Last night’s Hanson show at Water Street was a culmination of two years worth of in-jokes at City. Ever since I started, music editor Frank De Blase has been posing rhetorical questions about new concert announcements. “Guess who’s coming to town?” he’d say. And I’d always reply, apropos of nothing, “Hanson?!” And then, one magical day a few months ago, it happened. Frank excitedly broke the news that Hanson was, in fact, coming to town. And by god, I was going to have to cover it.

I arrived to the show to find up-and-comer Kate Voegele in the middle of her opening set. I actually wish I’d missed her whole act. Don’t get me wrong, I actually like what I’ve heard of her radio-friendly pop/rock. But she was amped to death at this show. It’s a problem when your bass line is so loud that it shakes layers of dead skin cells right off me, and her vocals were largely unintelligible. Frank’s been writing for months now about the scourge of overly loud concerts, and I fear poor Kate was another victim last night.

Second openers Stephen Kellogg & The Sixers faired better on the sound end, and immediately grabbed my attention with an initial instrument line-up of guitar, mandolin, banjo, and tuba. Sadly, that lasted for one song, and then Kellogg and I became locked in an intense love/hate relationship for the rest of his 40-minute set. He had me with his driving alt-rock anthems, but lost me with some indulgent, blasé autobiographical numbers. He won me back with his jangly rhythms but alienated me with his shameless self-promotion and lame one-liners cribbed from “Superbad.” But then he forever captured my heart by paying homage to the late, great Jerry Orbach, uttering those six magic words from “Dirty Dancing”: “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.” I mean, how do you resist a good Jennifer Grey reference? I’m not made of stone. (BTW: He’s way better live than he is on disc.)

And then there was Hanson. Once the band finally took the stage – a full 40 minutes after Kellogg and his crew had wrapped their set, an unforgivably long wait in my book – the boys put on a heck of a show. During the interminable break I surveyed the sizable crowd, trying to figure out who exactly was turning out for a Hanson show on a Monday night in Rochester, NY. It was an odd group; mostly women, almost totally white, some of them in their teens, some of them college-aged, some of them in their early 30s. The latter contingent I understood, since they probably tooled around in their best friend’s Aerostar (or approximation thereof) and blasted “Middle of Nowhere” on hot summer joyrides during high school like my crowd did. But the younger ones? It’s been 10 years since “MMMBop”; anyone in high school was practically a fetus when these boys used to get mistaken for girls. How would they even know what a Hanson looks like?

But the crowd knew perfectly well what a Hanson looks like (the answer: all grown up and totally foxy), and what one sounds like. This group knew the words to most of the songs the band played, everything from the early stuff (“Where’s the Love,” “If Only”) to stuff off Hanson’s current indie release, “The Walk.” And they sang along enthusiastically to almost every number. It was kind of an eye-opening experience: this is a band that’s often dismissed—unfairly--as a teeny-pop novelty, but which has fans that remember every lyric from even minor hits a decade later.

And yes, they played “MMMBop.” The City crew wondered how the boys would handle the song now that their testicles have dropped. The brothers wisely turned it into an acoustic jam, and what’s arguably the most popular nonsense song since “Louie Louie” has never sounded better. In fact, the band sounded amazing all night. The boys all have fantastic voices—Isaac and Zack particularly impressed me— those harmonies still sound great, and their ability on their respective instruments has only increased over the years. Eldest brother Isaac has also matured into a confident, charming presence on stage, even though lead singer Taylor still probably gets the majority of the attention. Wee Zack got plenty of love from the screaming girls on the balcony, which was a good thing since he finally cracked into a smile toward the end of their set’s first hour. Prior to that he looked totally bored behind his drum kit. I wondered if perhaps his perfect librarian bun was too tight, or if his one luxurious, chunky bang was distracting him by flopping all over his face. (All of them have amazing hair; they should be doing Pantene commercials or something.)

All told, Hanson’s set lasted more than two hours. The guys played tracks off of each of their four albums, and some covers from The Police, U2, and a surprisingly smooth and funky “Let Love Rule” by Lenny Kravitz. They seemed legitimately impressed by the crowd’s enthusiasm and milked it with countless audience-participation bits, some of which fell slightly flat. Steady clapping is one thing, but tasking the crowd to shout out the chorus on the off-beats or only clap on certain measures of a refrain is probably too much to ask the hive mind. The one poor girl next to me was like Homer during the “Monorail” song on “The Simpsons,” blurting out “Hey” after everyone else had stopped. (I loved it.)

Confidential to my Amazonian nemesis, the woman who stood in front of me for most of the show: 1) It is not cool to elbow your way through the crowd multiple times during the night so you can go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth to your equally towering boyfriend, and then cling to him like a lichen while shooting out death glares to anyone in your general vicinity; 2) I am not your messenger, so if you have something to say to your aforementioned boyfriend, please don't poke me in the back and try to have me relay some garbled instructions to some dude I've never met; 3) If you don't want to go to a concert, don't go. Your constant fidgeting and restlessness distracted everybody else around you from what was otherwise a totally satisfying show.