UPPER DARBY:
Philadelphia, PA | Tower Theater | 09.16.00
It was 10:00 in the morning and Hartford, Connecticut was being pelted by glittery September sunshine, the kind that looks impressive from inside cars and dorm rooms but in reality proves to be no more warming than the average TV set after a couple hours of use. Feels good on your hands. That’s about it. But it looked pretty and we were excited.
Amanda started in Hartford, Vermont the night before. Stefanie started in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Corinne and I started in Boston. And after Hartford, Connecticut, Meghan occupied the final seat in Amanda’s beetle green Ford Escort (Name: Sly).
We were intrepid. We were Road Sisters. We were about to brave 600 miles of the open road for one Hanson concert. Final destination: The Tower Theater, Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, seedy little sub-borough of Philadelphia, that other cradle of liberty.
We were leaving Hartford, on a busy two way street, cars parked on each side, heading toward I-84, tossing around granola bars and bottled water when we saw her. A middle aged woman in cornrows and windy pants. She was riding a bicycle, throwing off the flow of traffic and panicking many a foreign driver, the one sitting directly to my left included. Then we got closer. It was a child’s bicycle. The kind you drove around your neighborhood when you were nine, all pink handlebars and flower decals. And she was ambling along at a slow pace, a too big woman on a too small bike, her eyes forward, oblivious. And that was how the trip began.
There were tolls. Twenty. Thirty. Two-hundred. We lost count by the time we hit the Connecticut boarder. In Massachusetts. In New York. To get on the Mass Pike. (50 cents.) To get off the Mass Pike. ($2.00) To see the woozy, foggy view of the Hudson and the New York City skyline from the George Washington Bridge in all its glory. ($2.15) To ride the New Jersey Turnpike. ($4.00) By the time we made it home, we were broke, but we didn’t get lost. (Insert begrudging thanks to Yahoo! Maps here.) Not once.
It was on the Mass/Connecticut line that we saw the first Road Hottie, a guy in an dirty orange truck with a sweatshirt to match, plenty of swagger, a nice jawline, a tan and a piercing through that part of your face just below your lip that I don’t know the name of. He drove with one hand on the wheel and had a rockabilly haircut. We were in love. We waved. We howled. He smiled. We passed him on the right.
Almost equally as beautiful, and maybe even a little more thrilling, was the Newark Airport. The planes descend low over the highway, their silver bellies blocking the sun over your head for an instant as they coast to the runway, which is seperated from the highway by a fence, and not an overly sturdy looking one at that. You can see them come out of the clouds in a neat little queue, one after the other and then head for the ground.
At first glance, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the non-highway parts we saw anyway, were undeniably nasty places. Strip malls with purple-awninged restaurants that had names like Dave’s Italian Grill. Car dealerships. Crusty gas stations. Tatoo parlors. It was a crash course in Jon Bon Jovi’s career motivation, if nothing else.
We checked into the hotel (Comfort Inn at the Philadelphia Airport, Essington, PA1. It had beds. It had a roof. It was more than sufficient.) and found ourselves with an immediate room upgrade- from a room with two double beds and a rollaway to a room with a king size bed. And a "balcony view." Granted, a balcony view of the parking lot is not exactly a luxury, but king sized beds do have a luxurious vibe about them, even when they’re covered in scratchy green paisley with various nondescript stains near the edges.
But hey. We were young. We were independent. We were throwing around our own money and our own hard won feminine power. Don’t think it was lost on us once, the fact that thirty-five years ago, young women didn’t pick up and travel hundreds of miles for anything if they came from the kind of nice, quiet, suburban families we all hail from, without too much variation. Boys did things like that. Loose women did things like that. Orphans did things like that. It was freaking exhilarating.
We arrived at 3:30. We decided what to wear. We applied concealer and took Tylenol. And then it was time.
It’s relatively easy to find Hanson concerts, even in unfamiliar cities. When in doubt, follow the teenies.
Upper Darby, PA is a sketchy place. Not the kind of place you’d want to be at night. Alone. Without mace in your pocket. Or a personal alarm. Or a large, noisy, vicious looking, well-trained dog. And then there they were.
Girls. Lines of them. Throngs. Crowds. Wearing… all sorts of uncalled for fashion insanity. Badly executed leather pants abounded. Cowboy hats of every variety of faux, dyed, unbrushed cow print. Enough body glitter to… sink something. A tour bus? A minivan? A shipfull of scantily clad wannabe Stevie Nicks/Drew Barrymore/Rose Dawsons. And these are the girls that read Teen People, right?
Pre-concert moments carry with them this frantic, awful stress factor. There’s an overwhelming feeling that everyone is looking for something: a roadie to flirt their way backstage with, better tickets, glimpses of family members, meet-and-greet passes.
