Fountains Of Wayne – Live at Wiggins Park, Camden New Jersey – July 20, 2007 – WXPN-FM broadcast –
Fountains Of Wayne in concert tonight. Another tribute, another dose of sad news, another reason to wonder about the big picture and another loss.
Tonight it’s the sad news of the passing of Adam Schlesinger, co founder and principle writer for Fountains Of Wayne. The band was around for a comparatively short time, and Schlesinger was a multi-talent whose work went on to critical acclaim; lots of awards and accolades and a rich legacy of songs. All over earlier today when he lost his battle with Coronavirus, a battle which lasted some two weeks – put another number of the ledger of loss; one of the 800+ who left us yesterday.
From Rolling Stone:
Schlesinger had one of the most unique and busiest careers in pop. With Fountains of Wayne — a group that blended power-pop delight with indie and alt-rock sensibilities — he released five albums between 1996 and 2011. During the same period, he released six albums with his other group, Ivy, all the while building a portfolio of TV and film music. His first hit came in 1996, but it was a song engineered to sound like it was actually from the Sixties: “That Thing You Do.” The track served as the sole hit for the Wonders, the fake band at the center of Tom Hanks’ film That Thing You Do!; in real life, the track charted well and earned Schlesinger an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song.
In a 2016 interview with Consequence of Sound, Schlesinger spoke about the parallels between his fictional hit and his real life one: “People all of a sudden know you for this one song,” he said. “It just follows you around, and you have to play it over and over again. It comes to define you, but you have to find a way to stay fresh with it and enthusiastic about it. It’s a weird thing. … It’s a happy problem to have, really. Before ‘That Thing You Do,’ I hadn’t written anything that anybody knew. Then I had one thing that people knew, and then a few years on I had a couple other songs that people knew. When you’re just starting out and you want to be a songwriter, you want to be able to mention something that people have heard of.”
“Adam Schlesinger took pop music writing to its classiest and most untouchable place,” Jack Antonoff wrote. “An honor to live at the same time he made his work.
’nuff said . . .no words outta me.
Hit play and call it a night.