Molly's Humdrum

"Australia Has Been So AWESOME" -- Hanson

I HAVE some good news and some bad news.

My interview with Hanson in New York was intended to be how they announced thier mid-year Australian tour.

But,unfortunately, the tour has been postponed because the band-Isaac, 17, Taylor, 15, and Zac, 12-want to make a new album, to follow Middle Of Nowhere (which has sold more than 400,000 in Australia) and the latest, 3 Car Garage.

But the guys say they want to be here next year."We really want to tour Australia" Taylor says.

MOLLY: It's very brave to bring out this new album (3 Car Garage). You know, tracks you did before releasing your first official album.

TAYLOR: It's the music we did before we did Middle Of Nowhere. It contains the original versions of MMMBop, Thinking of You, and With You In Your Dreams. This is the stuff that got us signed.

ZAC: It's really for the fans. We had so many requests from people wanting to hear the two CD's we've done before, so we finally gave in.

ISAAC: We had thousands of letters and emails from fans everywhere, including Australia, so we decided to let people hear it. But i do want to say, it's not a new album, it's an old album. And we spent just four hours on each song in a garage studio. It's nothing special but it's a cool thing.

MOLLY: Your Hanson Web Sites are amazing.

TAYLOR: We have almost two million hits everyday on Hansonline, our official site.

MOLLY: I remember that day in Melbourne (last August), and excuse me for being cynical, but i introduced you on stage very early on a Saturday morning at a shopping centre in front of 25,000 kids going crazy, and you got up and what shocked me was you were able to improvise and do all the numbers live. I gotta tell you, that suprised and shocked me.

TAYLOR: Well, that's what we do.

ZAC: It's what we're about - playing live.

MOLLY: Your musicianship is of such a high standard.

ISAAC: We all played keyboards for a long time and we all studied classical piano.

TAYLOR: Isaac wrote his first song when he was in third grade, when he was seven. Then we all started doing it. Our first performance was in 1992.

MOLLY: Did you realise when you wrote MMMBop that it was going to be a massive song?

ZAC: When you write a song, you like it because you wrote it, but you never go "This song is gonna be huge, it's amazing, it's soooo great". It was just, "I like this song, it's kinda cool".

TAYLOR: The thing about MMMBop was it didn't really even get much of a response from our audience locally.

ZAC: Our fans were much more into Stories and River.

MOLLY: I believe that some songs on this new album could be massive if you re-recorded them. Is that a possibility?

ISAAC: Yeah, maybe.

TAYLOR: Some of them were candidates for Middle Of Nowhere. But it's hard to know which ones to put on. We're always writing new songs. MOLLY: Seeing you at the Bottom Line (in New York) there was a lot of diversity in your show.

ISAAC: With a show you got toshow your versatility. You need to be able to rock out and have a lot of fun.

MOLLY: So when are you coming to Australia?

TAYLOR: We were going to start this tour in Australia, but now it's become a case of how we can get the next album out. Getting back in the studio is a real priority. But do not despair...

ZAC: We will come eventually.