Isaac and Zac
"This is going to be great," Isaac said, his eyes glittering. "It was such a great idea to bring in some fans to this too."
"Yeah," Zac agreed, then he laughed. "It's a practice concert!"
Isaac laughed.
The last of the setting up was being done, and soon the recording would begin.
Taylor, Ash G and Walker
Walker was sitting at a desk by the door. The fans had apparently all gone in already. Apparently...
Two more girls - who looked to be twins - showed up at the last minute, and he had them sign some forms before they were shown the way in.
Meanwhile, Ashley was directing the fans to sit in a sort of semi circle around three stool that had been set up for the band. Guitars were on nearby stands, microphones were set up, and the typical Christmas lights were once again in place on the floor. A man from the studio began to work the audience, and had them practising to clap.
"Not quite practise Zac," Taylor smiled, pretending to crack his knuckles as he waited impatiently, "this is it. This is the CD. If we screw up, we're dead."
He chuckled.
Isaac and Zac
"Like, dead-dead?" Zac questioned. "Six foot under? Rotting in our graves? Dead as a doornail? Dead as a post? Gone to the big concert in the sky? Finished? Kaput -"
"Zac?"
"Yes Ike?"
"Shut up."
"If I did that, I wouldn't be able to sing. And that would be a screw up. So we would be dead."
Isaac groaned.
Taylor and Ash G
Taylor looked up as Ashley came through the door.
"Introducing you guys now," he raised an eyebrow, and indicated for them to go through.
"Great," Taylor grinned, and led the way.
He grinned when he saw the crowd.
"Welcome to the party," he said to them, going to take his place on the farthest stool.
Isaac and Zac
"Hey ya'll," Isaac greeted.
"Yo," said Zac, taking his seat.
They put on their headphones and soon started to play.
"Slow down the click a bit," Isaac said.
Taylor
Taylor hesitated in his playing, chuckling at the confused crowd.
"Ike has a voice in his head," he grinned.
Isaac
"I'm talking to god, actually," Isaac joked.
There were a few giggles in the crowd as they realised that the Hansons were hearing voices in their headphones.
Taylor
After the first song ended, and all had gone smoothly, Taylor was beginning to sweat because he was so hot.
"Ok, I'm really hot, I'm gonna take this off."
As he began to take off his sweater, everyone began to chuckle. He looked around innocently.
"This was not planned," he insisted.
More chuckles.
"Yeah, ok guys, I'm really hot."
Then he teasingly began to lift the top of his shirt, revealling his stomach. Finally, he let it go.
With a sigh, he heard Steve (better known as God) mention something about his microphone. He frowned, and began to tap it.
"What's wrong with it?"
Isaac and Zac
Zac jumped up off his seat and started to inspect - and fix - Taylor's microphone.
"Tay seriously breaks everything he touches," Isaac told everyone.
Taylor
Taylor chuckled, but nodded to the crowd.
"I really do," he admitted sheepishly.
Isaac and Zac
"He destroys, breaks, maims just about everything, seriously," Isaac grinned. "We done?"
"Yep," Zac said. "Tay, if you break it again, it's coming out of your pocket money."
"Okay cool. This song is called 'Love Somebody to Know'."
"Love Sombeody to Hoe!" Zac grinned.
"We come up with dirty names for all our songs."
Taylor
"Yeah, we might be going a bit far..." Taylor grinned, "the jokes aren't normally too bad the first day."
Isaac
"Yeah," Isaac agreed. "Our jokes always start out innocent in the studio and as the time goes on, they get worse and worse. They go from G to PG to R to... bad! This is like Day 1. Day 2 will be worse. We won't invite you to Day 3!"
After singing "Love Somebody to Know", Isaac switched guitairs.
"Hang on... is that mine? Or is that yours? I... argh... When you have three guitars it's easy to get confused."
Taylor
Taylor grinned.
"We need to like, colour code them or something."
Then he put on a goofy voice.
"Red, blue and greeeeeeeeen."
He chuckled.
"Sorry. I need a capo."
Zac
Zac looked at Taylor.
"Uh... You don't need a capo," he told him.
Taylor
"Ah pooh."
He strummed the guitar he'd decided was his and grinned.
"No dancing bears and no bald eagles!"
Isaac
"Okay," Isaac explained, "that's just an inside joke about how we've decided no animals will be allowed in our show. I won't bother to explain to them about the dancing bears because that's not funny, but I will tell them about the bald eagle. When we were gonna sing the national anthem at the World Series in Florida, there was a bald eagle that was gonna circle above our heads as we sang. They were telling us it was just gonna fly around and come down and land on the trainer's arm. They were going through a practice run and the eagle swoops around, comes down and, instead of landing on the trainer's arm, nosedives right into the pitcher's mound."
