FOUNTAINS of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger isn’t an athlete by any stretch of the imagination. “I’m 100 percent against all type of exercise,” he declares.
That’s likely par for the course for many rockers, but it’s notable here because the power pop darlings, formed in New York in 1996, will shower runners with their sunny pop sound along the five-mile course during Nike’s Run Hit Wonder race on Wednesday evening in Central Park.
“People should just sit still,” continues Schlesinger. “Nike should have a shoe for that – shoes you can easily kick off.”
He may not qualify as a runner, but as a rocker, he and Fountains of Wayne qualify as one-hit wonders for “Stacy’s Mom,” 2004’s surprise smash from the group’s third album “Welcome Interstate Managers.”
Along with FOW, other one-, two- and three-hit wonders Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, the Donnas, Chingy and Nina Skye, will entertain the sold-out event’s 10,000 runners.
“It’s going to be a very silly day. Maybe we can just do the Doppler effect when people run by,” he says, demonstrating a vroom-type noise, resembling a car going around a racetrack.
Songwriting partners Schlesinger, a bass player, who was raised in Montclair, N.J., and singer/guitarist Chris Collingwood, who grew up in rural Pennsylvania, met in 1986 at Williams College in Massachusetts, and have had a career worthy of a Coney Island Cyclone ride.
Signed to a major label, Atlantic, but dropped after their 1999 release “Utopia Parkway,” for not being mega-sellers like labelmates Stone Temple Pilots and Hootie and the Blowfish,
the group, a foursome, didn’t release an album for five years. When FOW finally introduced “Welcome Interstate Managers” – on S-Curve, an EMI imprint – they didn’t think any one would notice, but the catchy “Stacy’s Mom,” inspired by a friend who had a crush on a pal’s grandmother, heated up the charts, boosted by the steamy video featuring Rod Stewart-ex Rachel Hunter as the hot mom.
FOW, named after a New Jersey garden-ornament store, followed up their sleeper hit with “Out-of-State Plates,” a collection of B-sides, live tracks, a parody of Oasis (“Elevator Up”) as well as two new tracks (“Maureen” and “The Girl I Can’t Forget”). They also include covers of songs by the varied likes of Electric Light Orchestra and Aztec Camera, as well as their widely bootlegged version of Britney’s “… Baby One More Time,” which Schlesinger claims isn’t a send-up, but a tribute. “We just really liked Britney’s songs when it first came out,” he says.
Before the Run Hit Wonder on Wednesday, the band will perform at another sports event – a benefit in Fenway Park after the Yankees-Red Sox games.
“I’ll be rooting for the Yankees, thank you very much,” Schlesinger says.
