Q: Where’s the Love? A: The West Loop, apparently.
The WXRT DJ introducing bizarro supergroup Tinted Windows at this weekend's Taste of Randolph festival recounted the incredulous moment of discovery of the band. A group of girls in their late 20s, apparently unfamiliar with the band, listened in as he named each member of the band. With increasing confusion, the girls accurately identified the act each musician was normally associated with ("Bun E. Carlos!" "...From Cheap Trick?" "Adam Schlesinger!" "Wait, from Fountains of Wayne?" "James Iha!" "Woah, from the Smashing Pumpkins?!") Oddly enough, they couldn't figure out what band lead singer Taylor Hanson was from. Much of the rest of the crowd made up for them, however.
So that's where all the aging (at 23-years-old) Hanson fans went. They still can hit those high-pitched screams, but the years have taken a little bit off of the dynamics. Some had Hanson tattoos on the back of their necks. In April, when Tinted Windows played in Chicago for the first time, it was at the 21+ Double Door. I was told that the promoters expected a healthy crowd this time around for all the young Hanson fans who couldn't go before. I didn't quite understand this, as I didn't see how there could possibly be new fans of a group whose last hit single was in 1997. It seemed like my predictions were largely correct, though I did spot a few high school age fans there, which I announced with the unfortunate remark, "Look! Those girls are under 21!"
The Hanson devotees near us were impressed that we were able to name all three of the brothers' names (we admitted that "Zac" was just a lucky guess, as it's the default '90s boy's name). They were pleased with the makeup of the crowd. At a typical Hanson concert, they explained, the audience is about 95% female. Though the Hanson fans were the most audible contingent at the Tinted Windows show, the audience was more accurately a fragile alliance that also included old Cheap Trick fans in Sturgis Rally tank-tops and curious Pumpkinheads like myself. My attempts to identify and characterize Fountains of Wayne fans failed. The Hanson fans suggested, however, that perhaps there was a stronger connection between Pumpkins fans and Hanson fans than we might expect: "A lot of people at Hanson concerts are actually goth girls."
The show itself was a pleasant way to spend an evening. It's hard to analyze songs from the nothing-but-overtones sound systems that are standard at outdoor festivals, but it was energetic and the hooks were there. From the way Taylor expertly worked the crowd, you'd have thought he'd been doing it since he was thirteen. He's grown up into a pretty snazzy dresser, sporting a silver tie against a bright orange shirt with the sleeves rolled, tucked into fitted black pants. Maybe I just say that cause his stage attire is rather like....well, mine.
Though Taylor and Iha were certainly the most recognizable band members on stage, it seems like Schlesinger and Carlos are the more likely architects of the band's power-pop sound. The set even included a cover of a song by The Knack! And, to make the line-up even more WTF? worthy, Evan Dando of The Lemonheads came out as a surprise guest to sing The Velvet Underground's "What Goes On." Well, a surprise for most people, but not for me. I already knew, because Taylor had tweeted about it minutes before the show, and one of the Hanson girls next to me had gotten an automatic text message notification from his Twitter. Adorably, Taylor posted it to the Hanson account by mistake instead of the Tinted Windows account:
To his credit, from the timestamps you can see it only took him a brief mmmbop before he realized his error. I don't know how I feel about abbreving Chicago to "chic" though. At least he didn't say Chi-Town.
[photos by dan m parker]
Tags: hanson, tinted windows