A Song That Feels Like Warm Summer Days

I am of an age where, when I hear the name Stan Getz, the famous jazz saxophonist, I think immediately of the exchange in That Thing You Do! in which while the Wonders are interviewed at KJZZ, a jazz radio station in southern California, Skitch Patterson begins to talk excitedly about the music that reallyContinue reading “A Song That Feels Like Warm Summer Days”

On Tom Hanks Goodness

Mark your calendars. 27 March 2007. The That Thing You Do! Director’s Cut. One hundred, fifty-five minutes. A full hour longer than the theatrical release. Score! That Thing You Do! is the story of the Erie, Pennsylvania band, the Wonders (sometimes spelled “Oneders”) and their meteoric rise and very sudden fall from the pop chartsContinue reading “On Tom Hanks Goodness”

On the Really Stupid Things

One of the top searches bringing people to the website this month is, I kid you not, “Oneders of the World.” What the frell are people trying to find? The Oneders are, as everyone knows, the Erie band that’s the focus of Tom Hanks’ film That Thing You Do!. If it’s “Wonders of the World”Continue reading “On the Really Stupid Things”

December’s Greatest Hits

The top fifteen reasons people checked out allyngibson.com in the month of December. 15. “John Lennon atheist.” I wouldn’t call Lennon an atheist, per se, but he certainly had his issues with organized religion. Witness this quote–“Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I am right, and have been proven right. We’re bigger thanContinue reading “December’s Greatest Hits”

That Thing You Do!

I was arranging my CD collection recently and came across the soundtrack album for Tom Hanks’ 1996 film, That Thing You Do! TTYD! tells the story of the Wonders, sometimes spelling Oneders, pronounced o-Need-ers, an Erie, Pennsylvania garage band of 1964 who write a hit song, hit the big time, and then break up. TheContinue reading “That Thing You Do!”