Hanson breaks free
Band defies today’s music industry
Lauren Tumas
Staff Writer

It’s been years, but everyone still knows the song “MMMBop,” Hanson’s career-launching 1997 hit, which began the first chapter in the brothers’ music careers. But at noon on Nov. 17, the brothers emerged from Columbia’s Ferguson Theatre, 600 S. Michigan Ave., with a new album, their own record label and a documentary that educated students on the growing epidemic of corporate control over bands’ creative processes.

Thanks to a written request through their online fan club by Jennifer Baird, a music business major, and the Public Relations Student Society of America, Hanson stopped at Columbia as part of its 24-day college tour the band held a Q-and-A session with students after a screening of the band’s documentary, Strong Enough to Break. Over the four-year course of producing the 2004 album, Underneath, Hanson left Island/Def Jam and started an independent label corporation, 3CG. Isaac, 25, Taylor, 22, and Zac, 20, wanted to succeed as independents outside of what they call the consolidated corporate culture of today’s music industry.

“Right now the record companies and a lot of the media control the outlets, and this gives such little choice,” Taylor said. “Fans are starving to death.”

The documentary features several speakerphone calls with prior management members, including Jeff Fenster, former senior vice president of A&R for Island/Def Jam Records. At the Q-and-A session, fans told Hanson that they were frustrated watching the way Fenster treated them, often having no opinion of his own on the direction of their album. “The point is, we’re artists who feel like we can solve a problem, so lets solve a problem,” Isaac said.

According to Zac, major labels are not signing the kind of bands that inspire audiences, instead encouraging one-hit-wonders by giving them record deals.

“The problem is that them developing a band means actually making a band, as in taking a band that looks good and making them sound good,” Isaac said. “The risk we all run is we will either win because our song is played 9,000 times a week and eventually people are so familiar with a song that they will buy it because they have heard it a zillion times, or a situation where people will stop listening all together.”

All three of the brothers suggested that students could use cell phones, Myspace.com and e-mail to widen support for local bands.

“As fans we have to say that we want more choice … so give us great records, give us options, let us help develop places like iTunes,” Taylor said.

According to Isaac, part of the problem right now is that there is a lot of great music that never gets heard.

“We want to encourage you guys that this is a time when you as fans have an opportunity to completely reshape the way music is exposed, purchased and the way that the industry as a whole—from record companies to radio stations—reacts to what you say,” he said.

The student-run Columbia chapter of the PRSSA tried to enforce a Columbia-student only rule on the event, but some Hanson fans were more determined than others. They kicked three girls out of the screening after sneaking in from other schools, but Bradley University sophomore Melissa Simanis managed to finagle her way into the theater.

“I heard they would be here and I couldn’t pass up a chance to see my lifelong crush in person,” Simanis said.

Freshman music production major Mark Walloch said that he has been a Hanson fan since the fourth grade and that he was pleased by the professionalism, maturity and passion that they expressed.

“I think that there’s a lot to learn from the documentary and about major recording labels,” Walloch said.

Hanson hopes to sign independent bands to their new 3CG label in the future, when they have time to give them the personal attention they need. For now, they are practicing what they preach and trying to build a grass roots community of artists, labels, promoters and fans to help bring independent music to the forefront. They are demonstrating their support for independent music by sponsoring contests that allow developing bands to play as their opening act in each tour market, as well as giving away free sampler CDs, that promote independent bands’ music.

Baird said she would like to see Strong Enough to Break included in the music department’s curriculum at Columbia, just like New York University and the University of Southern California have done.

Baird said she believes that as a future person of the music industry, it is really important to bring bands that promote a positive message to Columbia.

“I have been absolutely floored with the response I’ve been getting [since people found out they were coming to Columbia],” Baird said. “It’s been awesome."