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Adam Schlesinger, Fountains of Wayne, and Me

Ah shit.

That was my first reaction when my friend Dave texted me the news yesterday that Adam Schlesinger had died after contracting COVID-19. .

Though he had a wide and varied career as a film/TV/theater composer (That Thing You Do and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend ) and worked as a producer (weirdly often, it was with artists I already loved such as They Might Be Giants, The Monkees, and Motion City Soundtrack), for me the beginning and end will always be Fountains of Wayne.

I was hip to them almost from the start. Their first album came out in the fall of 1996, when I was a sophomore in college. I'd gotten a job at the campus radio station, which gave me access to a vast library of promotional CDs. Most of these went ignored, as the program manager had very narrow tastes (basically if it wasn't in top 10 on the CMJ charts he didn't touch it). I must have read about Fountains of Wayne in a magazine, and doubtless said magazine used the magic words "power pop" because I s…
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2019 In Review

It's that certain time of year when everyone starts naming "the best" things from the past 12 months.

I used quotations because of course best is a subjective concept, and even where there's critical consensus it's often a case of monkey-see-monkey-do. So end-of-year (or end-of-decade) lists are not any definitive mark of quality. 
Then why make one? Well, mostly I like having an archive to look back on. But more broadly, end-of-year lists are a great way to discover something new. Especially now that music is so easy to access - via YouTube or a streaming service - you can give an album a full listen without paying for it directly. You no longer have to buy blindly, or make a judgement call based on a series of 30-second clips or after standing at a listening booth in a record store for an uncomfortable amount of time (like I used to do). 
So, here are the albums I enjoyed the most in 2019:
Get Up Kids - Problems Carly Rae Jepsen - Dedicated Jimmy Eat World - Su…
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Catching Up: 2013 - 2018

Once upon a time one of my favorite things to do on this blog was to unveil my end-of-the-year top ten. It started off as a complicated affair with multiple categories. As time went on it simplified, later becoming not a top ten but a modest list of albums I was happy to have spent my money on. As my attention moved away from the blog, I stopped the tradition altogether. I haven't posted - or even made - a year-end list since 2012. I also used to post the artwork and tracklist for my annual year-end mix, and I have also been remiss in that for the past six years.

So, in an attempt to make up for lost time, here's are some freshly-prepared year-end lists and a cataloging of the mixes I made each year.

2013
Jimmy Eat World - Damage
Pearl Jam - Lightning Bolt
Tegan and Sara - Heartthrob
Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires of the City

mix:
1) Jimmy Eat World - "I Will Steal You Back"
2) Ra Ra Riot - "That Much"
3) Divine Fits - "Chained to Love"
4) Regin…
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The Summer of Speedwagon: A Final Reflection

Summer ends Monday, and thus ends my summer REO Speedwagon. As follows are a few stray and summary thoughts about the band.

-Despite their tumultuous history, the band have a very clean discography. Everyone who's gotten obsessive about a group knows the pain and pleasure of hunting down that rare soundtrack appearance, b-side, or solo album. Outside of The Goonies, REO didn't do original songs to soundtracks, and they have no non-album b-sides. They also didn't do solo albums or side projects. And though they clearly had the talent for it, they didn't produce or write for other artists or even really do guest appearances. Kevin Cronin did exactly one solo song, on the soundtrack for the 1989 film Sing. He sang backup on Survivor's 1983 album Caught in the Game, and on one song on Richard Marx's 1989 Repeat Offender album. Gary Richrath co-wrote a song on a Darlene Love album. In 1983 Alan Gratzer played with Eddie Van Halen on Queen guitarist Brian May's S…
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Since You're Gone: A Ric Ocasek Appreciation

Ric Ocasek passed away yesterday, and my heart sank when I saw the news. Don't know what you got 'til its gone and all that, but it's difficult to anticipate whose passing is going to affect you and how, and thinking about it too much is ghoulish anyway. The bottom line is that Ric Ocasek has had an outsize impact on the development of my music fandom, and I hadn't truly reflected on that fact until today.

Like my fellow Gen-Xers, I grew up hearing Cars songs as part of the tapestry of everyday life. "Magic" at the waterpark, "Moving in Stereo" in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, "Drive" on a car ride at night (how perfect!), "You Might Think" and "Just What I Needed" at the mall or mini-golf course. I knew all the songs but couldn't name the band.

Freshman year of college I conducted an intensive self-education in pop music that started with greatest hits albums by "important" bands. During a rare trip to th…
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REO Speedwagon: Find Your Own Way Home (2007)

Where We Left Off:
REO Speedwagon's 1996 album Building the Bridge was their first album not to chart since 1972's R.E.O./T.W.O.. But their appeal as a live concert draw continued to grow, especially as nostalgia for the 1970s and 1980s built.

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Though 11 years between albums certainly seems egregious, REO did release some new music during that span. The 1999 Epic compilation The Ballads featured two new love songs, "Just For You" (written by Kevin Cronin with Jim Peterik from Survivor) and "Til the River Runs Dry" (by Cronin and singer-songwriter Jimmy Scott).

But it would be another 8 years before new REO music appeared on the shelves. According to Cronin, a 2000 tour with Styx - specifically seeing a new generation of fans singing along with the old songs - lit a fire under the band to start working up new material again.

The result was Find Your Own Way Home, which came out in April 2007. The band self-released the record, and cut a deal with XM Satelli…
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REO Speedwagon: Building the Bridge (1996)

Where We Left Off:
REO Speedwagon, like so many '80s arena rock giants, got chopped up by the early 1990s alternative buzzsaw. Their 1990 album The Earth, a Small Man, His Dog, and a Chicken was their worst-performing release in more than a decade. After sticking with the band for two rollercoaster decades, Epic dropped them.

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With no label, REO Speedwagon essentially started over in the early 1990s. After a hiatus during which guitarist Dave Amato toured with Cher and Richie Sambora, the band began taking gigs wherever they could get them. They went back to playing clubs and fairs, trying to win fans one show at a time the way they had in the early 1970s. It wasn't easy, and there were times when the future of the band was in serious doubt, but eventually it started to work.

Granted, they weren't so much adding new fans as they were reminding older ones they were still around. As singer Kevin Cronin put it in a 1996 interview with the Orange County Register, "The fa…
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