Cool article. He was a bit of a songwriting whore, turns out. He’d write songs for anyone.
Yep. One of his many great gifts was being able to mimic the styles of others while keeping just a little bit of himself in there for fun. Synthpop? Sure. Europop? Got it. Garage rock? Absolutely.
Oh man, my wife and I just realized we saw him live when he was a surprise opener for They Might Be Giants ten years ago or so at the Largo in LA. Was a really great concert overall.
In the week after 9/11, late night talk shows were just coming back on the air, trying to figure out how to do entertainment in the wake of so much sadness, anger, and confusion. Late Night with Conan O’Brien was no different. And like a lot of shows, they had an additional hurdle of restricted travel into and out of NYC, especially by air. Any guests would have to be fairly local.
And so on that first Friday back, Conan’s musical guests were Adam Schlesinger and Fountains of Wayne. Instead of doing any of their own songs, though, they instead did a cover of The Kinks’ “Better Things” a song that I’d imagine by now has gotten millions and millions of people through times of darkness and great sadness. And after being off of youtube for a long time, that clip is finally resurfacing. And it’s no less great – and sadly pertinent – now than it was then.
Thanks for sharing that
Man, I forgot how much I listened to these first few FoW albums back when they came out. I pretty much remember every word. Welcome Interstate Managers is where I fell off, so apparently I have 3 other albums to discover. This sucks.
The Michael Caine of music.
Of all the tributes I’ve read for Schlesinger, this one is my favorite.
http://citypages.com/music/nobody-will-ever-have-a-career-like-adam-schlesingers-again/569322411
Fountains of Wayne mapped out an area of the northeast corridor that Springsteen was too idealist and Billy Joel too cranky to depict—or maybe that both were just too old to have fully experienced. There’s really no better song about how far away from the rest of the universe New Jersey can feel than “Hackensack.” It hovers with the weightlessness that comes from living in a placeless place, the realization that you don’t have a life story, you’ve just been present for an accrued series of minor events. But Schlesinger understood that such a realization was indeed a story, and deserved to be told as much as anyone’s.
Part of what we’re mourning with Schlesinger’s death is the end of an age where a bill-paying but personally satisfying music career remained possible.
I’ve been revisiting a lot of Schlesinger’s back catalog the last day or so - more FoW than Ivy, even though I recognize it’s good stuff it’s not so much my thing - and I have a new appreciation for their work now. Mostly because of my wife and her family, I think. She’s a Jersey girl (sure, go ahead and cue up that Tom Waits song, it fits) and I’ve made quite a few trips out there to the Jersey shore, the Newark area, the train into Manhattan. For a guy who grew up in Louisiana, the New York metro area was not just geographically distant; culturally it may as well have been London or Morocco. But now I get those references, they feel a little more personal. Lead us not into Penn Station, indeed.
Yeah, that’s a good one. I especially like that last sentiment…
But if for a few moments today you accidentally find yourself not absolutely miserable, don’t hate yourself. Like the guy sang, “The sun still shines in the summertime.”
Thanks for posting!
Wow. I actually remember this episode from the first season, mostly because my friends and I would watch to make fun of the cast, and I kiiiiind of had a little bit of a crush on her.
Piece of advice: if you decide to go to Amazon and rent That Thing You Do! because you haven’t seen it in ages and have fond memories of it, whatever you do don’t accidentally rent the “Extended Version”. I kept wondering why there were all these scenes I had absolutely no memory of. It manages to turns a snappy, sweet little dramedy about a one-hit wonder from Erie, PA into a bloated mess of unnecessarily extended scenes that we got just fine the way they were in the theatrical cut.
Just trying to help.
We watched it last night (not the extended version) and it’s a decent-enough movie anchored by one hell of a great song. And that terrific radio scene.
I suppose the main problem is baked into the concept… the movie peaks early and it’s all downhill from there, just like the One-ders. Still, I like the fairytale-ness of it all. The stuff with Guy getting to play with Del Paxton in the recording studio works better than the love story and climactic kiss with Faye which doesn’t quite work as an earned subplot or in the moment.
Casting could have been better too. But I forgot Charlize Theron was in it! She’s not at all unappealing to look at.
It was funny seeing Tom Hanks write and direct a version of himself with all his manic comic mannerisms. It’s a lot like how Woody Allen always does versions of himself even when he’s not starring.
BUT THAT SONG!
I had forgotten that there was not one, but two Magical Negros in that movie. I wonder if that’s a record.
EDIT: Forgot to mention, it turns out, in the extended cut…Tom Hank’s character is gay, and Howie Long plays his lover!
Did they give the bass player a name in the extended version? I thought that was kind of weird for a movie about a closeknit band of musicians and they didn’t bother to name one of them.
I don’t think so. I think him being the unnamed “bass player” is one of the gags.
Yep, as Don Rickles might say “That’s the joke!”
From last night’s Jersey 4 Jersey online benefit.
Bruce played. Bon Jovi did too.
But this was the moment of transcendence, which speaks to the greatness of Adam Schlesinger’s talent as a songwriter.
Dust in the room warning. Chris Collingwood singing the chorus written by his longtime friend “If you ever get back to Hackensack, I’ll be here for you” is…something.
(Also, I would pay way too much money to see a Fountains of Wayne farewell tour with Sharon Van Etten sitting in on bass and backing vox.)
So good. Thanks for sharing.