New Weller documentary “ONE”, filmed by Andy Crofts, is available to watch online now at www.PaulWeller.com or the link below. “ONE is one year in the life of Paul Weller and his band. It’s a montage of sights and sounds we have witnessed on our travels around the world. I wanted to make something real for the fans that they haven’t seen before.” – Andy Crofts
Paul Weller is rounding off an incredible 2015 by unveiling new behind the scenes documentary ONE over the festive period.
Head to http://www.PaulWeller.com or visit Weller’s YouTube channel from 10am on Boxing Day to see more than an hour of footage shot by live keyboardist Andy Crofts, capturing a year on the road with Paul Weller and his band.
Saturns Pattern, the latest album by Paul Weller, is out now.
Capturing a year on tour with Weller and his band, the film follows his tours of the UK, Europe, North America, and Japan and includes candid interviews with Weller, his band and other team members, It’s a rare glimpse into the tour bus and dressing room, live and rehearsal footage and backstage jams.
Here is an amazing documentary, which tells the story of Joe Strummer, former Clash frontman and defining figure of British popular music.
As a Celebration of his life and his music, with exclusive interviews from band members, close friends, roadies and fans, this film gives an insight into the artist whose sudden death in 2002 came as a shock to the music world.
Interviewees include Mick Jones, Topper Headon, Jonny Green, Glen Matlock, Pennie Smith and more. Also featured is music from Joe Strummer,The Clash and The Mescaleros. You can see footage of performances of Tommy Gun, Graceland, London Calling, White Riot and many many more.
Narrated by Robert Elms
Documentary Chapters:
Chapter 1. First Impression
Chapter 2. Early Days
Chapter 3. Punk… So What Was That All About?
Chapter 4. Leader of the Pack
Chapter 5. The Fans
Chapter 6. We Gotta Move On
Chapter 7. Backlash
Chapter 8. Amerika
Chapter 9. The Man Behind the Mask
Chapter 10. Words and Music
Chapter 11. “I Am Not Che Guevara”
Chapter 12. That Split
Chapter 13. The Wilderness Years
Chapter 14. The Mescaleros
Chapter 15. Joe At 50
Chapter 16. Deja Vu
Chapter 17. Joe R.I.P
Chapter 18. Legacy
Chapter 19. Strummerville
Chapter 20. Memories
The Beach Boys, Elvis, Frank Sinatra, Nate King Cole and many more. Behind their success was a group of studio musicians called The Wrecking Crew.
What the Funk Brothers did for Motown… The Wrecking Crew did, only bigger, for the West Coast Sound. Six years in a row in the 1960s and early 1970s, the Grammy for “Record of the Year” went to Wrecking Crew recordings. And now, THE WRECKING CREW tells the story in pictures and that oh, so glorious sound. THE WRECKING CREW is a documentary film produced and directed by Denny Tedesco, son of legendary late Wrecking Crew guitarist Tommy Tedesco. The film tells the story of the unsung musicians that provided the backbeat, the bottom and the swinging melody that drove many of the number one hits of the 1960’s.
If you think — and want to continue to think — that Brian Wilson played that signature roller-rink organ on “California Girls,” read no further. If you’ve labored under the illusion that Karen Carpenter tapped out that delicate drum part on “Close to You,” or that Papa John Phillips strummed the sweeping intro to “California Dreamin’,” prepare for a rude awakening. On hundreds of hits from the late 1950s through the mid-’70s by acts such as The Byrds, The Mamas and the Papas, Elvis Presley, Harry Nilsson, The Beach Boys, Sam Cooke, The Carpenters, The Ronettes, Simon and Garfunkel, Frank and Nancy Sinatra and many, many more, the backing band was a group of faceless studio musicians.
The jazz-trained instrumentalists were L.A.’s first-call players for pop, TV and movie work. They were the consummate pros, the fixers, the one-takers, the guys (and gal) behind the guys. They were the Wrecking Crew.
Back when L.A.’s recording scene was a hit-minting machine that ruled the airwaves, they worked up to four three-hour sessions a day. Some say they slept in the studio. Huge money was made. Family lives suffered. Marriages crumbled.
Yet they clocked in and out, somehow always sounding inspired for the big names and pretty faces on the record covers, creating what has become the soundtrack to two decades of American life.
But who were these deft, anonymous masters?
Director Denny Tedesco tackles that question with The Wrecking Crew, a heartfelt, engrossing documentary 19 years in the making, which finally sees theatrical release in New York and Los Angeles on March 13. It joins the formidable ranks of behind-the-scenes music docs including Muscle Shoals, Standing in the Shadows of Motown and 20 Feet From Stardom, and it’s a story Tedesco is singularly qualified to helm.
His late father, guitarist Tommy Tedesco, was one of the core members of that integral session group, and a man whose sense of humor was as big as his six-string talent. The guitar intros to TV’s The Twilight Zone, Green Acres, Bonanza, M*A*S*H and Batman? That’s Tommy.
Tommy Tedesco, originally from Niagara Falls, N.Y., succumbed to cancer in 1997 after a decades-long, three-pack-a-day smoking habit. His illness was the catalyst for the documentary.
“When they said he had a year to live, my concern was, if I don’t do it, it’s going to be the biggest regret of my life,” says Denny, who had worked in Hollywood as a grip and set decorator but, in terms of directing, “had no idea” what he was doing. “It wasn’t going to be just about my dad; it was going to be about the group of them.”
“Them” is a bit tough to define. It was not “a set group of musicians,” Tedesco explains. Depending on who you talk to, it’s “15, 20, 35 players,” but the core group included the bassist extraordinaire Carol Kaye, drummers Hal Blaine and Earl Palmer, guitarists Al Casey, Tommy Tedesco and Glen Campbell (later of “Rhinestone Cowboy” fame), keyboardists Don Randi and Leon Russell and sax player Plas Johnson.
