Forgotten Music: That Thing You Do Soundtrack

Making a movie set in a particular time period and using actual music from that era to help capture the feelings of the period is one thing, and I suppose like everything else about filmmaking, it can be a challenge to do it right. But it seems to me that coming up with new music that sounds just like it really is from another era would be even more difficult. That’s exactly what Tom Hanks and a number of collaborators did with the music for the movie THAT THING YOU DO, which was also written and directed by Hanks.

Set in the early 1960s, the songs from THAT THING YOU DO are a near-perfect blend of the musical styles from that era. The soundtrack begins with the Mitch Miller-like “Loving You Lots and Lots”, then follows up with the title song and several others performed by the fictional group from the movie, The Wonders. “Mr. Downtown” is a jazzy, noirish tune reminiscent of the theme from PETER GUNN, while “Hold My Hand, Hold My Heart” sounds like it could have been performed by any number of girl groups from that era. “Voyage Around the Moon” captures the same instrumental sound as “Telstar” and other hits inspired by the Space Age. “My World is Over” is a sad ballad, “Drive Faster” a hot rod song, and “Shrimp Shack” another instrumental from a fictional beach movie within the movie. (I can imagine Candy Johnson shimmying to “Shrimp Shack” without any problem.) The soundtrack wraps up with a long, smoky piano jazz song and a “live” reprise of the title song.

“That Thing You Do”, the song, was written by Adam Schlesinger from one of my favorite groups, Fountains of Wayne, and in fact to me The Wonders sound a lot like Fountains of Wayne.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost fifteen years since THAT THING YOU DO came out. It’s a fine film, and the soundtrack does a beautiful job of capturing the era in which it’s set. And it’s just great fun to listen to, especially if you lived through those days and heard songs like these all the time.

More Outlaw Country

A couple of classics: Ray Wylie Hubbard's "Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother" and Gary P. Nunn's "London Homesick Blues" (sometimes known as "Home With the Armadillo"). I bellowed out these songs many a time while running around with friends in the Seventies.

Forgotten Music: Michael Murphy and Steve Fromholz

I've never been a big concert-goer. Back in the Seventies, though, when I was going to college in Denton, I went to a few shows on campus since they were free. I saw Willie Nelson a couple of times that way. But the best concert I attended there featured Michael Murphey and Steve Fromholz, who at the time were part of the so-called "outlaw country" movement of singer/songwriters in Texas. Murphey is better known now as Michael Martin Murphey and does a lot of traditional Western music (much different from "country and western" music, which is often really neither of those things). Fromholz, who was also part of a duo known as Frummox with Dan McCrimmon, never became well-known, although he appeared as an actor in at least one movie starring Willie Nelson. He was also the official Poet Laureate of Texas at one time. I have no idea what he's doing now.

He and Michael Murphey were both great at that concert, and I had a fine time. "Texas Trilogy" is probably Fromholz's best song, although I'm also fond of a humorous tune called "Rest Area Waltz". My friend Leland DeBusk was at that concert with me and became a big Fromholz fan, even learning to play "Texas Trilogy" on the guitar. And Murphy's "Cosmic Cowboy" really sums up the era. Leland could play that one, too. He's gone now, bless his heart, but the music's still here and makes me think of him. "Ridin' the range and actin' strange . . ." Good stuff from 'way back when.