Tag Archives: hanson

BRB

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You ever have those nights where you are reading or remembering or hearing or thinking and thoughts and emotions just click into some sort of place… that can’t be explained or put into words? I’ve been reading old words tonight, old fiction and online journal entries from my freshman year of college.

I just need to reconnect with the girl I used to be.

& Then I’ll figure some things out, I’m pretty sure. Here’s to connecting.

 

Things I don’t know if you know about me:
I used to refer to myself as Lady Ivory, if you aren’t familiar with the name, it comes from Girl Goddess #9, the short story by Francesca Lia Block. I had an Alabaster Duchess to my Lady Ivory.
I used to have short hair that I kind of spiked in the back, I straightened the bangs to the side
My hair has been red, blue, purple, a poor attempt at blonde, various shades of brown and also black.
I used to try and make awesome images in photoshop and other programs, I haven’t for a while
I can always use song lyrics to describe me better than I can use my own words

So I’ll be right back. While I’m gone, tell me about you.

 

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freshman year of college, 2003. i was freshly nineteen

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2006 in San Francisco with freshly dyed red hair (I dyed it in the hotel bathroom in Chinatown)

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I used to experiment a lot with makeup. This was 2003/2004. But I think the makeup and smile was actually because I was about to, or had performed in the Dance Company I was a part of at MCLA

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again, at MCLA freshman year. not always smiling

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sometime in Ohio, (I think it was Christmas time 2004/2005) this was evidence of my first cellphone, large and chunky!

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these aren’t tickets from shows I went to, as I made this for someone else, but it’s an example of my attempted graphic editing genius.

Every Word I Say

Posted in hanson, love, music, passion by

I promise to return to less music slash Hanson related blog posts next week, but I Just wanted to let you know that I wrote a Guest Groupie post over on the Good Groupie. It’s my attempt to put to feelings to words, or as The Good Groupie says in the post,  I describe “ that single moment when you stand in front of the stage and feel the musical high and you understand yourself perfectly through verse ” You can read the post here: Every Word I Say

 

<3

Wanderlust: Tulsa

Posted in hanson, love, melanie kristy, moments like movies, music, passion, travel, wanderlust by

Over the weekend I went to Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was for a festival of sorts, what we named a convention that was really a weekend of stuff put on by the band Hanson in honor of their 20 years as a band. At the beginning of the show they played (actually the second of two shows — they had to do two shows on Sunday night because so many people RSVP’d for the event) a video from their audition to play at Mayfest twenty years ago. Isaac was 11, Taylor was 9 and Zac was 6. It was precious.


If you’ve never been to Tulsa, it’s a small city in Oklahoma. The first time I landed there, I was shocked to see there were only five (!!) tall buildings in downtown. This is very unlike cities I’ve been to before, mostly on the northern east coast, even the small ones.




There are cute little stores and restaurants, really pretty houses and art on buildings. I ate fried pickles, breakfast for dinner and drank ice chai tea lattes. I even found a coffee place with tangerine kombucha. We rented bikes and reenacted music videos and blared music in the middle of the street at 11:30pm while we waited for a train to pass.





It was one of those weekends that was exactly what I needed. Even if I couldn’t put it all into words that makes sense just know that I returned home feeling inspired and full of music and love.



ps You can read the Good Groupie’s reaction to our weekend at her post here, where you can also see a video of part of the street dancing three of our friends did in attempts to reenact the Thinking About Something video they were in.
That’s something I was reminded of this weekend as we drove around Tulsa, listening to music we all have in common and the stuff we don’t – it’s so much fun to share a musical moment with someone, knowing you both have a connection to a song. – The Good Groupie.

Tell Me, Does It Move You?

Posted in music by

They don’t know what it’s like to love one band, one silly piece of music so much it hurts.

Almost Famous

I’ve referenced that quote before, but it’s worth referencing again because it’s one of those quotes that resonated so deeply within me I find my mind quoting it without thinking about it. It was when I watched Almost Famous for the first time and heard those exact words that I fell in love with the film. I thought: someone else gets it.

I have allowed songs to burn inside me, on repeat for days while I attempted to uncover everything it was about and everything that song said to me, meant to me.

I didn’t really grow up around music. It was in the background somewhere and the radio was a consistent lullaby, but I didn’t learn about bands or music from the ones my parents loved. I learned about bands and music from what I loved and from branching off from there. So it wasn’t until I was old enough to to really comprehend the effects music could have on me that I really understood its purpose in my life.

Sometimes there are songs that express me better than I can express myself. Sometimes there are songs that I know what I’m feeling before I do. Sometimes I am unable to write blogs or stories because those thoughts have been said and written and expressed in the more pure forms of expression and in ways that I can’t even comprehend except just to experience.

And so we’ve come to the start of another writing series. I might post songs that have really moved me, or play lists composed of ones I couldn’t live without. Or experiences relating back to music. Or anything else, really.

So I’ll leave you with the song I got this title from, one that’s been on repeat for almost five years now.

