The Witzard

Adam Schlesinger was a prolific musician, songwriter, composer, record producer, and co-owner of Stratosphere Sound . Unfortunately, Schelsinger passed away this past April due to complications from COVID-19 at 52 years of age. Adam Schlesinger was most notably, a founding member of Fountains of Wayne , as well as Fever High , Ivy, Rogue Oliphant , and Tinted Windows. Additionally, Schlesinger contributed to a number of soundtracks, including Crazy Ex-Girlfriend , Tom Hank's That Thing You Do! There's Something About Mary , Me, Myself & Irene, Josie & The Pussycats , Scary Movie, Fever Pitch , Orange County, and Two Weeks Notice . Adam Schlesinger even produced and mixed records for America , Dashboard Confessional, Fastball , Ben Lee, The Monkees , Motion City Soundtrack, Led Zeppelin 's Robert Plant , They Might Be Giants, The Verve Pipe , and more. Saving for a Custom Van by Rachel Bloom Since his passing, Fountains of Wayne reunited to perform "Stac...

A MIXTAPE FROM BEN LEE by BEN LEE "This album began as an exploration of songwriting. I decided to write songs for different voices, and invite these singers to perform them. My dear friend Sam Spiegel (Squeak E. Clean) offered to produced the record I had conceptualized, and we began working on the collaboration in earnest in 1998," Ben Lee recently wrote in a long-form message on his newly-launched Bandcamp page. A MIXTAPE FROM BEN LEE is more of a "mixtape" in the loose sense of the term; leaning more towards the direction of a 90's radio-to-cassette mix(ed)tape, rather than a modern-day Hip-Hop loosies promotional collection. Spiegel self-describes the 11-track project as "the first album that [he] ever produced over 10 years ago," which boasts vocal appearances from Zooey Deschanel , Empire of The Sun frontman Luke Steele, former The Bens bandmate Ben Folds , Sean Lennon, Azure Ray , The Cardigans songstress Nina Persson, and Gelbison , ...

While well-groomed "heart-throb" types like Justin Timberlake and Robin Thicke are busy concocting smooth baby-making Future R&B , lone scantily-clad showman Sean "Har Mar Superstar" Tillman 's bringing the Ron Jeremy to old school-sounding Soul-Funk/R&B . Har Mar Superstar 's been doing his thing for the past 10-15 years now and has toured or worked with a wide variety of underground/mainstream talent: Ben Lee , Fabrizio Moretti (The Strokes), Father John Misty , Britney Spears , Neon Neon , Beth Ditto, Jennifer Lopez , and Drew Barrymore. "Lady, You Shot Me" were supposedly crooner Sam Cooke 's last words, which now effectively doubles as Bye Bye 17 's lead single, of sorts. Julian Casablancas' newly-formed Cult Records quietly unleashed the 10-track album a little while back on April 23rd. Bye Bye 17 feels like Har Mar Superstar's first honest attempt @ some tried-and-true LEGIT R&B music and while I...

While they might sound like an unlikely pairing on paper, Ed Sheeran & Yelawolf actually have a whole lot more in common than you could ever even imagine. Surely "BIG" on their respective shores (England/Alabama), The Slumdon Bridge EP just might push these 2 up-and-comers into uncharted waters on either side of "The Pond." These new-found musical buddies wrote, recorded, and re-mixed 4 tracks over the course of 10 hours-worth of stashed studio time. A genuine mutual admiration really seems to exist between multi-instrumentalist and Redneck rapper . Early favourites from the painfully brief Slumdon Bridge EP include: "London Bridge" and "You Don't Know (For F*ck's Sake)." The best term that I can possibly begin to find to describe The Slumdon Bridge EP is "Alternative Hip-Hop;" Here, we have 4 home-grown, Down Country acoustic Hip-Hop jams - properly laced and flourished by Yelawolf 's very distinctively acce...