There’s hardly any such thing as a perfect concert for a fan. The setlist is never exactly what you want, or the band isn’t quite in the best mood.
Today’s Fountains of Wayne concert came pretty darned close. Okay, they didn’t play everything I wanted to hear. In fact, I ran into Chris Collingswood and Adam Schlesinger in the media tent beforehand, and offered them 10 bucks apiece if they’d play “Troubled Times,” quite possibly their best song and the one I always use to convert people into FoW fans. They didn’t bite, though, claiming it wasn’t exactly festival material. I upped the offer to 15 bucks American. No dice.
But otherwise, the show was nearly perfect. The band seemed pleasantly surprised that so many people at a historically jammy festival was into their pop sound. They ran through a fantastic setlist, with highlights like “I’ve Got a Flair” and “No Better Place,” “Hackensack” and “Hey Julie.” And of course, they played their megahit from a couple years back, “Stacy’s Mom.”

Some people don’t quite get how wonderful Fountains of Wayne are. It’s easy, if you aren’t listenting closely, to dismiss them as a novelty act, to call their songs simple and straightforward. But if you listen closer, you get that the songs are much deeper than they seem, reflecting little slices of everyday life in penetrating ways.
And god, the melodies. Those gorgeous melodies, so sweet and beautiful. I’m guessing Collingswood and Schlesinger dream in melody. Their hooks, both subtle and obvious, will stick in your head for days, popping out in the most unexpected places.
So they didn’t play “Troubled Times.” It was still a nearly perfect show.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 16th, 2007 at 11:32 pm and is filed under Online. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.