Tell me, does it move you
Does it soothe you
Does it fill your heart and soul
With the roots of rock & roll

Been There Before – Hanson

When you can’t get through it, listen to it,

Charm Bracelet of Memories

Posted in love, melanie kristy, moments like movies, music, passion by

They dont know what it's like to love one band, one silly piece of music so much that it hurts - Almost Famous

I’m always trying to put into words the way I feel about my favorite band. I saw them twice this past week end and it was amazing, as always, maybe even more amazing than usual. I met up with lots of friends and used up $70 worth of gas in two days (it was worth it!) and took a million pictures.

If my life and my love for a certain band were a charm bracelet of occurrences it would look something like this:

When you’re twelve you discover the meaning of life, or at least how it applies to your twelve year old self. It’s from an album, a fandom and lots of songs that are fun to dance to/ kind of silly/ or everything you needed to hear in lyric form.

You begin to actually finish novels. What used to be strings of scenes and characters falling in love over and over starts to become something more real.

You’re fifteen you’re an extra in a college movie. The cute guy recognises the pendant around your neck and tells you he was in their music video.

The album that was released in 2004 smells like a dark room, it looks like the faint red light inside a dark room from all the times you developed film in there while playing the album on repeat.

Your friend’s mom accidentally becomes e-mail buddies with the keyboardist’s father in law. A meet and greet is set up and you’re set, after six years, to shake hands and share a picture.

They are playing at Mayfest in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where they live. You go to Houston with a friend and drive up to Tulsa for an amazing weekend, live music and a really bad sunburn (newsflash: Oklahoma in May is a lot warmer and sunnier than Massachusetts in May). There is also the very first Members Only Event: the screening of their documentary.

You get a ride with a fan club member from Sonoma County to LA. Sleep on the street. See two of their shows in one night (acoustic and then electric).

Somehow you acquire all of their phone numbers. You never use them, but they stay in your phone contacts for a while.

Shirley Temples become the signature drink of the Boston shows. You sit in the balcony every time and enjoy the show from above where you can both see and hear.

Outside the venue you’re by the beach hanging around waiting for appearances. All of a sudden the drummer is right there playing with an air soft gun. He’s running around cars, dodging people and shooting at one of the tech guys. Instead he hits your friend in the chest.

You start buying tickets for friends so you won’t go alone to shows. It’s fun but not the same. You count the connections you’ve made in the past on your hands. Maybe this is growing up, you think.

There are lots of members only events you aren’t invited to because you aren’t a member anymore.

And then there’s this year. Twenty-six hardly looks any different than the years before. You may be older, you may be more mature, but a string of songs live can bring you back far enough to remember everything you were about and everything you’ve lost and miss about yourself.

Adventures on Sunset

Posted in hanson, love, music, passion by

I’ve gone some distance for concerts. Tulsa, Oklahoma stands out the most. Last year I almost went to Chicago for a weekend. My most memorable experience, however, takes place in California.

I was living in Sonoma County on campus without a car. I had only been in California for a couple weeks at the longest. Hanson was on tour, but not coming to the West Coast at all. How does that even happen? I fly all the way across the country and they stay on the East Coast and Mid
West to tour, taunting me….

Until…

The announcement was made that Hanson would perform in Los Angeles. They would not just do one show, they would do two in one night. An entire acoustic show followed by an electric one. And they were also playing on the Howie Mendel show the night before. (At least, I think it was Howie Mendel. I honestly can’t remember). I know my roommates thought I was insane for wanting to go. Even my mom questions why I still want to see more than one concert per tour. They play the same songs after all. This isn’t always true, though. And it isn’t just the songs I go for. It’s the entire experience that makes me feel like I’m at home even when I’m across the entire country. Once I learned about the shows, my immediate thought was, “How am I going to get to LA?”

There wasn’t even a question whether or not I would go. All I wondered was: how?

And so my adventure began. I bought my tickets before I had a ride there. Worse case scenario, I could hop in the car with a random stranger and risk everything for my first night in The City of Angels, a night of memories and the chance to see my boys three times in two nights .

Did I say worst case scenario? I meant to say, that’s pretty much exactly what I did. I made posts on Hanson community message boards, namely the paid membership side of Hanson.net in search of anyone planning to make the eight hour hike southbound. That’s when I met a fan willing to drive a little out of her way to help me out. It was not happily ever after in friendship-land. I don’t even remember her name. What I do remember is reading Francesca Lia Block books in the backseat; eating Luna bars and listening along to pop music while she and her cousin drove.

We got along okay. I forked over some gas money, pitched in to sleep on the floor of a dingy hotel for our second night and left feeling just fine about my overall experience.

Los Angeles was utterly amazing. My experience was limited mostly to Sunset Boulevard where the street and I became intimate friends for the first night. Camping outside a venue has never been my idea of a good time, no matter how good the possibility I could get a good spot inside would be. (It wasn’t even an impressively close distance. We were not the only girls sleeping against buildings that night). But I decided the entire situation was great life experience and kept on with the plans.

