The Wrecking Crew

A one-woman historical wrecking crew

Poor Sarah Palin. Why can’t the media leave her alone?

I mean, here’s a woman trying to enjoy a simple, relaxing family vacation on a huge and gaudily-decorated bus that happens to stop in New Hampshire just as Mitt Romney announces he’s running for president, and she’s hounded like Lindsay Lohan leaving a bar. Please, give this private citizen some privacy!

Striving valiantly to stay under the media radar, Sarah rolled into New York City and created an absolute frenzy by having lunch with Donald Trump in busy Times Square, but I’m sure it’s a coincidence that the lunch came just as interest in her bus tour was starting to flag.

“Every time you go to New York, you gotta see Donald Trump,” Palin explained. “I approve of his independence. I told him, ‘Don’t shy away from speaking out.’ ”

I’m also sure I speak for Jon Stewart and comics everywhere when I say, yes, please, Donald! Keep speaking out! And please consider a Palin-Trump ticket! America may not need you, but comedians sure do!

If Sarah wanted a relaxing vacation, she had other options. She could have booked a cottage at Hampton Beach, where she and her family could spend their evenings strolling the picturesque Boardwalk, mingling with drunken tourists and later soaking in a large vat of penicillin. Instead, she set off on a bus trip of historic locations but refused to tell reporters where she was going, apparently because she hates publicity.

So far she’s been to the National Archives, George Washington’s home, Civil War battlefields and the Liberty Bell. But she wouldn’t be Sarah Palin if she didn’t put her mouth in it, this time in Boston, explaining history and Paul Revere.

Last week, Palin pulled together an off-the-cuff and highly amusing rendition of the famed Midnight Ride that featured bells, gunfire, noise and perhaps a stirring solo by Andrea Bocelli.

“He who warned uh, the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms, uh, by ringing those bells, and um, makin’ sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be sure and we were gonna be secure, and we were gonna we were gonna be free … to be armed.”

Well, not exactly. Has this uber patriot learned nothing from the five colleges she attended?

Lots of people are unclear about Paul Revere’s ride, but Sarah’s subsequent response is almost as entertaining as the original flub.

The Wrecking Crew: On the road to you! « art predator

For this Wrecking Crew was the name given to the fantastic studio musicians living and working in Los Angeles in the the 1960’s when rock and roll was really beginning to take off. The songs they worked on are an iPod full of hits that is the sound track for everyone who grew up during this period, or even for those who grew up much later and have still heard the music played on radio, television, or even YouTube.

The musicians’ names are little known except to those in the music industry, but they should all be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, if not have their faces faces sculpted into the hillside by the Hollywood Sign. For Earl Palmer, Hal Blaine, Carol Kaye, Plas Johnson, and Tommy Tedesco, among a whole host of others were instrumental in launching some of the greatest pop and rock songs ever recorded. Denny Tedesco has set out to right this wrong and this documentary is a living, breathing tribute to these remarkable, unsung heroes. The Monkees, the early Beach Boys, The Association and many other bands did not yet have the musical licks necessary to play in a studio, and so these session players would pick up their instruments and do anything and everything that needed to be done. nted by them, and songs that had no real groups attached to them were played by these men and the amazing Carol Kaye. There may have been eight to twelve of them, or as many as thirty or more musicians in all. They were behind the scenes studio players who had come to LA to find work and, as fate would have it, came along just as rock and roll was exploding. Only the coming of bands who actually recorded their own songs , the story of the un-sung heroes of the Los Angeles Rock and Roll recording scene in the 1960s, is on the road for a series of showings to raise enough money to license all the fabulous music being showcased in the documentary which features rare historical footage, interviews and testimonials from stars of the music industry.  See and hear the music and story of Los Angeles studio musicians known as the Wrecking Crew, who played behind some of the best known recordings of the ’60s and ’70s.

The Wrecking Crew makes a stop here in Ventura Friday, June 17 with screenings at 6:00 and 8:00 pm in the Martin V. and Martha K. Smith Event Pavilion at the Ventura County Museum on Main in downtown Ventura with a reception from 5:00 to 8:30 pm.

Your $15 admission includes access to all exhibitions, including Rock ‘N’ Roll, fifty photographs of 1960s rock stars  by renowned celebrity photographer Guy Webster and viewing of Ramon Byrne’s musical instruments carved from stone at Art City. The museum will donate $10 of each $15 admission to the non-profit International Documentary Association, to help finance music rights licensing fees, to enable this film to be shown to the general public in the future.