I think we all understood that Hanson's transition from sugary kiddie pop unit to funked out rock band would bring some serious changes, from shorter hair to deeper voices to smaller venues to less dynamic Billboard numbers and the like. Few of us, however, had expected those transitions to stretch into our own relationship with the band. Being a Hanson fan isn't exactly a complicated business. You buy albums. You go to concerts. You express your love and devotion as needed in the appropriate forums. You join the fan club.

We all did it. MOE was an exciting development in the small universe of Hanson fandom. It was concrete evidence of the band's reaching out to us on a semi-regular basis. It bore their fingerprints, their photographs and their questionable grammar alike, and it was within reach. Twenty dollars a year landed you an admittedly high-class effort on nice paper delivered to your home with Tulsa, Oklahoma as its return address. It was a good deal, and it was fun. It was what we waited for when there were no new albums to buy, no new outfits to gossip about. There was a mystery to it, (Why didn't they ever individually credit any of the articles, and who, for goodness sakes, is Dr. Food?) and it was concrete. It was something to put away, to haul out, to keep. And in three more issues, it'll be gone.

It's not that its rather formidable replacement, Hanson.net, isn't fun. It is. It has enough message boards, pictures, trinkets, bells, whistles and e-mail boxes to sink a small tour bus, but what it doesn't have in any kind of traceable amount, is Hanson. They haven't posted there once. None of the content is written by them. None of the pictures are taken by them. There is nothing there to indicate or personally reflect the band that the service takes its name from. When will we ever see one of Zac's Paint Shop masterpieces on Hanson.net? Or a picture that a fan drew that personally appealed to them? Or a letter that meant something? Sure, the digital universe is impressive, but it's also highly impersonal. MOE was something intimate, something that came to you from them, as assuredly as that envelope read "Tulsa." Hanson.net is a behemoth at its outset. It's not a club. It's an institution run by a bunch of faceless digerati in New York who don't know you from to the next David Bowie fan. And for all of the information it provides, and all of the pictures it houses, and all of the "exclusives" it entitles you to, it's also very expensive.

One hundred dollars a year, to be a member of a band's fan club, is steep. It's steep if you're a college student with no use for your own Internet provider. It's steep if you're the parent of a Hanson fan and you're happy with your current provider. And that's just for the people who can even entertain the option of getting Hanson.net. If you're 15 and don't have a credit card, if you don't have a computer (God forbid.), if there's more than one Hanson fan in your house, if there's no dialup in your area, it's not just steep, it's impossible. While the goal of a club should be exclusivity, it won't do to alienate the members of the much more affordable and affable original fan club, many of whom won't be able to sign up for Hanson.net, no matter how slick its advertising campaign.

And that's where this situation truly starts to get sticky. Hanson et al have been pressing Hanson.net at us like it's the greatest thing they've ever done. They've been pressing so hard that they're neglecting nearly every other outlet that they've created for their fans. Hansonline.com has become a shameful wasteland in the wake of Hanson.net. Once the only official online source for Hanson information, it now remains perpetually unupdated, even while important news, especially about the tour, sails right past us, information about everything from tour dates to on sale times to venue information. If it weren't for the Hanson Hotel, many a MOE member (That's MOE, the fan club, that contrary to Hanson's opinion, does indeed still exist.) would be in the dark about preferred seating for this tour, information that they're entitled to. It's become all too clear that preferential treatment is being given to Hanson.net members while MOE members are left to scratch for information wherever they can find it. Because it's not that the important information isn't being posted. It is, but it's being posted at Hanson.net, and whether this was their goal or not, it gives the impression that information is being deliberately withheld in order to goad MOE members into signing up for the service. Even the MOE alternative, the free e-mail "newsletter" that all MOE members will be signed up for after the publication is discontinued, smacks of an opportunity to advertise Hanson.net, to spread the word about all of the exciting exclusive information we're missing out on.

It's not unwise to move the fan club closer to the Internet. One thing that Hanson.net will assuredly have over MOE is that it will be timely. Information that took months to distribute can now reach us at the click of a button. But putting the club on the Internet and only on the Internet will surely serve to alienate more than it will welcome. There are still some of us who don't have computers. There are still some of us who enjoy what is palpable. And there are still some of us who want Hanson, and not a frozen, digitized shadow of them.