There are a few things in life that are perfect. Most of them involve music.
The above thought occurred to me last week, after I watched the extraordinary musical Come From Away, a work of boundless spirit and emotional impact, an expression of relentless wonder from start to finish. Wonder. That also applies to a little motion picture called That Thing You Do!
That Thing You Do! opened in theaters 25 years ago this month. It's my all-time favorite movie, edging out my previous favorite flick A Hard Day's Night. Music and movies. It occurs to me that I first saw both films within about a mile of each other, the Beatles' film at the North Drive-In in Cicero, NY in 1964, and teen sensations the Wonders at Cicero Cinema 13 in 1996. The drive-in closed in the '80s, and is now (blasphemy!) the site of a Wal-Mart. Cicero Cinema 13 had just opened in September of 1996, and That Thing You Do! may have been the first of many films I saw there. It too faded into that great Bijou in the sky in 2005. The building that housed it is now part of a car dealership. Roll credits!
I never tire of That Thing You Do! The film is loaded with heart and ingenuity, performed by charismatic players, stacked with quotable lines, and propelled by an irresistible title song that was crafted by the late, great Adam Schlesinger. I have owned the movie on VHS, on DVD, a deluxe version on DVD, and a deluxe version on Blu-ray. If there had been a paperback novelization, I would have bought that, and I'm very open to the idea of buying books about the making of the movie. In the mean time, The Ringer recently posted a fabulous and detailed oral history of That Thing You Do!, which I recommend to anyone with an interest in Erie, PA's phenomenal fictional pop combo the Wonders.
And still, when I'm flipping channels on TV, if I happen upon That Thing You Do!, I watch it through to the end. Again. It's...snappy. Perfect wonder, every time.
There are a few things in life that are perfect. Most of them involve music. It's that thing we do. The wonder renews. This is what rock 'n' roll radio sounded like on a Sunday night in Syracuse this week.
IN TWO WEEKS: THIS IS ROCK 'N' ROLL RADIO # 1100!
This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read all about this show's long and weird history here: Boppin' The Whole Friggin' Planet (The History Of THIS IS ROCK 'N' ROLL RADIO).
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Fantastic!
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