Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2004 17:55:21 -0500
From: Christopher <plattc@optonline.net>
To: audities@smoe.org
Subject: Re: FOW- Mexican Wine
Message-ID:
<012F03E901EC87459302B8EC8D04680C016FA0EA@nycmailmb01.enterprise.corpad.time
inc.com>

My two cents, I saw the talent show bit in the vid as a subtle jab
at/affirmation of their new-found fan base.  Frankly, I'm still in a woozy
state having seen FOW at an all-ages show in Princeton a month or so ago,
where fully half the audience was pre-teen girls.  It was very very bizarre.
Encouraging state of affairs that kids dig cool music like this, but bizarre
nonetheless.

I'll never forget an identical experience I had back in early '96 at an
all-ages Goo Goo Dolls show at Chicago's Park West. I went with a couple of
college friends who were also big GGD fans, the three of us having picked up
on the band in their scuffling days back in '90 when *Hold Me Up* came out
and the Replacements comparisons were thick in the air among the critics.

The *A Boy Named Goo* tour was the fourth time we'd seen them (the first in
a venue as large as the Park West), and it was right after "Name" became a
megahit. It was like their fan base had completely shifted overnight --
instead of playing to 200 postcollegiate males in Minutemen and Pixies
t-shirts at Metro, they were playing to a couple thousand screaming teenaged
girls, all of whom seemed rapturously in love with Johnny Rzeznik and none
of whom knew the words to any song other than "Name" (which got the full
arm-waving, lighters-in-the-air treatment). As much as we enjoyed the show,
about halfway through it one of my friends turned to me and said, "I think
that this band is going places we aren't destined to follow." I replied,
"Maybe they'll be like the Monkees, and it'll be cool to like them again
once their new fans grow up and the screaming stops." We both had to laugh
at our obvious snobbery.

Both times that I saw FOW last fall the crowd was a really nice demographic
mix. That's got to be gratifying to FOW -- they seem to have that whole
"eight-to-eighty" Beatles thing going on.


Gregory Sager