Taken from an August issue of Democrat and Chronicle
(Thanks to Alexandra for typing this up and letting me use it!)
By Jeff Spevak

The irreverent band can seem downright grown up- or are they just talking gobbledygoo?
Twelve years ago, when they were young and truly acted like Goo Goo Dolls, the Goo Goo Dolls played power-punk covers of Blue Oyster Cult's Don't fear the Reaper, or perhaps Creedence Clearwater Revival's Down on the Corner with Buffalo lounge lizard Lance Diamond on lead vocals.
Just a few years ago even, when the band performed its first big hit, Name, on a Christmas edition of Late Show With David Letterman, there was a frat-boy irreverence in the way the Buffalo trio set down its instruments, sprinted across the stage and leaped into a wading pool full of eggnog.
"We didn't know how to take ourselves seriously," says bassist Robby Takac, who plays with the Goo Goo Dolls Saturday at Finger Lakes Performing Arts center. "We were kids. I say that all the time, I guess I wasn't really a kid- I was 20 years old- but my brain was not mature then. It was escapism, the boys' club going out and having a good time as you can." So now they're what... Goo Goo Men? Not when Takac reports he's calling from Milwaukee and hoots "Shlemiel! Shlemazel!" into the phone, badly re creating the opening movements of the old TV brew town sitcom Laverne and Shirley.
Takac shares singing and songwriting duties with guitarist Johnny Rzeznik, who can be identified immediately because he looks like a mussed up Jon Bon Jovi. Takac is also easily identifiable, because he's the barefoot one. He has no aversion to footwear, but says he merely wants to feel the low end rumble of his bass.
"Remember those old vibrating football games?" says Takac, who at 35 was born in a long forgotten era where video games and MTV didn't' exist. "My goal in life is to be vibrated around the stage just like those little men."
Yeah, the goo goo dolls always looked like a band getting a good buzz in the early days. The band released their first album in 1987, Goo Goo Dolls, and immediately established itself as a lumpy conglomeration of the basics: an unpolished meatloaf of the Replacements and the Ramones. The Replacements' Paul Westerberg even contributed lyrics to We are the normal for the 1993 album Superstar Car Wash.
And a good Goo Goo Dolls show always includes nicely beered up versions of Cream's Sunshine of your love, the Rolling stone's Gimme Shelter, the Plimsouls' A million Miles Away, Prince's I could never take the place of your man.
But the good times had a cynical edge and that's what you hear in the bands own songs. It didn't' get any more cynical that Ain't that Unusual, from the bands 1995 breakthrough album A boy Named Goo. "It's like a made for TV movie and I just blew my lines" is Rzeznik's view of life.
You could hardly blame them for being cynical, when Wal-Mart announced it was removing A Boy Named Goo from its shelves after complaints from "a small number of people" that the goo covered boy on the cover depicted child abuse.
The outrage didn't' last. "After they made a big deal about the cover, the record went back up into the Top 20," recalls Takac, suggesting that Wal-Mart didn't want the record when it wasn't selling, but was happy to have it back on the shelves when the controversy renewed interest. "The Right," he says, "is only right when it's money involved."
As the Goo Goo Dolls have gotten older and wiser, they've become more proactive in their beliefs. Saturday's show includes not only a canned food drive, but also a 3 1/2 minute video based, says Takac "on a concept that annoys us- greedy uncaring people."
"We are trying really hard to make sure the tour has a positive spin on it. It seems a lot of the music today is based on Sears selling refrigerators through carefully choreographed boy groups to a big group of people in too-big pants trying to beat each other up in front of the stage."
And there will be anti-violence booths, addressing the new back-to-school issue. "We want to give good advice to kids about potentially violent situations" says Takac "Life would be best if there were no guns, but thanks to Charlton Heston and his ape-like friends, that will never happen."
As punk-club veterans, the Goo Goo Dolls have also witnessed another form of violence: They've seen the scene in front of the stage go from a handful of kids slam-dancing to crushing, mosh pit action.
"That's not the way it's supposed to be" says Takac. "That's violent and dangerous. I'm 35 years old. I've been through that whole thing, with 200 people in a bar and 20 people having a great time just running around."
"But the first time I saw Pantera, Wendy O. Williams and -- oh it must have been Motorhead in '86 -- I remember looking down on the floor and thinking 'Ok this isn't supposed to be happening.'
"All of the charm goes away, all of the charm in seeing Suicidal Tendencies at Scorgie's in Rochester goes away. It becomes an outlet for your aggression. It seems to give people an excuse for their aggression. Taking that one step too far is allowing people who don't understand the nature of the event to take control."
And as the Goos mature, the songs seem to be more concerned with closer, personal issues. Their 1998 release, Dizzy up the Girl, continues to take the cynicism away from sprawling institutions the band can't fight, such as TV, and shifts it to relationships.
"The people you grew up with, the people you had problems with, each record is a document of our relationship with those people" says Takac.
"I write about things that tear me apart, and it's all very personal to me. It's funny to hear people disassemble the lyrics. If they get it wrong, it almost means more to me, because it's morphed into something that is meaningful to them.
"We do get a lot of letters just talking about helping them through deaths, bad situations. Name affected a lot of people who didn't have a clue who we were. They're kids. Kids whose parents are breaking up, and their life is just falling around their feet. When their family decides it's not gonna be a family anymore, I think I hear that more than anything."
The Goo Goo Dolls have had such people in their lives. Adding vocals by Lance Diamond - a regular at Buffalo's Elmwood Lounge on Fridays and Saturdays - might have seemed like a light hearted goof, but it was also a way the Goos could say thank you.
"He was one of my best friends in those early years and really looked out for me as a human being." says Takac. "I always tried to share that same respect as well. He sort of showed me that, though the first seven or eight years of the drunkenness of this thing- because that's pretty much what it was- you have to make sure your ducks are in order. He said to me, "Show business, that's two words. Show and Business."
And after 12 years in the business, Takac has some advice as well: "If you jump in a pool of eggnog, don't sit in an airplane for a couple of hours without showering. Boy, it smells."

