Fountains of Wayne spurt pop into Detroit

Move over Ted Nugent - Adam Schlesinger, bassist of Fountains of Wayne, is the new Motor City Madman. Of course, this is all according to Schlesinger's partner in crime and lead vocalist Chris Collingwood, the man who also makes the fatal error of considering New York the new Motor City. What Collingwood doesn't realize is that in Michigan, The Nuge is a type of god - one who even has his own radio show. "The fact that Ted Nugent is even entitled to a political opinion is just ridiculous," Collingwood said, clearly disturbed. "The man wrote a song called 'Wang Dang Sweet Poontang.' No one should pay attention to what he says about anything."

PREVIEW
	Fountains of Wayne At St. Andrew's Hall with Sloan Sunday at 7:30 p.m.

Talk of Motor City madmen aside, people are starting to pay attention to Fountains of Wayne, the dynamic songwriting duo of Schlesinger and Collingwood (along with drummer Brian Young and guitarist Jody Porter) who have reinvented the witty pop song with ditties like "Radiation Vibe" and "Sink to the Bottom." On his own, Schlesinger crafted the title track for Tom Hanks' recent directorial debut "That Thing You Do," a '60s style rock 'n' roll tune that landed him an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song. For the band, the sudden acclaim was somewhat of a mixed blessing. "It was a positive and a negative thing," Collingwood said. "Obviously, we got a lot more attention for the band as a result of our association with that, but unfortunately, it also made everyone think that Adam was the leader of this band and that he wrote all the songs on our record. We were offered to play the song at the Oscars, but I said no."

Instead, as any Fountains of Wayne fan would note, the song was performed not by the band, not by the actors from the movie, but by, well, as Collingwood himself said, "Who the hell knows who performed it! They were lip-synching. They were imitating the people in the movie and the voice wasn't even Mike (Viola, the actor who sang 'That Thing You Do' in the movie). They got somebody to impersonate him. Everyone's reaction has been like, 'This is the strangest thing.' They changed the whole song around and put in a 12-bar section so they could do their little do-wop dance. It was surreal to me."

Fortunately for Fountains of Wayne, a band named after a garden-statuary store in Wayne, N.J., its own success has been a little less surreal, though no less momentous, given its difficult beginnings. "I was living in Boston and we had, the first time around, made an album for an independent label in New York," Collingwood explained. "They refused to put our record out and tried to keep us from ever being able to record, so we were involved in a legal battle for three or four years. At the end of that, I moved down to New York, knowing fully that we were going to try and work together."

And work together they did. Schlesinger and Collingwood joined forces to make a self-titled debut that had them spending only one week writing the songs and one week recording them for the album.

Recently, the band was on tour opening for The Smashing Pumpkins, despite the two bands' different sounds. According to Collingwood, this phenomenon was due primarily to Fountains of Wayne's choice of record labels.

"Our record's on Scratchie Records in conjunction with Atlantic, and James (Iha) and D'Arcy (of The Smashing Pumpkins) are partners in Scratchie. I don't know if I'd do it again, but it was definitely a good experience. Our first big tour."

The band's good time has proven its worth, as now it has been invited to the UK for several spring festivals that should prove to draw an even larger audience than its Smashing Pumpkins dates. Until then, Fountains of Wayne will be touring as headliners.

Fortunately for audiences, there will most definitely be another album to chat about in the future. For now though, Fountains of Wayne's bassist is only looking at the immediate future, including Sunday night's show at St. Andrew's Hall.

"We're not thinking about the playoffs right now," Collingwood said. "We just want to go out there and give 110 percent. Win one game at a time, one show at a time."
Fountains' Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood will play in Detroit on Sunday.

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