Taylor
"Which was exactly where we were gonna be standing," Taylor cut in with a chuckle.
Isaac and Zac
"So needless to say, we've decided no animals in our shows," Isaac finished off.
Zac took the moment to stand up and tapped his chin.
"I need something."
"Me?" suggested a girl in the back.
"I need a small instrument," Zac laughed.
"I can be a small instrument."
Zac grinned, picked up a drum, and held it up.
"You have to be shaped like this!"
A little later a few girls said together: "Marry us Ike!"
"All of you? Isn't that illegal? Unless we move to Utah and become Mormon..." Isaac laughed evilly. "In that case..."
Taylor
"It's illegal there too Ike," Taylor raised his eyebrows.
Zac and Isaac
"Yeah, but isn't it like more looked over?" Isaac asked. "Hey, that reminds me of this joke..."
Isaac then proceeded to tell a joke that started going downhill.
"Ike. Ike. Stop," Zac interuped.
Isaac held his thumb and forefinger so far apart.
"I was this close to flaming out!"
He made his fingers swoop down as if crashing into the ground.
"Thanks Zac."
Taylor
They launched into the next song.
When it was done, Taylor heard Steve telling him off.
"What?!" he frowned, confused.
Then he looked up.
"But I wasn't tapping my foot," he looked down at it.
"Yes you were!" called some of the fans.
Then he grinned.
"I don't tap my foot, I tap my whooole body," he said in a deep voice.
Then he set the guitar down and mad ehis way over to the piano.
Isaac
"No, Tay," Isaac said. "It's Penny."
Taylor
Taylor turned, confused.
"Dagnabit. I was so excited to get to the piano. It's all big and brown..."
Isaac and Zac
"Like Shaq!" Zac grinned.
"Zac, who is Penny?" asked a woman from the audience.
"Penny is all of our imaginary lover!" Zac replied.
"Ok," Ike put in, "that's kinda...awkward."
"I have a joke," Zac went on. "There were these three guys who were in the jungle and they get captured by cannibals. Well, naturally they're really scared that they're gonna be eaten, but the chief approaches them and says "we'll let you go, on two conditions. The first, you must all go out and find ten pieces of the same kind of fruit." Well, naturally the three guys agree. The first guy comes back with ten pears, and the cheif tells him the second condition. He has to shove them all up his ass without making a sound. So the guys starts shoving. But he gets to the third one and he just can't do it. So they drag him off. The second guy comes, and he has ten berries. He's told the same thing and so proceeds to shove them up his ass. He gets to the tenth one and cracks up laughing, and so they drag him off. The first guy goes "Dude, you were so close! What happened?" And the second guy replies "Well, I could see out friend coming back, and he had pineapples"."
He grinned at everyone, and then (despite the joke being over), continued:
"And so the cannibals had a fine dinner and did lots of dancing afterwards. Like this!"
And Zac proceeded to hit hid drum and do a jungle dance that went on and on and on.
Taylor
"Ok..." Taylor just shook his head, laughing.
They launched into the next song.
Afterwards, Taylor gestured to the crowd.
"You guys are great," he grinned.
"No, you guys are great," came girl from the audience.
"No, you guys are great," Taylor chuckled.
"No, you guys -"
Isaac and Zac
"Oh my god, it's gonna be an endless cycle!" Isaac laughed, tuning his guitar. "The G string is always a little high."
"Yeah, it's a little tight on your nuts, Ike," Zac replied.
Everyone started laughing, and Zac realised what he said.
"The guitar nuts!" he exclaimed.
"Dirty, dirty minds," Isaac said, shaking his head, a small smile on his face.
"Maybe I should start telling clean jokes instead of dirty ones," Zac grinned.
"Do you even know any, Zac?"
"Sure I do," and he proceeded to prove it.
And Isaac joined in with his own jokes. During this, someone snorted and Isaac looked up.
"Okay, who was it?" he asked.
A girl raised her hand, red with embarrassment.
"No, it's okay! Be proud of your snort! Not many people can snort when they laugh. I can't... Ok, maybe I can't because I trained myself to not do that for 22 years, but I can't!" Isaac grinned.
"I have a joke about that," Zac grinned.
"How come I'm not surprised?"
Zac continued telling jokes when there was a loud screech from his headphones. Zac threw them off.
"Owww!" He yelped. "God just screamed in my ear!"
Even so, Zac was laughing.
"God just told Zac to shut up," Isaac laughed.
After wiping the tears from his eyes, Isaac went on:
"Okay, back to business," and started to talk about salsa beats, "here, it's like this."
Isaac started playing "Someone" with a salsa sounding riff on the guitar. Zac joined in, shaking the pear.
