Movie reviews: Two great rock docs (+ two more films)

First of all, two music documentaries, The Wrecking Crew and Muscle Shoals, both about the stories behind the music you see on stage or hear on a recording. And both great movies. (But then, you know I love rock docs.)

The Wrecking Crew, 2015, 100 minutes

The Wrecking Crew, directed by Denny Tedesco, is the glorious story of the session musicians who backed up many of the hits you love from the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s (even though you might have come to love that music only recently). The group of 20 or so musicians played in varying combinations behind the hits recorded by the Beach Boys, Herb Alpert, Sam Cooke, the Mamas and the Papas, the Crystals, the Ronettes, the Monkees and many more. They made Phil Spector’s famous Wall of Sound sound like a wall of sound.

The group dubbed The Wrecking Crew played on all these hits: “Be My Baby,” “California Girls,” “Strangers in the Night,” “Mrs. Robinson;” “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin,’“ “Up, Up and Away;” “Viva Las Vegas” and “Mr. Tambourine Man.” Six years in a row in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, the Grammy for Record of the Year went to Wrecking Crew member recordings.

Some of the musicians, like Glen Campbell, went on to perform in their own names and become famous. But most were talented musicians you never heard of, such as drummer Hall Blaine, tenor player Plas Johnson (you hear his saxophone on the theme song from The Pink Panther); guitarist Barney Kessel; pianist Don Randi; and electric bass player Carol Kaye.

And the late guitarist Tommy Tedesco, father of the director and the inspiration for the film. Tedesco senior was a fabulous musician and the film shows him in many stages of his life, playing many different kinds of music. Seeing how he earned his living (a very good living) as an almost-anonymous but essential musician, inspired his son to record the story of the Wrecking Crew, the name they gave themselves after people said they were wrecking the music business.

It was great to see Carol Kaye, known as one of the greatest bass players in the world at the time, in interviews and performance, both then and now. She said a lot of women were playing in jazz and music clubs in the late ‘50s and ‘60s. Sometimes she would play many gigs in one day. And she proves she still rocks in the solos she plays in the film.

Many of the musicians came out of jazz and learned to play rock and roll on the job. Rock and roll was a dirty word then, but there was little money to be made playing jazz.

The Wrecking Crew was a Los Angeles-based group. Up until then, the music business was considered to be based in New York in the iconic Brill Building. But the Wrecking Crew pulled the business west.

The film is made up of music clips from the time and interviews with musicians then and now, plus interviews with figures such as the late Dick Clark, Frank Zappa, Cher, Nancy Sinatra and Leon Russell.

The Wrecking Crew was actually finished in 2008 and shown on festival circuits. But it couldn’t be shown commercially until Tedesco raised a pile of money to pay for licensing 100 hit songs used in the film. He finally succeeded with a Kickstarter campaign in which 4,245 backers pledged $313,157.

The film is running at least through next week at Landmark Century Centre. If you’re a music lover get to the theater now because it may not run much longer. There were a lot of musicians in the theater the day I saw it. I could tell by the jokes they laughed at.

Muscle Shoals, 2013, 110 minutes

What is Muscle Shoals? It’s just a little village on the Alabama border. But so much great music came out of it. No one can exactly explain why. Jimmy Cliff said, “At certain points in time on this planet, the are places where there’s a field of energy. At this time, there was Muscle Shoals.” Muscle Shoals is a 2013 documentary about FAME Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound Studio.

There was a certain Muscle Shoals sound. It was its own kind of R&B, different than Detroit, different than Memphis. U2’s Bono gives the river the credit. There’s the Mersey sound in Liverpool, then there’s the Mississippi and the Delta blues. Here it’s the Tennessee River. Bono thinks it must be that the sound comes out of the mud. But there was also something about the sound of the room that made it magical. (Dave Grohl says the same thing about the room they recorded in at Sound City, in his documentary of the same name.)

Director Greg ‘Freddy’ Camalier describes the sound as a “funky, soulful, propulsive kind of groove.” Some of the musicians who recorded there were Bob Dylan, Rod Stewart, Joe Cocker, Simon and Garfunkel, Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones, Wilson Pickett, Percy Sledge, Gregg Allman, Alicia Keys and Steve Winwood.

Rick Hall was the founder of FAME Studios who overcame the poverty of the area in the 1970s to establish the recording studio with a house band known as the Swampers. It was the Muscle Shoals rhythm section—guitar, bass guitar, keyboard and drums. In the heart of Alabama during the Jim Crow era, Hall established Muscle Shoals as an integrated musical operation with no color distinctions between black and white musicians.

It’s an inspiring musical story and like The Wrecking Crew, features interviews with musicians as well as a chance to hear the music they made.

The film Muscle Shoals is available on DVD and it’s streaming on Netflix.

And two other films of interest

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (99 minutes) is a film that has gotten some buzz as “an Iranian vampire western.” Well, okay, it is about a vampire but she only attacks men who mistreat women. It’s really a very fine film, directed by Ana Lily Amirpour, and set in a fictional Iranian ghost town known as Bad City. (It’s shot in Bakersfield, Calif.) The cast is Iranian-American actors speaking Farsi. There’s a sweet love story about two lonely people, one of whom happens to be the hijab-wearing vampire, beautifully played by Sheila Vand. Her boyfriend is played by Arash Marandi, on whom I developed a crush by the end of the film. The cinematography is high-contrast black-and-white, mostly shot at night in industrial-type settings. The story is engrossing and I will probably watch it again. If I was giving stars, I’d give it 4 out of 5.

Jean-Luc Godard’s Goodbye to Language (70 minutes) is a 3D film that should be seen in 3D. It’s currently streaming on Netflix and I strongly recommend you don’t watch it that way. I missed it when it was showing in 3D at the Gene Siskel Center and I’m sorry I did. I watched it last night on my lovely big TV screen. Don’t repeat my mistake. The film is experimental and kind of nonlinear and just looks strange in 2D. But at least it’s short.