The Smiley Smile Message Board

Maybe I've managed to miss this (in which case, sorry), but the above-titled book will be published February 14th next year, written by Kent Hartman - 304 pages. Should be... interesting.

More interesting: I can't find anything out about Kent Hartman. I've been searching. Who is he?

Try harder - this took me, oh, 37 seconds to find:

"KENT HARTMAN is a longtime music industry entrepreneur who has worked with dozens of well-known artists, including Three Dog Night, Steppenwolf, Hall & Oates, Counting Crows, and Lyle Lovett. He has written for American Heritage, The Oregonian, and Portland Tribune. Hartman teaches marketing at Portland State University and for several years produced The Classic Comedy Break, a nationwide radio feature. He lives in Portland."

What's that?  I think I can hear Carol Kaye gnashing her teeth. . .

Well, we'll just have to see how good his research is.  I almost hope it's not very good to leave the door open for the magnificent collaborative coffee-table Denny Tedesco endorsed movie tie-in book that I hope to be involved in.

Saw the Wrecking Crew movie at a screening at the Regent Theatre in Arlington, Massachusetts not far from Boston.  It was awesome, attended by a large academic audience, with a talk both pre and post screening with Denny Tedesco.  Impressive archived photo and film clips as well as that fabulous corpus of music they worked on.  A not-to-be missed film.   

It was very well-received and seems to have made the rounds at various film festivals and has won about 30 prizes to date.  A film done from the heart! And, the audience knew all the words!  ;) 

Agreed, it's a great movie. Pity then that it perpetuates the myth that The Beach Boys didn't feature on most of their mid-sixties backing tracks :wall

Thankfully the investgative work of Craig Slowinski and Jon Stebbins debunks that myth, although it may take some time to undo the years of damage.

That is a really good point.  I think they were demonstrating that the studio time was so precious that if these session musicians were used, they would have fewer "takes" to record music, and, it sort of featured their personal journeys as versatile musicians, who  came to be in big demand when the West Coast music scene exploded; and the shift from the East Coast (New York) to the West.  I learned a lot from watching that film.  Of course, hearing the opening measures of California Girls, God Only Knows and Good Vibrations didn't hurt. 

But, that era included a whole spectrum of musicians alongside the Beach Boys, and it emphasized the dynamic of the Boys coming back from an exhausting road tour, and getting back into the studio to work on the vocals.  It would be almost superhuman and unrealistic, to expect musicians who just came back from touring to learn all that music flawlessly, to be record-worthy and time-efficient with studio time use.  I liked that it showed Brian working in the studio when the Boys were on the road.  People were blown away with the quality.  It was quick-moving and held the audience interest.  So cool !  ;)

Promo/review copy of the book arrived today - will peruse over Christmas.

I'm gonna buy that book!

OK, have given the book a thorough once-over. It's good news and bad news.

Good news is, it's an entertaining read with a lot of background info on individuals and it's arranged in a loosely chronological fashion, with the chapters centring on specific songs. The transition from the heydays of the sixties to the leaner days of the seventies is a sobering tale.

However...

The long-disproven canard of the Crew playing on almost all BB sessions is once more trotted out (one astonishing revelation has Ms Kaye flipping Brian the bird at the entirely vocal "HM,R" session interrupted by Murry after Brian made her play for so long), and while I'm no Jimmy Webb aficionado, even I could see the holes in the part where "MacArthur Park" was recorded in mid-May 1968, as one seamless piece of music, on a 16-track recorder and with Richard Harris adding his vocal at the same session (for them as is baffled - every single one of those claims is incorrect). It's the kind of thing that makes you wonder about the other stuff you're reading. Pity, as on the whole, it's an enjoyable read and, the preceding caveats aside, I'd recommend buying when it's published in February.

See? Right there. Automatically the author's cred is in question, and I'm instantly going to wonder about the authenticity of the rest of the information in the book. Carol only flipped the bird at Brian because he pushed her too hard and kept her there late on a Rhonda instrumental session. That's it! Why embelish it? Keep the vocal session with Murry separate, because it was! The author must be naive to think that readers who've been around the block a few times and know a few things about the Beach Boys might not read the book!

The Wrecking Crew film will be shown at 11 am at the NAMM (National American Music Merchants) convention this Sunday the 22nd in Anaheim, California.  Q and A after the the showing.  It should be quite  a 4 day convention and showing of the film.

Here would be a fine place to point out that the movie and the book are entirely separate projects, the only connection being the subject.

Is the book title accurate: 'Secret'? Nobody in America knows who the Crew were? That seems to be stretching the truth for the sake of a catchy title.

Is there a wrecking crew movie about to be aired on HBO?  Or am I thinking about Funk Bros.?  Or neither?

There's one covering both camps: "The Carol Kaye Story".

Shouldn't that be a "Lifetime Channel Original Movie"? ;D