An Overview

I waited 13 years for that night. I became a fan at 11. I heard about them in primary school and I didn't understand who they were. The radio stations here did not play a lot of pop music at the time and I used to listen to my parents' adult contemporary and rock and roll CDs and cassettes. Quite honestly, the only exposure I had had to pop at that time was Michael Jackson. My sister put on the Rickdees countdown one night and I heard Taylor's high-pitched girly voice and these boys singing a chorus of something that was clearly not English. I laughed. At some point I looked them up online and read the lyrics to their songs. I'm a sucker for nice lyrics. I got the Middle of Nowhere album during the summer of 1997 and by the time I Will Come To You was released, I was hooked. Of course, I'm talking about Hanson.

I remember there was one other girl in my school who was a fan - very few people here are attracted to skinny white boys. I remember freaking out every time I heard them on the radio. My cousin used to record their television appearances for me since I did not have cable television at the time. She also recorded Backstreet Boys and 'Nsync for herself and my sister. We were teenyboppers, but at the time, we were defensive to anyone who called us that. There was no escaping it though - our rooms were plastered with posters of our musician of choice. I still have a binder with all my old goodies - posters, pin-ups and articles from magazines, an official poster, official and unofficial books, and those are not including the albums and singles. I had a fan site - cliched I know, but it was through building and maintaining the fan-site that my passion for web design and graphics was spawned.

I won a contest on Artist Direct to ask the band a question back in 2000, when they released their second album, This Time Around. It was, "What is the toughest question you were ever asked and what was your answer?" I was afraid (quite rightly so) that they would just tell me that my question was the toughest and that was their answer. Zac said that, but it was after I royally made an ass of myself by freaking out on the phone when they asked me about where I lived. They lived in my country (Trinidad) for a time some eons ago. They did not look amused, and I was grateful that they meet so many fans that they would forget that moment.

I have kept up with their music, their leaving the record label and forming their independent 3CG Records back in 2003, their albums through the years, charity efforts with Take The Walk and TOMS Shoes in 2007, and now their Live Streams at alive@hanson.net. All this time I have become the only Hanson fan that I know in my country. Their fan base has dwindled as their popularity waned following the onslaught of Britney Spears et al. in the early millennium.

They won't come to Trinidad for a concert. I know this. In order to see them, I knew I had to go to them.