We saw Diana, all five feet of her, and three and a half of her hair, wearing maroon corduroys and a fleece tech vest with Birkenstocks, the kind of cool-looking hippie mom who doesn’t have to encourage her young ones to join a band because it’s nonsense to think they’d do otherwise on their own. And yes. Her hair really is that long. (Let it be noted that in general, the Hanson clan seems not to cavort with many non-blondes. Mildly disturbing? We think so.)
Then we saw Mackenzie, (Disclaimer: For all of the Family Privacy Folks, there were no pictures taken, no attempts to converse, no inquiries for autographs. We just gawked and moved on. Thank you.) who’s positively large in every sense, sporting a respectable looking tan and navy blue pants with a Chinese dragon down the back of one leg. It seems he’s either inherited Taylor’s hand-me-downs a tad early, or big brother is picking out his clothes. A good thing to see. He’ll join the band. Watch. It’ll happen.
And then there’s Walker, that miraculous hunk of middleageddom… but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Sitting away from your friends at a Hanson concert ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. Given that our seats were scattered, I, for whatever misguided reason, campaigned hard for the best seat of the lot, which was in the 10th row. And I got it. And I paid the price. Great seat, yes, but without the familiar running commentary that so nicely accompanies most of my friendships, and thus my concert experiences, there was a void. Example: Whenever Ike did something particularly sexy, I wanted to look to the person next to me and share some mutual expression of adoration. This is not a possibility when the person in the seat next to you is a forty year-old gentleman who’s heaving sigh after frustrated sigh over having to stomach the horror on the stage in front of him. (Note: He did win brownie points for singing along to You Can’t Always Get What you Want, but my praises end there.)
So I sat alone in the tenth row, Isaac side, which is a good place, especially if you share my particular fondness for that particular boy.
I can’t believe I’m about to say these words: M2M was really good. I was expecting two whispery little girls breathing heavy into their microphones and purring over how cute they think Zac is. They didn’t. In fact, the brunette has herself a respectable chunk of vocal ability, and the blond is just cute, so we forgive any musical flimsiness on her part. Sure, their writing abilities are a tad dreary compared to the diverse universe of shining harmonies and to-die-for melodies that is Hanson’s music, but the songs didn’t entirely blow either. Although perhaps the highlight of their entire set came when Marion was describing the story line of a song where a girl was trying to steal her boyfriend, and Meritt chimed, "Yeah. She was kind of a bitch."
And for those in the audience who booed them: You’re lame. Bye.
Then it was time for The Trinity themselves. They ran on stage. The crowd cheered. Ike started the riff. Zac banged away at his drums. I don’t remember what Taylor was doing, but it was probably some semblance of what he does best: singing and looking pretty. They moment began to build. The thump of the bass grew louder. They opened with… Look at You?!
And it didn’t even bite that much. I swear. In fact, that song is starting to lose that alarming generic quality that it possessed for most of the Albertane tour. It is, in fact, turning into a churning, jammy little number with plenty of swagger, thanks to Ike’s charming new role as Resident Rock Poseur. He struts. He grimaces. He’s all but obliterated that shy, calm little boy whose most ambitious onstage trick was the occasional march in place.
That was when I saw the Vein. And realized soon after that it’s the little things about Hanson concerts that distract me beyond all belief. The Vein was in the right side of Isaac’s neck and it pulsed gently whenever there was a guitar solo, whenever he sang. Suddenly, I could almost understand the impulse to rush the stage, to see it up close, to run the backs of my fingers over it. Between it, the wispy, curling mop of his hair, the Please Come Touch Me and See How Soft I Am cotton of his oxford shirt, it was like reveling in the rather warm, pleasant sea of the New Confident Isaac.
Given the amount of bedazzled, riveted, silver-studded glam garb that Hanson has been sporting recently, the fashion statements were kept to a minimum at Philadelphia. The single most daring garment of the evening was the admittedly attractive studded belt that Taylor wore, that held up his remarkably well-fitting jeans. Other than that, a "Gee, I don’t feel like getting dressed up for the show tonight" vibe prevailed. Jeans. T-shirts. One rather handsome, clingy gray wifebeater2. (And really, once they saw the general swill pit of a neighborhood that was Upper Darby, PA, they probably figured that getting dolled up wouldn’t be worth the effort. Really. When the bus pulled up, their immediate reaction was probably something akin to, "Wow, our album really did tank, huh?")
If the ease of the attire can in any way parallel the ease of the performance, this was one night where it happened. They were engaged, energized, tearing through each song with what has become their usual amount of passion and fervor. Zac swung his head around, a la rabid dog, for most of the show, occasionally standing up to crash away as his drums. He looked remarkably present, not to mention happy, which, after all of the detachment and general spaciness he exuded onstage during the Albertane tour, wasn’t just welcome. It was a relief. At one point during the show, a sign in the sixth row or so caught his attention and he started to stare at it while he played. Of course, at this point, the girls holding the sign were having a spit-flying fit because he was noticing them. As he saw them start to get excited, a smile started to make its way across his face, and it got bigger and bigger until he was almost laughing. All of this and he didn’t miss a single beat. It was a sweet moment, an instant of perfect fan/band harmony, the kind of Hanson interaction we all want for ourselves. Wherever those ladies are- Congratulations. You made Zachary Hanson smile. A lot.
