Fountains of Wayne - Welcome Interstate Managers
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On this episode, we take a deep dive into the third album by the power-pop band, Fountains of Wayne: Welcome Interstate Managers.
After two critically acclaimed, but in the eyes of the Atlantic Records commercially underperforming LPs, the label dropped them. The band shopped around for a label, but with little success, As a result, Welcome Interstate Managers. was self-financed. The record saw the songwriting duo of Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood crafting songs about the alienation and working day travails of young adulthood. The album spawned a Grammy-nominated hit “Stacy's Mom”, and also garnered them a “Best New Artist” nod as well.
As long-time fans of the band already knew, “Stacy’s Mom” only scratched the surface of what the band had to offer. Without the backing of a major label, the band crafted an LP of 16 pop tunes containing some of the most deftly written, funny, heartbreaking, and poignant lyrics on just about any pop album made before or since.
Sadly, the world lost Adam Schlesinger, arguably one of the best, and certainly one of the most prolific songwriters of the 21st Century, to Covid in 2020.
THINGS WE DISCUSSED ON THIS EPISODE
Prior to forming Fountains of Wayne with Chris Collingwood, Adam Schlesinger joined French pop band Ivy. Listen to the Schlesinger co-penned single “Lucy Doesn’t Love You” off of their third LP "Long Distance”
When the Fountains of Wayne released their debut in 1997, the cover photo that they had been told they had exclusive rights to was being used by a British power-pop band the Flamingoes, whose album had been released a few weeks before. As a result, Fountains of Wayne went with a different (and much more generic) cover for the European market.
Following in the long-standing tradition of pop music artists, Fountains of Wayne released a Christmas single in 1997 “I Want an Alien for Christmas” b/w “The Man in the Santa Suit.” The latter is a perfect distillation of what made Fountains of Wayne so special: a instantly accessible pop tune that is both humorous and melancholy.
The video for the hit single off of Welcome Interstate Managers, “Stacy’s Mom” starring Rachel Hunter, featured all sorts of pop cultural references (including various nods to the Cars who were the obvious inspiration of the song). The video topped both MTV and VH1 playlists at the time
Ten days after the September 11th attacks, Fountains of Wayne were the first musical artist to perform on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. The band performed a very appropriate cover of the Kinks’ song “Better Days.”
Here’s Mike Viola (the Candy Butchers) and Adam Schlesinger performing "That Thing You Do" from the film of the same name at the during the Tribeca Film Festival in 2007. Schlesinger wrote the song and Viola provided the vocals for the film. The video also shows what a fine bassist Schlesinger was.
While touring in the early 2000’s Robbie Fulks and his band created a travel game inspired by what Fulks deemed Fountains of Wayne’s super-competency and amazing. He imagined them as operators of a crisis hotline for songwriters. In the game, someone in the band would place an emergency call for counseling, and a reach a member of the “hotline” who would offer a solution based on some “time-honored Fountains of Wayne techniques.” He ended up recording a version of the game which you can listen to below.
Here’s a bonus: Robbie Fulks covering “Stacy’s Mom” in the country boogie style of Wayne “the Train” Hancock.