Taylor
Taylor just grinned and joined in on the tambourine.
When it was over, Taylor shook his head.
"But that's French, so it doesn't work."
Isaac and Zac
"French, Latin, it's a very multicultural song," Isaac grinned.
They played another song and Isaac observed that it was about a breakup with an girlfriend. Then he complained that he couldn't seem to hold a relationship "And Isis doesn't count," he thought.
"Aww!" chorused the crowd.
"Yeah, it's kinda pathetic, isn't it?" Zac remarked teasingly.
"Well, we love you Ike!" said one of the fans.
"Yeahhh! That's what she said..." Isaac trailed off and looked off to the side.
Taylor
Taylor chuckled.
"Well, I am personally very happy with my girl," he grinned.
He heard a couple of 'awwws' in the crowd.
"You guys wanna finish up?" came Steve's voice.
"Yeah," Taylor nodded, "ok guys, last song."
Yet another chorus of 'awwwws'.
Isaac and Zac
They performed the last song and then said goodbye to the fans.
"We're going to sign autographs and take photos while you leave," Isaac told them.
"And if you're lucky, we might even be in the photos with you," Zac teased.
Taylor, Ash G and Walker
The boys met up with Ash who directed them through into a main room where they could meet with the fans.
Their father saw them.
"Hey boys, how did it go? I snuck in a while ago and caught a couple of songs..."
"It was great," Taylor nodded, grinning.
Isaac and Zac
"Yep," Zac agreed.
Isaac spoke to the fans as they came out.
Taylor, Ash G and Walker
Walker and Ashley stepped aside so that the boys could greet their fans.
They'd given the fans the choice of either having their photo taken, or having an autograph. They got the photos out of the way first, then began signing autographs.
Taylor looked a couple of twins over as they approached. Identical. Ok...
One of them handed him a LIFEbeat ticket as he struck up conversation.
"Um... yeah... we're twins if you didn't notice..." one said eventually.
"Oh really?" Taylor acted as if he hadn't noticed.
The girl just gave him a weird look. He held out his hand to shake her's.
Isaac
Isaac held his hand out to the twin the same time as Taylor did, but she shook Taylor's.
"Of course she shook Taylor's. Why... no... let's not go there... that's particular territory is just depressing," Isaac told himself.
Taylor
Taylor laughed.
"So, where are you guys from?"
Isaac
"Where are you guys from?" Isaac asked within two second of Taylor.
"Kansas City," the twins said together.
"Oh, cool."
Taylor
Taylor signed the tickets with a nod, then handed them to Ike.
Isaac and Zac
“Yeah…that’s my lifebeat ticket,” said the twin.
“That’s your Lifebeat ticket?” Zac exclaimed, peering over Isaac's shoulder.
“Yep.”
“Safe is easy.”
Taylor
Taylor saw the girl trying to register what Zac had just said, then rolled his eyes.
"Oh don't mind him," he waved her off when she looked to him for help.
Isaac and Zac
"Candy and marshmellows. Good stuff," Zac went on, nodding. "You eat them and they taste really good. But don't eat too much or you'll get sick, and then where would you be? Spewing down the toliet bowl. Or something worse out the other end. Of course you may think it's worth it. After all, where would we be without candy and marshmellows? Some people may say that marshmellows are candy, but they really deserve a category of their own. They're so fluffy and sweet, you can suck 'em and melt 'em. Completely different texture to chocolate and lollipops and other such stuff. You know, there was this guy once who had a dream about eating a giant marshmellow, and in the morning, his pillow was gone. That kind of thing doesn't happen to every sweet thing. Unless that sweet thing is a one night stand, if you know what I mean. Have you ever tried to eat two gobstoppers at once? It's no easy task, but the trick is to suck the first one for a bit until it's small enough to fit the second one in. Depending on how skilled you are, you should be able to fit in a third..."
Isaac just stared at Zac as he rambled on and on.
Taylor
Taylor looked between them, trying to make sense of what Zac was saying. Then he smiled at the girl.
"He's just weird like that," he offered.
"Ok... you know, I think I'm going to go now..." the girl smiled, then pointed towards the door as she began to leave.
Taylor looked at Zac again, just watching as he kept rambling. When the girl was at the door, he finally called out.
"Ok, see you guys next time! Thanks!"
Then he turned to the next couple of fans.
Isaac and Zac
Zac then started rambling on to the next fan. Soon they were all out the door and all packed up. Isaac spoke to a couple of more fans as they left, btu soon that was exactly the case.
They left.
At last, late and dark it now was, the Hansons went home.
OOC: A couple of different sources were referred to for this post. One was an e-mail, the other was http://www.geocities.com/ercw28/Hanson.TheChurch.html