MMMBop.\nA single phrase launched the sibling three-piece Hanson to fame in 1997, when the teenage brothers reached pop stardom with "MMMBop," earning them millions and creating an indelible image of the trio as a one-note, one-hit wonder, an image they could never fully erase.\n"There are people that, when they sing 'MMMBop,' they say, 'MMMBop … they do like that … dibdadop dibdadoodadop," drummer and youngest member Zac Hanson, 20, said, imitating detractors who mocked the group during its sudden rise to fame.\nBut the nonsensical phrase is only the beginning of the story for Hanson, denounced as throwaway bubblegum pop by some and embraced as a guilty pleasure by others. Since their debut, the brothers have recorded eight albums, played venues large and small across the world and made a stand for independent artists by breaking ties with their major label to record and promote their music on their own.\nOn the heels of their recent release, "The Best of Hanson: Live and Electric," the band will tell its story with a day-long event Monday at Alumni Hall in the Indiana Memorial Union, combining a documentary screening with a direct conversation with fans. \nThe film, compiled by the band and director Ashley Greyson, documents Hanson's recent break from Island Def Jam Records and successful venture with 3CG, their own record label.\nThe fanfare leads up to the evening concert, where the former teen idols, now all in their early 20s, display the musical talent and cohesion that has kept them together throughout the years.\nThe concert also features winners of an opening band contest, which Hanson holds to give artists at each tour stop a chance to play for large crowds. The show in the Alumni Hall will feature the Pat Mcgee Band and another band yet to be announced.\nSenior April Lewandowski, assistant director for Union Board club concerts and films, described why Union Board wanted to bring this presentation to IU students.\n"We thought doing the concert would be a great opportunity to show the campus how Hanson is working with the independent music movement," she said. "Their industry knowledge and the money they've made has allowed them to tour on their own dime, and in doing so, they've given opening band slots to local independent musicians who want a chance to be onstage."
A Long Road to Respect
\nIsaac, Taylor and Zac, who started playing music together at 11, 9 and 7, respectively, are three of seven children who moved throughout South America and the Caribbean during their father's tenure in the oil business, eventually settling in Tulsa, Okla. The brothers began to take up their instruments and released their first independent release, Boomerang, in 1994. \nIn 1997, Middle of Nowhere, which introduced the world to the pop-rock trio, featured a pair of hits, "Where's the Love?" and the track they still can't seem to shake.\n"It reached the point where people wouldn't even know how your songs went or anything about you," Zac said. "They'd just know who you were. (It's) success on a level that you're almost reaching nonmusic fans; it's becoming almost a cultural thing."\nFollowing the success of Nowhere, Hanson released This Time Around, which moved beyond the pop sound that made them international stars, a move that reflected less positively on the Billboard charts. \nHanson said their motive was not to recreate their former success but to continue to experiment with different genres.\n"Never let people know what they're going to get from you," Zac said. "Keep them interested in the new things they're going to hear on each album."
The split and a new goal
\nIn 2003, as the band prepared to record a new album, it felt it needed to venture out beyond the umbrella of Island Def Jam, a major force in the recording industry. After Mercury, its original label, dissolved into Island by way of corporate mergers, Hanson said the mood wasn't what the band had come to expect.\nAfter a live album, demos collection and Christmas album released between 1997 and 2000, Hanson had earned enough from its success to begin exploring its artistic interests, ventures of discovery which Zac said go against the grain in the major label environment.\n"If it would have been the Island of many years past, then that would have been a good place," he said. "Bands like U2, Bob Marley -- great music has come out of that name, but really, the system of major labels isn't as healthy as it once was. We caught the tail end of it with our first record."\nMuch of Hanson's newfound mission is to inform fans of the status of the music industry, hoping to mobilize young people to change what they view as downfalls of the record industry. Among the downfall, Zac said, is that record labels make decisions based on a band's stock price rather than on artistic integrity.\n"Obviously, college students are going to take over the world, literally," Zac said. "What we're doing is trying to be someone talking about what's going on in the music business, not just sitting by and letting it happen. (We're) trying to activate fans, the people that are ripping music off the Internet because they can't find anything on traditional outlets."\nZac said the music industry struggles to bridge the gap between heavily marketed artists' music and what young people actually listen to. \n"You're constantly being bombarded with so much information," Zac said. "Finding the way we're going to break through that clutter as an industry hasn't really been defined. People are going to look back at 2005 and say, 'Oh, they listened to Chingy.'"
A different timeline
\nWhile the band has been touring and performing since well before adolescence, Zac said the latest tour, which makes stops at numerous colleges, doesn't cause him to miss the life of regular college-age students.\n"I think people live their lives on their own timelines, and you make choices based on when you're ready for it," Zac said. "We were lucky to know what we wanted to do with our lives really early on and not a lot of people have that opportunity. I have absolutely no regrets."\nHaving self-produced their latest album on 3CG, Hanson said the band is grateful for its loyal, if unique, fan base.\n"The people who come to our concerts, who buy our records -- we tend to polarize people," Zac said. "You usually either love Hanson, or you don't care for us at all."\nJunior Ashley Fragomeni said she believes college students are a huge part of the audience because they grew up with the band.\n"There will be two types of people at the Hanson show," Fragomeni said. "(There's) the fans who have loved them since 1997, and (those) who are interested in seeing how Hanson have changed. There aren't many 'new' Hanson fans, so to speak."\nLewandowski said as men in their early 20s, Hanson can relate to the situation with young people and voice their perspectives as music business veterans.\nIn addition to three bands, a documentary screening and direct access to the band, Hanson said it will give to the audience compilation CDs featuring the band and several up-and-coming artists the band enjoys. Though promotions are largely coming from the band's own pocketbook, all the amenities are for the fans, to whom Hanson said the band owes its continued success.\n"The role of our fans is just incredible," Zac said. "It's helped us do so many things, makes it possible for us to make music and keep doing it. I think they are an example for what should exist and doesn't exist enough because they're out there every night, knowing all of the lyrics, asking all of the crazy music questions. It's something that's really cool -- I can't give them enough credit for what they do"