The day of the show I met some nice girls, ate slices of pizza from a little restaurant down the street and wandered the isles of Hustler. I even bought a coffee drink from the café inside Hustler. I saw the guy who played Alfalfa in the Little Rascals movie (Someone asked him, I didn’t recognize him how many years later….), was flashed some girl-flesh when I asked what a girls’ tattoo was and did an endless amount of waiting, something I’d been so used to from going to shows that spending most of an entire day waiting in line didn’t phase me.

Showtime made the drive, sleeping on a sidewalk, waking up shivering and spending a whole day in line worth it. I even left with the cell phone numbers of Isaac, Taylor and Zac, not to their knowledge. At this point the numbers had started to get passed around the fan-base. My ride drunk dialed them and left them a message of their own concert on their voicemail. The entire experience boiled down to the moment those three guys walked onto the stage and I was home, at last, surrounded by music I adore and people who feel the same way.

Have any crazy stories to share? Have you ever camped out for a band, or caught a ride with a near stranger?

Nineteen Things You May Not Know About Me

Posted in lists by

1. Song lyrics have inspired most of my fiction.

2. An essay I wrote called Behind The Face of Radio was published in Bridgewater State College’s Undergraduate Review Volume III. (Interested in reading it? Let me know and I’ll see if I can post it).

3. I could never live in a land locked state. I love the ocean and would feel claustrophobic without it near.

4. My iPhone is named Miss Lovegood after Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter.

5. I have nicknames by many of my friends. Though the most common one is Mel, I also answer to: Mellii, Mello, Mellochi, Ivy, Colly, Lozenger, Berta and Smell (thanks to my brother).

6. I used to write a lot of poetry. I wrote the class poem for my high school graduation in 2003. I read it out loud during the ceremony and it was published in the 2003 yearbook.

7. I am fascinated by circuses, carnivals and fairs. I love the lights, the music and the people. I find the idea of “geeks” or sideshow freaks particularly intriguing.

8. I’ve tried every sporty from basketball to cheer leading. I even spent part of forth grade learning baton twirling. Dancing in the only thing that ever really stuck.

9. I fell in love with writing in second grade when we spent most of the year rewriting childrens’ books. One particular example I remember was called Melanie and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day.

10. My first job was in the kitchens at King Richard’s Faire (a Renaissance festival). I lasted two weekends before quitting.

11. I love Alan Rickman’s voice.

12. Once in highschool my hair was blue. It’s also been purple, various shades of red, black and orangey/blonde.

13. My favorite verse in a song was not recorded on the album version of the song.

Don’t wander through
This glassy surface
Expecting to find more than me
‘Cause what am I
Without a purpose
But a lone mirage to see.
A Song To Sing – Hanson

14. I started wearing glasses when I was four or five. They were bright red (and awesome).

15. One time I slept on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. I slept with a Tinkerbell pillow and blanket on the street against a building. Curious about that? Story coming soon.

16. I left my favorite pair of sneakers in Italy because they were falling apart, They were purple low top Chuck Taylors.

17. Glasses on guys is a huge turn on for me.

18. I didn’t have my first kiss until I was just shy of 25 years old.

19. I used to drink pickle juice straight from the jar.

One Day Without Shoes

Posted in aspirations, health, love, passion by


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If you could go all of today without shoes, I urge you to do it.

Why, you ask? Because all over the world there are children and adults who can’t afford shoes. There are people living everywhere who are forced to walk on the hot earth, step on broken glass and sharp rocks because they have no other choice.

One Day Without Shoes is a movement that Toms Shoes advocates. It’s purpose is to make people aware of other peoples’ suffering. By going a whole day without shoes, you can explain the Toms’ mission to others. And by going a whole day without shoes, you can experience what it might be like for someone else. You can walk a mile in someone elses’ lack of shoes.

I haven’t done One Day Without Shoes, and I’ll readily admit that. Most work environments don’t allow it for obvious health reasons. But I’m still willing to spread the word. For two years when Hanson toured they took a one mile walk with their fans before each show. They were barefoot almost every single time. They encouraged their fans to walk barefoot, too, to experience what it is that others endure on a day to day basis.


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If you can’t go barefoot, why not instead buy a pair of Toms Shoes? Every pair that is bought, one is donated to someone without. They’ve done shoe drops in different countries, delivering shoes to children who’ve never had one single pair.

These facts are taken straight from the Toms Shoes website.

*A leading cause of disease in developing countries is soil-transmitted diseases, which can penetrate the skin through bare feet. Wearing shoes can help prevent these diseases, and the long-term physical and cognitive harm they cause.

* Wearing shoes also prevents feet from getting cuts and sores. Not only are these injuries painful, they also are dangerous when wounds become infected.

* Many times children can’t attend school barefoot because shoes are a required part of their uniform. If they don’t have shoes, they don’t go to school. If they don’t receive an education, they don’t have the opportunity to realize their potential.

I hope you have an amazing day, shoeless or not. Because if you’re reading this, it’s likely you have the opportunity to wear shoes. You probably have more than one pair.