And as for Taylor… well… he gets more beautiful by the nanosecond, but that aside, he was in the mood for intensity it seems, pounding away at his keyboards with the focus of a particularly keen laser. Of course he bounced around throughout the show, flailing his abundance of limbs in every direction, sometimes too much so, but isn’t that his charm, though? The little slips that positively betray his elegant beauty and expose him for the hysterical dork that he is. His voice was in top form, every ache and grunt firmly in place. In fact, in one of the most startling, excellent musical moments of the show, it was Taylor’s voice that was the star. In Speechless, (which, like Look at You, has thankfully been remade into something grittier and more interesting than it ever was before) during the "Come on baby" (as in, "Come on baby…you think I’m so blind…"), the other musicians went silent, and left Taylor to sing the line unaccompanied. It wasn’t even sung, really. It was a purr, a whisper, a caress. In basic terms, my knees went weak and I almost wound up on the floor. But I didn’t. Because I wasn’t sure if that cranky man would catch me or not. So I stayed standing. Just barely.
Also, during Piece of My Heart, Taylor displayed some incredibly impressive vocal stuff, wrapping his voice around the verses just enough, enough to provide ample amounts of slink, but not so much that they seemed over done. (What? Christina Aguliera?) It will also be duly noted that hearing Taylor sing the words, "Didn’t I give you everything this man possibly can?" is an incredibly exciting experience.
Other musical highlights included Crosstown Traffic, which burned with a rather nice intensity, its overtly sexual leer aside3. The most surprising musical moment of the show came when they played This Time Around. At one point, it got hard to hear the band because of what was happening in the audience. Screaming, you ask? No. They were singing. At the chorus, the auditorium exploded. What was happening suddenly became completely clear. To think for one minute that the younger fans don’t understand what’s happening to Hanson on the Billboard charts, in the press, in the court of public opinion, is absurdity. And This Time Around has become The Anthem. It’s become the way of saying to Hanson, "We are still here." It’s an articulation of the pact that we’ve all entered into: As long as you make music, we’ll be here to listen.
Also making appearances onstage during various parts of the show, was Dad. Outside of the three that happen to be in the band, Walker might just be my favorite Hanson. And not just because he’s hot4. Armed with the Hanson video camera, there’s something ultimately charming about a guy who’s so fascinated by and generally in awe of his kids. Then there’s the fact that this person created these three other magnificent creatures. I dare you to not be attracted to that in some way5. So yeah. I love Walker Hanson. Go away.
But it was Zac… Zac, Zac, Zac… who stole the show. I Want You to Want Me was the last song, the encore. Between that glorious golden lion’s mane of hair flying in every direction, the I Have No Idea What to do With My Hands ministrations, the inability to proverbially walk and chew gum (or in this case, sing and shake hands) at the same time, or the flying leap off the drum set at the end of the song, it was basically an ecstatic moment. (It was a big leap. Taylor, who was actually sitting behind the drums at the time, and doing a fine job of it we might add, looked rather alarmed in that brilliantly confused way that he sometimes does.) It bodes well for the future of Zachary Hanson in all respects, his singing abilities, his playing abilities, and his heart throb abilities. And maybe someday he’ll figure out where to put his hands 6.
There was the occasional concert weirdness: The girl who jumped up on stage during the accoustic set, took Taylor’s hand, said something to him, and was promptly hauled off by Romeo. Taylor looked confused. We were too. And the nice little group that figured out how to make their way onstage by the end of the show. (Note: Want to see Isaac Hanson bristle? Quickly? Angrily? Pull something like that. The eyes were like daggers. You could see him mouthing, "Get down." And he meant it.) And the girl behind me who, during Save Me, let out a scream so shrill and so loud that I think my dog, all the way back in Massachusetts, gave a yelp. Then I did a generally, un-Laura-like thing. I turned around and gave her a nasty look. Then she looked at me, gave a sheepish little smile and said the following: "Sorry. I’m a cheerleader."
Now. Let me say it once. And only once. Letting that sentence come out of your mouth in my presence will not endear you to me in any way. In fact, if I were to make the List of Things to Not Say to Laura, that sentiment would assuredly be close to the top. My immediate thought after she said it? "Congratulations. You’ve just earned yourself a place on my webpage for posterity. I hope you get hate mail."
And then it ended… stage went black. Lights came up. Ears rang. Bodies scrambled.
Our night with Hanson had ended. Our trip to Philadelphia, on the other hand, was far from over.
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