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        Goo Goo Dolls >> Goo Goo Dolls >> Goo Goo Dolls not stuck in the past
        
(Message started by: the redo on Mar 9^th, 2007, 11:43pm)

Title: Goo Goo Dolls not stuck in the past
Post by the redo on Mar 9^th, 2007, 11:43pm

Oh God... read it. You'll know why my brain almost just exploded. Twice.

HEADLINE: Goo Goo Dolls not stuck in the past

BYLINE: SUE WHITE, The Saginaw News

BODY:

Robby Takac grew up in Buffalo, New York, but that didn't make it any easier pulling in early one morning to a blustery Chicago.

"I'm not looking out the window, but I know it's gray and overcast," said the Goo Goo Dolls bassist. "We're pulling this winter storm around with us on this tour, and it seems like we should be used to it, but it's like getting used to Chinese water torture."

Yet Takac and his bandmates, guitarist John Rzeznick and drummer Mike Malinin, credit a return to Buffalo for the back-to-the-roots sound of their new album, "Let Love In." And at a time when many of their peers from the 1980s are hooking up with nostalgia tours, they're finding a new audience with the single "Better Days."

"We've lived in Los Angeles for the last eight years, and your perspective changes out there," Takac said. "There's a constant pressure from the industry there, to be what they want you to be, and it's a struggle to stick to the truth, to what comes natural.

"Buffalo is freezing, but it's a great place. Knowing it, growing up there, I could show you more fun than you've ever had in your life.

"With the world growing smaller by the minute, it's great to tap into the traditions, the ghosts of a romantic past, all the things Buffalo is built on."

Recording in the town's huge Masonic Ballroom was an integral part of defining the Goo Goo Dolls new sound, he added, and the experience has persuaded them to build a permanent studio in the New York border city for future projects.

And this is big news from a band that has entertained the notion of calling it quits once or twice - "Eight times, to be accurate," Takac said - in its 20-year history.

Takac and Rzeznick first put together their talents in the early 1980s, and Saginaw isn't going to hear much from that period when the Goo Goo Dolls come Sunday to TheDow Event Center, Takac said.

"We'll glaze over those five years when the record industry was really patient with us while we grew up and learned how to play," he said, laughing.

"What you will get is an incredible exchange of energy. It's always amazing to me to hear a big crowd singing your songs back to you, word for word."

Fans will hear "Iris," "Name," "Slide," "Here is Gone" and all the songs that made the band a household name a few years later. And they'll also bring out the new.

"We're in the midst of putting a tour together for this summer, and we are running into pitfalls, avoiding places we don't want to be," Takac said. "It's really hard.

"We had an offer from Def Leppard, which would be a great show, but I can see how it would be billed already, the '80s and the '90s together again.

"Chris Daughtrey (from 'American Idol') was another offer, but the financial part of it was too high. To say the state of the music industry is in flux right now is an understatement, but we have a standard in our own minds. It's not about how many records you sell anymore."

On the concert front, he said, the audience is expanding in both directions.

"People are bringing kids to our show as their first concert, and I'm so glad it's me giving them the story they'll tell for the rest of their lives," he said.

And the Goo Goo Dolls are still gathering a few stories as well. The band was the first act to set foot in the rebuilt New Orleans Superdome, performing "Better Days" before the now-historic Saints-Atlanta Falcons football game.

"We were the first to say 'Hey, folks, how are you doing?'" Takac said. "It was a very intense time, and we were a little torn when we were first asked to take part."

A year after Hurricane Katrina, they saw communities still devastated, and they wondered why the money wasn't spent there instead of rebuilding the football arena, putting on fireworks and paying for big-name entertainers.

"People were literally sleeping in the street; their houses were washed away," he said. "We felt really weird about it. Then they opened the gates and everyone poured in - you didn't have to buy a ticket for it - and none of that was left in my mind.

"The people are submerged in the devastation every day and this freed them for the moment. They told us how much it meant to them, and we realized this was New Orleans' official day off.

"It took a real cool turn for us."

Title: Re: Goo Goo Dolls not stuck in the past
Post by tkc1989 on Mar 10^th, 2007, 8:26am

Ok, I've just briefly scanned this, but I'm guessing one reason is that the guy can't spell Rzeznik...? lol

Title: Re: Goo Goo Dolls not stuck in the past
Post by the redo on Mar 10^th, 2007, 10:08am

Well, no, that's a given. The Def Leppard talk made me cringe and I'm relieved that doesn't seem to be happening (I can't take ANOTHER summer of the Goos playing opening act). Then the Chris Daughtry stuff, because the audience he would bring would annoy me, even though his music would probably mesh okay with the Goos.

The part about ignoring the first 5 years made me laugh (cry?) though, because he forgot to mention how they ignore year 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, excluding the singles...