MovieChat Forums > The Wrecking Crew! (2015) Discussion > What I Learned...

What I Learned...

posted 9 years ago by urbanspaceman
5 replies | jump to latest

I thoroughly enjoyed this film, didn't want it to be over. I am 63 and it's truly the music of my life. Some stuff I already knew but I learned a lot.
1. I'd love to know who refused to be associated with this. There's always someone. I noticed that Hal Blaine didn't mention The Carpenters
2. Dick Clark isn't to be trusted. Did he really expect us to believe that he didn't know about studio musicians until he saw their names on Monkees albums? Is this the same Dick Clark who once said that the reason that American Bandstand didn't have live bands was because they feared problems with the local union? What a crock!
3. Al Jardine hasn't changed a bit. At least he didn't claim credit for Brian Wilson's decision to use the Crew in the studio.

I see it's on Blu-Ray in a couple months. I'm in.

[–] eeleyebrown 9 years ago

It's on Netflix now. Great movie.

I find it ironic that all of these documentaries on unheralded studio musicians of all of these great hit records from 50 years ago, are being released and newly discovered by an unsuspecting audience at a time when music is increasingly being manufactured by machines and computers instead of musicians. I'm a musician and I've been in sessions where I had to play along with a laptop computer. Then later they took my guitar parts and chopped them up and only used about 1/16 of what I actually played and looped it. In fact, they took my eight bar guitar solo and edited and rearranged the notes. The computer guy was actually playing my guitar sample like it was an instrument.

[–] Maxamillionmovies 9 years ago

eeleyebrown - What you describe is what I think has been lost by a great deal of the younger musicians who are recording music today. So much of the magic was simply people playing TOGETHER. The spark of an inspiration in real time here, an answer to a riff there. Even "mistakes" or an offhand comment or a unique solution to a problem could be the thing that just set a tune off. It's hard for that to happen when playing to a click track and then a stack of player tracks with only one person playing at a time.

[–] satmfs2 9 years ago

I'm a musician and I've been in sessions where I had to play along with a laptop computer.

I can do you one better!

I played in a band the had the bass and keyboards programmed with a sequencer and the drums were played by a drum machine midi'ed into the sequencer. Meanwhile, the "real" drummer played an electric drum set that wasn't plugged into anything and the bass player played through a bass amp head that was turned on, but wasn't plugged into the speaker cabinet. The only two of the four of us actually playing instruments plugged into working amps were the lead singer's acoustic guitar and me and my guitars.

Oh...and we had no keyboard player on stage.

It get's better!

To show you how little people pay attention to live bar bands, we played quite a bit at this one particular bar. At least one weekend and some weekdays a few times every month. The drummer with the unplugged electric set was only able to "play" on weekends. The weekdays, we did the gigs without him, only the 3 of us. No one noticed, or ever asked us where the drummer was. Didn't ask us about the keyboard player either.

It was during my time with that band I lost the will to play!

[–] eeleyebrown 8 years ago

I can do you one better!

I played in a band the had the bass and keyboards programmed with a sequencer and the drums were played by a drum machine midi'ed into the sequencer. Meanwhile, the "real" drummer played an electric drum set that wasn't plugged into anything and the bass player played through a bass amp head that was turned on, but wasn't plugged into the speaker cabinet. The only two of the four of us actually playing instruments plugged into working amps were the lead singer's acoustic guitar and me and my guitars.

Oh...and we had no keyboard player on stage.

It get's better!

To show you how little people pay attention to live bar bands, we played quite a bit at this one particular bar. At least one weekend and some weekdays a few times every month. The drummer with the unplugged electric set was only able to "play" on weekends. The weekdays, we did the gigs without him, only the 3 of us. No one noticed, or ever asked us where the drummer was. Didn't ask us about the keyboard player either.

It was during my time with that band I lost the will to play!

Yeah I hear you on that. I play with a keyboardist who has so many gadgets and features, he could do the show without a drummer and bassist. It's a good thing guitar is still considered a must on stage and isn't so easily emulated but I'm sure the fine folks at KORG and YAMAHA are diligently working on a way to get me off stage as well. .

[–] eeleyebrown 8 years ago

eeleyebrown - What you describe is what I think has been lost by a great deal of the younger musicians who are recording music today. So much of the magic was simply people playing TOGETHER. The spark of an inspiration in real time here, an answer to a riff there. Even "mistakes" or an offhand comment or a unique solution to a problem could be the thing that just set a tune off. It's hard for that to happen when playing to a click track and then a stack of player tracks with only one person playing at a time.

The general public has been placated into thinking that this dumbed down "art form" of music today is the best thing ever. It's not their fault. Technology and the record companies have allowed things like sampling and dj culture to take the place of real live music creativity. Millennials think musicians are just people they see playing on the street for change. Or standing in the rear of the stage behind Britney Spears and Kanye West. It doesn't even occur to them that it's real musicians who made all the music that the samplers are stealing from. I saw Ke$ha on SNL a few years ago and the band had to wear helmets totally covering their heads so they are barely even part of the show.

This has been pretty systematic since the early 80s. Bands have been becoming less and less important while the solo artist has been pushed to the front. It's nothing that new. Solo artists have been around since the dawn of pop music and rock and roll. But at least the bands were though of as being important. Today technology is the record companies' best friend. They don't need a live drummer or bass player. They dont even need half a band. All they need is a producer who can play guitar and keyboards and an engineer who can program a drum machine, or better yet, some guy with an ear for music who knows how to operate and manipulate music computer software. Add one young sex kitten (usually found working at Dairy Queen or Chipotle) or some teen idol-looking dude with cool hair, who can grace the cover of Tiger Beat and you're ready to make hit records. Record company doesn't care because they're spending less money and making 1000x what they're saving by not hiring real musicians.