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| From | Beth2459@aol.com |
| Subject | FOW - all kinds of TIME MAGAZINE |
| Date | Thu, 18 Dec 2003 09:15:10 EST |
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Below is an article from the latest iss of Time Magazine- thought I would
share it, since it is pretty well written, and also shows who is the glass half
full FOWner and who is the glass half empty FOWner!
:-)
beth- a fan of the glass half fullner
http://www.groupiegear.com
only a few days left in the super duper groupiegear half off sale!!
AÂ RÂ TÂ SÂ /Â MÂ UÂ SÂ IÂ C
The Rise Of Mom's Boys
Fountains of Wayne is a great band that made it with a jokey, Mrs.
Robinsonesque hit. Is this a good thing?
By JOSH TYRANGIEL
Monday, Dec. 22, 2003
Chris Collingwood thinks he made a deal with the devil. Adam Schlesinger
thinks he finally caught a break. What Collingwood and Schlesinger — co-founders
and co-songwriters of the band Fountains Of Wayne — actually did was this: they
recorded a song about wanting to sleep with a friend's mother. Then they made
a video with Rachel Hunter, the ex-Mrs. Rod Stewart, playing a modern Mrs.
Robinson in a bikini. Naturally, Stacy's Mom became a top 10 hit — the most
downloaded song on iTunes — and earned the band a Grammy nomination for Best New
Artist. "People are watching the video and downloading the single, but they
don't know us or our record at all. It's kind of disappointing. It's a novelty
song," says Collingwood. Says Schlesinger, who wrote the song: "There are a lot
of videos with hot models. I happen to think it's a really good song."
What drove Fountains of Wayne to Stacy's Mom was the usual soul-killing
nightmare of the music industry. Schlesinger and Collingwood, both 36, met as
undergraduates at Williams College and soon after started Fountains of Wayne (named
after a lawn-ornament store near Schlesinger's New Jersey home), adding
bassist Jody Porter and drummer Brian Young along the way. They signed a
major-label deal with Atlantic Records in 1996 and were promptly buried by everything
else on the radio. "There's this expression, Bo-Now music," says Collingwood.
"It's that whole genre where singers just scream, Bo-Nowwww!!!! in that really
angry language that isn't even human. Unfortunately, Bo-Now ruled the airwaves
for a very long time."
Fountains of Wayne's first two albums (Grammy nominations for Best New Artist
are given out only when the Grammy people are good and ready) were full of
great, Kinks-inspired guitar-pop songs about contemporary suburban characters
like themselves. "When we first started writing songs," says Schlesinger, "we
felt like we needed to write about grand, universal themes like 'I am the King
of Pain.' I remember thinking, Jesus Christ, how do you write something like
that, especially if you're from New Jersey?" So instead they wrote Red Dragon
Tattoo, about an exuberant moron who gets inked to impress a girl, and Utopia
Parkway, which described guys a shade too old to be posting flyers for their
band. The songs were ironic without being distant, and catchy without being
Creed. And they didn't sell at all.
Atlantic dropped Fountains of Wayne in 2000, and the band had to figure out
whether it still wanted to exist. Collingwood spent a year tending his garden,
while Schlesinger turned to a lucrative career producing albums and writing
songs for movies and television. (Schlesinger got an Oscar nomination for the
song That Thing You Do. He also writes occasional sketch music for Saturday
Night Live.) Eventually the band regrouped and signed with tiny SCurve records.
They wrote more great, weird songs for their third album, Welcome Interstate
Managers, including All Kinds of Time, about a high school quarterback at his
life's bittersweet peak, and Valley Winter Song, which may be the first-ever rock
song about seasonal affective disorder.
They also wrote Stacy's Mom. The song fits the band's general aesthetic —
it's not a total sellout — but the chorus ("Stacy's mom has got it going on") is
less nuanced than its best work. When Fountains of Wayne handed over the album
to A.-and-R. man Steve Greenberg, who had previously signed Hanson and the
Baha Men, he pushed them to make Stacy's Mom the lead single.
Collingwood is still worried about that decision. On the band's recent tour,
opening for Matchbox Twenty, he says, "the hard-core fans were there, but
there's a large contingent that just wants the single, or holds up the sign that
says, I'M STACY'S MOM." He sighs. "I hope it doesn't haunt us." Schlesinger
couldn't be happier. With the momentum from Stacy's Mom, the band has persuaded
its label to do a video for its second single, Mexican Wine, in Brazil. There
will be several yachts in the video and a helicopter too. "Actually, I think
one of the yachts has a helipad on it," says Schlesinger. "Considering we really
didn't expect anybody to pay any attention to a record by us this year, I'd
say we're doing pretty well."
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