The Smiley Smile Message Board

This isn't strictly Beach Boys related, but I feel like this is a decent arena to mention this.

I just became re-aware of the documentary done about the musicians on the Motown tracks, called "Standing in the shadows of Motown".

There are also two soundtrack albums for it.  The soundtrack features instrumental "stack-o-track" type mixes of Motown hits.

So, I think that somebody (I, thus the ill-fated nature of it) should make a documentary about the "Wrecking Crew".  True, there were so many of them that it's harder to tell their story as a singular entity, but I think it could be done.  Where Motown was a story of locals making something of themselves, The Wrecking Crew story could almost be presented as some sort of microcosm of the american dream itself; the players represent a melting pot of people.  A lot of them were from the midwest, or the plains for instance.

Then of course, the soundtrack album could be incredible.  Instrumental versions of Beach Boys, Mamas and Papas, Sinatra, maybe some Movie Soundtrack stuff, Jan and Dean, and many many more.

What do you guys think?  Commercially viable?

Go for it man, and if you finish it and get it released, you can be sure that I'll buy a few copies.    :)

Sounds like a lot of money for production. You may have to scare up some backers to get the job done right, and distributed correctly. I would love it, and could not think of a better topic to keep my attention. Make it 90 min and I may even see it on PBS, and DVD

As far as I know, there may be a couple of documentaries about the "Wrecking Crew" already in the works, projects that have been in production for years now.  I secured a Brian interview for someone who was filming one a few years back.

But it's got to be an awfully hard project to sell to a network or distributor since so few people out there in TV land even know what "the Wrecking Crew" means.  And if there are going to be any songs in such a film, the sync licensing costs alone will be astronomical, since we're talking about very popular songs - and unlike a Motown project which would have had the support of Motown itself, publishing and master recordings of songs played by the Wrecking Crew aren't controlled by any one company.  Sadly,  the costs of licensing music have risen exponentially in the last few years as all of these record and publishing companies keep getting swallowed up in merger after merger.

You know Alan...I've recently gained a whole new appreciation of the "sync license". They are a beautiful thing for old washed up musicians like myself.

Yeah, good points.  It was rather convienient that Motown was just one label, (unbelievable that one label could turn out such consistently good stuff) that makes everything much easier.  Too bad the Motown CD didn't have instrumental mixes of any LA motown stuff.

I'd like to see a Nashville A-team thing, too.  

Probably not the least bit commercially viable, for all the reasons mentioned above, but man - that would be a fascinating project!

Straight to DVD, sold via the internet, could sell a decent amount.

Speaking of the Funk Brothers 2 disc soundtrack, I am listening to it right now.  The backing tracks are brilliant!

Enough to pay for all the sync lisencing?  Not so sure about that...i think that costs a nyitload of money...

The most interesting thing about SITSOM was that it was about musicians that hardly anyone knows, even though they played on hundreds of top 40 hits.

The same thing goes for the Wrecking Crew. If they'd make a documentary about them, advertise it as some sort of 'follow up' to SITSOM, mention the number of hit songs they played on and do some name dropping, I think it could be just as big a hit as SITSOM.