Fountains of Wayne concert review

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Fountains of Wayne concert review

Band: Fountains of Wayne

Venue: The Vic - Chicago, Illinois

Date: November 19, 2003

Somewhere in America is a place where the sky is always a crisp blue, the temperature is always a comfortable 72 degrees, kids play baseball in grassy fields until their bedtimes pass, and every happy suburbanite’s favorite band is Fountains of Wayne.

Okay, so maybe such a utopia is a bit of a fantasy, but Fountains of Wayne like to imagine such a perpetually innocent community can coexist with darker emotional traumas.

The New York power pop group’s performance at the Vic on Nov. 19 was a testament to human harmony, told through sha-la-la melodies, sharp lead guitar lines, and spacey keyboards to a big, beautiful culturally integrated audience.

In fact, twice during the show, the house lights were turned up so lead singer/rhythm guitarist Chris Collingwood could marvel at the shaggy-haired hipsters standing next to the junior high school girls in pink babydoll tees standing next to the graying middle-age husband and wife.

After seven long years of unmerited commercial indifference to their music, FOW were greeted with the warm reception they’ve deserved since their near-classic self-titled debut, undeniably the result of a new album stuffed with an almost inhuman amount of charm called “Welcome Interstate Managers” and better marketing strategies.

Peppy guitar driven nuggets like “Denise” and “Stacy’s Mom” integrated with touching downbeat ditties like “Hackensack” and “Sick Day” left fans and reluctant tagalongs alike whimsically dancing and nodding their heads like they were in love with their best friend’s girl while mom and dad were rolling on the couch circa 1978.

And that charm that highlights “Welcome Interstate Managers” along with all their best material certainly worked in FOW’s favor that night, with Collingwood and bassist Adam Schlesinger trading tour anecdotes between songs.

“We played Rockford last night,” Collingwood said to the audience, “and I was trying to think of something funny to say. So I said, ‘Hello, Rock and roll-ford! Are you ready to make some Illi-noise?’ And there was complete silence.”

Schlesinger, in turn introduced the next number with a similar self-deprecating tale.

“We recently played on The Sharon Osbourne Show,” he said. “We’re not really sure why. So here’s ‘She’s Got a Problem.’”

Such dry, biting humor is exactly what cut through to the forefront of FOW’s songs, interrupting every ticket holder’s singing with the reward of a slight chuckle or big goofy grin.

For every lonesome lyric as, “I will wait for you/As long as I need to/And if you ever get back to Hackensack/I’ll be here for you,” there was a counter of, “I saw you talking to Christopher Walken/On my TV screen,” sprinkling a potent dose of absurdity on the monotonous details of day to day life.

But if the Fountains performance had simply been an exercise in kitschy pop culture trivia and emotional irony, it would not have succeeded in being the cross-cultural, cross-generational union it was.

The fact remains that these guys carried their new wave geekiness with the confidence of veteran arena rockers. Collingwood used his nasal-y croon forcefully, alternating between soulful strains and nimble, airy falsettos, while lead guitarist Jody Porter’s liquid fingers tore into each song’s inescapable hook with glee.

The band dug through each of its three studio albums with equal fervency, never once allowing their performance to become a shameless plug for “Welcome Interstate Managers.” “Red Dragon Tattoo,” the summery ode to getting branded for a girl from 1999’s “Utopia Pkwy.” sat nicely alongside the pulsing indie rock of “Sink to the Bottom” from their 1996 debut.

Fountains of Wayne also managed to pull off possibly the first-ever objective in-joke by sabotaging “Radiation Vibe” – still, unquestionably, the catchiest song ever written – to break into a medley of Foreigner’s “Double Vision,” The White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army,” and Journey frontman Steve Perry’s “Oh Sherrie,” simultaneously alienating both the young trendsetters and baby boomers.

Two, count ’em, two encores yielded more of what the audience had developed a weakness for over the evening – no-frills pop songs, specifically the hopeful, delicate “Troubled Times,” the ridiculous, yet catchy “Leave the Biker,” a faithful cover of Electric Light Orchestra’s “Can’t Get it Out of My Head,” and the almost-psychedelic, “Go Hippie.”

Openers and local boys Caviar accomplished the amazing feat of making it through an entire hour-long set by simply force-feeding the crowd recycled Cheap Trick, Who, Pixies, Pavement, and, um, Peter Frampton, songs and consequently failed to transcend their influences.

On the bright side, though, Caviar did warm up the anxious, swelling crowd with round after round of the kind of cheesy male do-do-do harmonies FOW specialize in and some tongue in cheek humor that involved a band member’s birthday and a cigarette-smoking butler.

The evening, however, belonged solely to Fountains of Wayne and their notion that pop songs needn’t be mindless or delivered by a silicon-injected, scantily-clad female to reach an audience. For 90 minutes, that dimly-lit theater was Fountains of Wayne’s utopia.

By: Jeff Danna - Contributing Writer