hanson anymore.

Except, you know, when I do.

I've broken those rules exactly twice that I can think of in all my years of Hanson fannishness—once in a town called Exeter, New Hampshire for an event called Seacoast Idol, which I've never written about because it was so ridiculous and surreal that I'm still not sure it actually happened. (And if the copious stink of pot coming from backstage was any indication, Hanson's not either.) And then there was the ill-advised hysteria that happened last weekend.

Oh, I know. I wish I could blame this one on my misguided youth. But I clearly can't, as the weird water stains on my very grownup trench coat will testify.

So, we went to see Tinted Windows at The Bamboozle, a music festival held in a parking lot in New Jersey, headlined by No Doubt and featuring absolutely no one else of note. I say this as a card-carrying Old Person, because the 5 zillion kids in attendance clearly knew who they were looking at, and even if they didn't, I was convinced. And my friends instructed me to arrive approximately four hours early.

FOUR HOURS.

To this very moment, I have no idea why I arrived four hours early. In fact, let's ask my friends: Why did you make me show up four hours early? It's not like I live some fathomless distance from Giants Stadium or that Taylor Hanson made a special appearance in the morning to hand out croissants. In fact, when I arrived at this event, Taylor had probably only been in bed for about an hour. In fact, before I scraped myself out of my apartment and boarded that New Jersey Transit bus, I had only been in bed for about an hour.

But I had missed the first Tinted Windows show in New York City. (I was in Croatia. That long story is captured elsewhere.) And I figured this was maybe worth it. Even at that hour of the morning. Even in the rain.

It rained from the moment we arrived outside the gates—soggy and relentless—until the moment Taylor Hanson stepped on the stage. I could make insinuations here about the Power of Taylor and how he constantly moves with a patch of blue, cloudless sky above his big shaggy head. (It matches his eyes, as I'm sure he's well aware.) But honestly, the sun never came completely out and the rain never really stopped. It was more like a hopeful brightening in the atmosphere than anything else; you might need Isaac and Zac for full sun, to truly make the clouds part. Still, though, Taylor wore sunglasses. Maybe because he's too cool to live and maybe because he's just protecting himself from all the UV radiating from Planet Taylor.

Anyway.

By the time Tinted Windows took the stage, I was a soggy mess. And after about three bars of music, I didn't really care. I cared immediately after they left the stage, when I suddenly realized that I was soaked through every layer of my clothes, that it was raining again, and that I was starving. But while they played, all was well with the world.

So, Tinted Windows. You know what? They're great. The songs are fun and quick and frothy and the band obviously plays so well. And Taylor is as he always is—gorgeous, charmingly awkward, dressed like a fool, and singing like it's going out of style. Others have made light of his inclusion in this project, but really, he's the only thing that makes it work. There's no one else on stage who's pretty enough or guileless enough to sell such pithy fare, and certainly none of them can hit notes like Taylor can, even if the music doesn't seem to be an immediate match for Taylor's voice. (Imagine Michael Jackson fronting Cheap Trick. Yeah.) But somehow, it holds together, even if Taylor is still a little unsure how to go about being a frontman. If anything, what Tinted Windows could use is a full dose of Taylor's weird rockstar magic. The crummy thing, though, is that magic surfaces only occasionally, and only when Taylor is totally comfortable, in front of a crowd that is beside itself with hysteria, and about two hours into the set. Which means, of course, that it may never happen during Tinted Windows. We've all seen it—that moment where something switches over for him. It is usually the moment where he steps away from his piano, gets dangerously close to the edge of the stage. His awkwardness evaporates. He stops caring so much. And he is, suddenly, a truly great performer. But unfortunately for Tinted Windows, Taylor isn't a great performer every day of the year. On the flip side, he is a great singer every day of the year, and he's sexy as hell before he even opens his mouth, and that's what Tinted Windows is living off of right now. It's fun and a nice departure—Taylor has never played with a tighter band—but you'll find none of the breathless giddiness at a Tinted Windows show that you will at your average Hanson concert.

Still, though, Tinted Windows is such fun. James Iha could not possibly play any better, Adam Schlesinger is mellow and solid as ever, and Bun E. Carlos just looks like he's having a blast. The story, though—and I don't think this is unfair, despite my clear Hansony bias—is all about Taylor. As the set began, the front of the stage was aswarm with press photographers, and I assure you that few lenses were aimed at Adam Schlesinger. Maybe it's curiosity about how he turned out. (Cute.) Maybe it's the shear weirdness of the project. (Definite.) And maybe it's just another chapter in the same story that's played out since the beginning of Taylor's career. (Pretty boy sings pop songs and the girls all waited in the rain.)

