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Grammy Award-winner Adam Schlesinger died on April 1 of complications from COVID-19. The singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist gained fame for his work as a member of power pop band Fountains of Wayne, indie pop combo Ivy and other projects. He also wrote music for other artists and for television and films. Among his most celebrated compositions is the theme song for the 1996 comedy-drama That Thing You Do!<\/i><\/p>\n
Three weeks after his passing at age 52, the three surviving members of Fountains of Wayne \u2013 Chris Collingwood, Jody Porter and Brian Young \u2013 reunited for a livestream musical tribute to Schlesinger, a charity event to raise funds for the New Jersey Pandemic Relief Fund.<\/p>\n
Another tribute\/fundraising project in Schlesinger’s memory is the various-artists set Saving for a Custom Van<\/i>. Released by Bay Area label Father\/Daughter Records, the album features 31 artists turning in their own versions of songs written and\/or performed by Schlesinger.<\/p>\n
Saving for a Custom Van<\/i> is an eclectic set, one that demonstrates the wide stylistic breadth of Schlesinger’s creative output. And the featured artists \u2013 an equally diverse lot \u2013 dig into the material in a variety of ways. Tanya Donnelly and Gail Greenwood cover Ivy\u2019s \u201cUndertow\u201d in an arrangement almost identical to the original. Kindred musical spirits Nada Surf deliver a chiming, memorable cover of \u201cSick Day\u201d that \u2013 unsurprisingly \u2013 sounds more like Fountains of Wayne than anything else on the album.<\/p>\n
The recordings that stray the farthest from the originals tend to be the most interesting. Rachel Bloom\u2019s \u201cStacy\u2019s Mom\u201d mines the singer-songwriterly character within the Schlesinger-Collingwood composition. And while it\u2019s somewhat faithful to the original, Ethan Eubanks\u2019 reading of \u201cTroubled Times\u201d does the same for that song.<\/p>\n
Los Angeles pop group Cheekface gamely assumes the thankless task of covering \u201cThat Thing You Do!\u201d a song that arguably cannot be improved upon. Still, their slightly pop-punk arrangement isn\u2019t an embarrassment. Somewhat unexpectedly, FoW guitarist Porter tackles an Ivy tune, \u201cFour in the Morning.\u201d He gives the song a more expansive, atmospheric feel; it\u2019s one of the best tracks on the tribute release.<\/p>\n
Intentionally or not, a melancholy feeling pervades most of the tracks \u2013 even the upbeat ones \u2013 but that makes sense when the music is made by friends, associates and fans of the greatly missed musician.<\/p>\n
All proceeds from the release go to MusiCares\u2019 COVID-19 Relief Fund, an initiative designed to help those in the music community contend with the pandemic crisis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Grammy Award-winner Adam Schlesinger died on April 1 of complications from COVID-19. The singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist gained fame for his work as a member of power pop band Fountains […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19149,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,62,65],"tags":[128,852],"class_list":["post-19148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-release","category-rawk","category-review","tag-adam-schlesinger","tag-fountains-of-wayne","cat-49-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19148"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19150,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19148\/revisions\/19150"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}