And here is the concert review of the 8/28 concert (same author/newspaper)

Goo Goo Dolls are aging well
*The Buffalo band rocks Canandaigua with a show free of nonsense and heavy on power chords.

CANANDAIGUA - The Goo Goo Dolls do not seem bored, jaded, full of themselves, humorless, condescending to their fans, fat, constipated or stupid. They are only getting smarter after 13 years in the rock and roll business, that's a minor miracle.
Once Buffalo-based, and now pretty much tour-bus based, the Goo Goo Dolls rocked 9,000 enthusiastic fans last night at Finger Lakes Performing Arts Center. It was raw, power punk that rattled the banners of the tour's corporate sponsors. In this age, even altruistic souls such as the Goo Goo Dolls have to go to bed with CEO's.
But it's worth seeing kids in their new soft drink T-shirts, walking around like human billboards for some exec's ad campaign, to see a band that just plain rocks. With a stage swept clear of all nonsense, and with the trio propped up for the tour with an additional guitarist and keyboard player, the Goo Goo Dolls hardly seemed to need singalong hits such as Iris and Name. The band is a living testimony to the life-giving forces of exuberant power chords and chemistry.
Chemistry, as in what's gong on between Johnny Rzeznik and Robby Takac. Rzeznik is the band's poster boy: He looks good in a sleeveless T-shirt, flops around recklessly on stage, tosses his guitar around with abandon, snaps photos of the crowd, urges girls heading to college to beware of waking up in the morning "next to a fat, snoring, beer guzzling fool" and sings with an agreeably gruff voice.
Takac is the bassist in black, scooting around the stage barefoot and with his long hair dangling in his eyes, and handling occasional lead vocals in a voice that manages to be both sweet and sinister.
You could argue whether the feel-good grooves and hip hop of Dolls' tour mate Sugar Ray- the Miller Lite of bands- tastes great or is less filling. I certainly didn't feel weighed down by any heavy thoughts after the short, 45 minute set. But the band's stage props- Japanese lanterns and a pool side bar with a bartender preparing daiquiris for the band- tells you where Sugar Ray's head is. It's a little tough to shake the feeling that lead singer Mark McGrath looks a little like Vanilla Ice, but he's added a few 90's touches. His baggy jeans sag in the butt just enough to show the edge of his boxer shorts, just like all of the hip kids and plumbers in town. And that way of shoving his cordless microphone into his pants certainly endears him to all of the Freudian scholars in the audience.
McGrath gets big points for not wasting time. Three songs into the set, Sugar Ray played the big, mindless hit of '98, Fly, which got the "We're waiting for the Goo Goo Dolls" crowd off its butts. McGrath kept them on their feet by dashing up the aisles to high five fans and take a few sips of some guy's beer.
Fastball was supposed to open the main stage but backed out of the gig on Thursday in favor of another show. That bumped one of the second-stage bands into the slot: Kansas City's Frog Pond. A very strong pop band with female vocals- like a pumped up Veruca Salt- Frog Pond wins one of the best accolades you could hand a unknown band that plays a brief set before the main acts: Yeah, I'd pay to see 'em at the Bug Jar. And if Frog Pond turns out to be the next Nirvana, that would be a hell of a show, wouldn't it?
At least they left an impression on McGrath who thanked the band with a great big "Let's give it up for Frog Pan, un, Frog Pond!"