Labels: bamboozle, concerts, taylor, tinted windows

Posted by Laura Motta | 9:15 AM | 5 comments | link |

March 9, 2009: Taylor Hanson Is Cool. Groan.

When I saw Hanson last fall at the Nokia Theater in New York City, I noticed two out-of-the ordinary things. First, Adam Schlesinger was standing five feet behind us for the entire set. Second of all, the place was filled with dudes.

The former was cool—I love Fountains of Wayne as much as the next pop-addled post-grad—but not altogether surprising. There have been rumors for years that Adam was on the short list of producers considered for Middle of Nowhere. (Imagine, for a minute, what that album would have sounded like. Hell, I’d still like to hear it.) Plus, he also wrote a Christmas song for Snowed In that Hanson eventually rejected because they thought the concept was too immature. It’s called “I Want an Alien for Christmas” and Fountains of Wayne recorded it themselves shortly thereafter. It’s quirky and fun and what Hanson probably couldn’t articulate at the time—because who can, when you’re 14—is that the band probably couldn’t have performed it with any of the necessary cheek. Actually, cheek is still not quite Hanson’s specialty, but I get ahead of myself. But in short, it wasn’t all that weird seeing Adam at a Hanson show.

What was weirder was the second thing—the shear number of youngish, skinny-jeaned, modishly-coiffed boys loafing around the place. Now, I have nothing against youngish, skinny-jeaned, modishly-coifed boys. Because hey, I love the big blond one up front who’s busy forgetting the lyrics to the song he wrote. So why wouldn’t I love this motley collection?

Well. Here’s why. I don’t want to share.

Hanson is mine. And they’ve been mine since before I had an SAT score or a driver’s license. And for most of my years on this particular side of the fan fence, Hanson has not been cool and has not been suitable for anyone who is or pretends to be cool. So to suddenly seen these poor bastions of cool—the specimen known as the sadly posing early-twenty-something New York City male music fan—my heart kinda broke. For them, yes, because they’ll never know what we know. (Not until they’ve sat on a sidewalk for 12 hours or grown a vagina.) But also for us. Because, at this very late date in Hanson history, dear fellow fan, our ranks have been polluted.

Hanson has been around for so long and has made so much good music and are so much less depressing than the Jonas Brothers that they’ve actually become sort of cool.

Of course, Hanson themselves would probably see it the other way around. They undoubtedly see us as the pollution and the simpering male contingent as their late-arriving-but-true-target-demographic. What men love, after all, is still and will forever be more important, more legitimate, more artistically valid than what women love. Add that poison cherry to your bitter sundae, Hanson fan. You know, right after you spend a few minutes contemplating the fact that they married three of us.

And in a way, Taylor’s solo project—Tinted Windows, the single most exciting news to come out of camp Hanson since the release of Underneath—is, in a way, the fruition of all that. Hanson’s clamoring for legitimate musical friends, good notice from the mainstream press, more diverse fans, dissociation from its teenie bopper image. Tinted Windows grants Hanson—or at least Taylor—those things and more. And I don’t mean to be totally grumpy about it. These things are great for Hanson, whose fan base dwindles more and more as the years pass. (I went to a show at a small theater in Asbury Park, New Jersey a few months ago that was a quarter full. It was startling. And awfully quiet.) It’s also a good thing for Taylor, who, let’s be real here, could occasionally use some new context. Ike and Zac are splendid. They give to Taylor what only family can—subtle contrast, the inexplicable voodoo of history and blood. But he’s musically out of their league as both a singer and a songwriter, and he always has been. And let me horrify you some more: He probably knows it. And they probably do too.

It’s funny, of course, that the music created by Taylor’s new superband would seem so inconsequential. The first Tinted Windows songs are fun but nothing more. The guitars roar, they do. And the production makes the most of Taylor’s prickly tenor. But nothing I’ve heard so far soars like “Runaway Run” or weeps like “Believe” or jumps out of the speakers like “Something Going Round”. But then, that stuff really isn’t all that cool, is it.

Labels: concerts, coolness, solo projects, taylor, tinted windows

Posted by Laura Motta | 10:41 PM | 10 comments | link |