The Wrecking Crew - A documentary movie about the musicians who played the soundtrack of our lives wants your help.
They played on well over 10,000 hit recordings and countless 'album cuts' of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. People like Plas Johnson, Leon Russell, Hal Blaine, Tommy Tedesco, Carol Kaye, Glen Campbell and others played the music that backed The Beach Boys, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Sinatra, Sonny and Cher, Jan & Dean, The Monkees, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, Mamas and Papas, 5th Dimension, Tijuana Brass, Ricky Nelson, Elvis Presley, Johnny Rivers and Phil Spector's Wall of Sound and that's just a few!
The Wrecking Crew is a documentary movie that is already finished about these unsung heroes. Paying for the royalties to use the music clips and the AFofM to pay the musicians is the last hurdle. It's gotten awards at film festivals, but commercial movie theaters can't show the film until this last bill has been paid.
Tommy Tedesco's son Denny is producing the film, and to pay the last bit of royalties he is starting a Kickstarter campaign. I'm not a Kickstarter denizen, and this is only the second project I've backed. I'm getting the DVD and another bonus extra for my donation. I think there are many people like me who would love to own this DVD so I'm sharing it.
If you want to watch the trailer, and perhaps back the project, go to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wreckingcrew/the-wrecking-crew-doc-untold-story-of-rock-and-rol or the official Wrecking Crew site http://wreckingcrew.tv/ for even more info - it's worth the visit even if you have no intention of buying the DVD.
Insights and incites by Notes
Bob "Notes" Norton
Owner, Norton Music http://www.nortonmusic.com Add-on Styles for Band-in-a-Box and Microsoft SongSmith
The Sophisticats http://www.s-cats.com >^. .^< >^. .^<
Definitely something I'd pay to watch. I was going to add, it'd be nice if there was a movie about the "Funk Brothers" who played on those classic Motown tracks way back in the 60's.... but I believe there is a documentary about them already, "Standing in the Shadows of Motown." Nevertheless, it's hard to find - surely some film-maker grew up loving those old Motown hits?
C'mon, Spielberg, get your finger out!
:D :D :D
Vic
"Sometimes the beauty of music can help us all find strength to deal with all the curves life can throw us." (D. Hodge.)
I saw the Funk Brothers movie and it was good.
Our band was being courted by Motown back in the late 1960s (until our management and Motown couldn't agree on the money part) and I met these people. They weren't called the Funk Brothers back then, they had no name, they were just the first call studio musicians. But we humans need to name things to identify them, and the Funk Brothers wasn't a bad choice.
At the time we were the warm-up band for a number of headliner acts in this new thing called a "Rock Concert". We did The Four Seasons, Kingsmen, Association, some of the Motown acts, and more. It was an exciting time in my life. Watching the "Standing In The Shadows Of Motown" movie was a bit bittersweet for me, since I was almost a star, but the enjoyment was definitely more than the tinge of disappointment of that turn in my life.
Being in cover bands back "in the day" when that is what most bands did, I've had to learn the parts that the studio musicians of the day spontaneously came up with during those sessions. So the spontaneous thoughts in their brains became part of my musical vocabulary.
During the "Wrecking Crew" days (we never had a name for them either) the sheet music wasn't sold when the hits came out either, so everything was learned by ear. This makes you study the parts more closely than if you just read them off the sheet and you memorize as you are learning. And that embeds the parts deeper in the brain so you find yourself playing variations of those parts in your own improvisations.
That puts the studio musician in the role of entertainer and teacher.
I think that is a good profession.
I've put my money into the Wrecking Crew kickstarter fund, and I do hope enough other people do so that the DVD release becomes a reality and the movie plays local theaters.
Notes
Bob "Notes" Norton
Owner, Norton Music http://www.nortonmusic.com Add-on Styles for Band-in-a-Box and Microsoft SongSmith
The Sophisticats http://www.s-cats.com >^. .^< >^. .^<
