Sarah M Vasquez

What better way to close this year’s SXSW for me than with the original Jonas Brothers, Hanson. This is my Justin Bieber. I’ve been a fan of this band since I was 15 years old. Yes, I’m showing my age here and ruining my credibility as a music critic, but the truth is that I freaking love Hanson. I have a shirt that I occasionally wear to this day. That’s how you know it’s laundry day.

When I was figuring out my schedule for SXSW and saw that Hanson was performing at Antone’s, I freaked out. Luckily, Accent Editor-in-Chief Karissa Rodriguez happened to have a camera in hand to witness my squealing and oh-my-gods to document this for you.

But I was excited, because I was going to see this band live for the first time in my life. As soon as I got downtown, I immediately rushed over to the convention center so I could pick up a SXXpress pass for the night’s showcase. Badgeholders are allowed two of these passes per day to the showcase of their choice. So when you show up at the door, you get top priority. It’s a pretty nice deal, and the Antone’s show was the only time I took advantage of it during the whole week.

Not only was this one of the best nights of my life, it was also a great night for the band. Before their set, Hanson ran a 12-hour telethon to help those dealing with the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. They took advantage of the fact that they’re at SXSW with the abundance of musicians and music fans to remind people that while we may be having a great time getting drunk off free beer and enjoying live music, there is still a country that is going through a crisis and needs our help.

“In the last 24 hours, we have recorded and streamed with 40 bands from across the festival. We know that we’ve raised over 100,000 thousand dollars in that time for relief effort, plus many, many, many more through the text donations,” Taylor Hanson, lead vocalist/pianist for Hanson, said at their showcase. “This has been an unbelievable day for SXSW… So tonight is a celebration. Tonight is a celebration of music, and getting out there, and getting it done. Not taking no for an answer.”

The guys played more of the recent songs that I’m sadly not that familiar with. I overplayed their Middle of Nowhere CD that it’s completely scratched so I knew the words of the older tunes from beginning to end. When they played “Where’s the Love?,” which was their second single from that album, I immediately started filming.

Sadly, I couldn’t get as close as I wanted because Hanson fans were vicious little things and wouldn’t budge at all for the press.

Fans, please remember we have those little SXSW badges on our cameras for a reason. Please let us through so we can get those print-worthy photos and great videos you like to rewatch on Youtube. We promise not to stand there for the whole set. In fact, the faster we get our shots, the faster we move out of your way. And that’s my public service announcement for the day.

So the video for “Where’s the Love?” isn’t as great as I would have liked, and it was hard to shoot around the iPhones and cameras in the air that were also filming the song (which you can see in the video), but I’m posting the video anyway.

And because I used to watch Tulsa, Tokyo, and the Middle of Nowhere documentary on VHS (remember those?), I turn into that 15-year-old fangirl every time I rewatch this video. And yes, that means there’s a lot of giggling involved.

Originally posted at Accent on March 20, 2011 here.