The Wrecking Crew were cooler, hipper, downright casual.
“They looked down on us and this filthy new rock & roll. We were in Levis and T-shirts. These older guys in their ties and blue blazers, carrying around their little ashtrays, said, ‘These kids are going to wreck the business,'” recalls Blaine, who takes credit for coining the moniker Wrecking Crew.
Carol Kaye reportedly disputes the name, insisting that, back in the day, they were called the Clique.
Don Randi has a slightly different take as well. “We were [called] the Wall of Sound. We started with Spector,” says the affable keyboard titan. You may recall the holy keyboard pulse on a little Beach Boys number called “God Only Knows.” That’s Don Randi.
“The Wrecking Crew came later on. It’s an iconic phrase and people love it. But people would call us the Wrecking Crew because we could wreck a [session]. If you were a stupid producer, we could take you on a ride that you’ll never forget,” Randi says.
Whatever you want to call them, the group’s musical contributions are indelible, and Tedesco’s film is a long-overdue homage that puts these familiar strangers into perspective.
“It’s important,” Randi says. “It’s almost a piece of history. It’s a time that won’t be repeated again because the technology has taken all of that away, that liveness that we had. Although now some of the bands are starting to come back to it again. You know, let’s all get in a room and kill one another.”
“You’re only as good as your last hit,” Blaine says, “and no one had more hits than we did.”
In 2002 there was movie called “Standing in the Shadows of Motown” about the Motown backing musicians. And now, there’s this movie. I think it’s great that movies are being made to tell the in-house musicians’ story because they are very important to the music we enjoy. I hope there will be a movie about MFSB, the musicians behind the “Sound of Philadelphia.” Also, the Staxx musicians need their story told too. Heck, I think all the in-house musicians from the ’60s and ’70s across America should have their stories told.
MC5: A True Testimonial, also written as MC5 * A True Testimonial, is a 2002 feature-length documentary film about the MC5, a Detroit-based rock band of the 1960s and early 1970s. The film was produced by Laurel Legler and directed by David C. Thomas; the couple spent more than seven years working on the project.
Although the MC5 are considered very influential today, they were relatively obscure in their time. To make the film, Thomas collected photographs and film clips of varying quality, including U.S. government surveillance footage of the MC5’s performance at the protests that took place outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He interviewed the surviving members of the band and people closely associated with it. In the editing room, Thomas matched the band’s recordings to the silent footage he had collected.
MC5: A True Testimonial made its premiere on August 22, 2002, at the Chicago Underground Film Festival. Three weeks later it made its international premiere on September 11th at the Toronto International Film Festival. In November of that year, the film was awarded an “Honorable Mention” as a debut feature at the Raindance Film Festival.
During 2003 and early 2004, the film was shown at film festivals around the world. Critical reception was overwhelmingly positive. The New York Times described the film as “riveting”; The Boston Globe said it was “everything a rockumentary should be and usually isn’t”; and The Washington Post called it “one of the best movies of the summer”. Wayne Kramer, the MC5’s guitarist, said it was a “wonderful film” and John Sinclair, the band’s one-time manager, said Thomas had done “a fine job”.
In 2007, Time Out London ranked it #48 on a list of the “50 Greatest Music Films Ever”.
In April 2004, Kramer sued Legler and Thomas. In his suit, Kramer alleged that Legler and Thomas had promised he would be the film’s music producer, an assertion the film-makers denied. With the lawsuit, distribution of MC5: A True Testimonial ended and plans for a DVD release in May were canceled. In March 2007, the court ruled in favor of Legler and Thomas, and the Court of Appeals upheld the decision on appeal. Nevertheless, MC5: A True Testimonial has not been released on DVD, although in 2011 the film-makers began a fund-raising campaign to pay for rights to the band’s music.
The band Wilco have announced a new documentary called Every Other Summer, which focuses on Wilco’s Solid Sound Festival at Mass MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts. According to a press release, the documentary “offers a peek into the festival’s utopian vibe and the positive impact it has had on the small rust belt town in The Berkshires where it takes place”. Watch the trailer below.
Every Other Summer was directed by Christoph Green and Brendan Canty. The documentary was filmed at the most recent Solid Sound Festival (2013) and featuring performances by Wilco, Neko Case, Yo La Tengo, The Dream Syndicate, Lucius, Foxygen, Sam Amidon, Sean Rowe, and The Relatives. Reggie Watts, John Hodgman, Jen Kirkman, and others also make appearances.
This is a 1999 documentary following R.E.M. during the recording of ‘Up’.
Up reached #3 in the U.S. (with 16 weeks on the Billboard 200) and #2 in the UK, but didn’t have the staying power of the band’s more-recent albums, and thus the band’s lowest sales in years. “The things that we have to do creatively for the band may not be the most commercial things,” Mike Mills observed. “That isn’t the point. The point is to keep it fresh and interesting and alive.” R.E.M. subsequently admitted that they came close to breaking up while recording the album.
Although R.E.M. initially intended not to tour for the album, after many successful promotional concerts upon the album’s release, the band quickly arranged a four-month arena tour of Europe and America during the summer of 1999. In 2005, Warner Bros. Records issued an expanded two-disc edition of Up which includes a CD, a DVD-Audio disc containing a 5.1-channel surround sound mix of the album done by Elliot Scheiner, and the original CD booklet with expanded liner notes.
On New Year’s Day, the UK’s BBC Four aired a new 75-minute documentary called“The Clash: New Year’s Day ’77″ put together by filmmaker Julien Temple and built around his own, previously unseen footage of the of the band performing on Jan. 1, 1977, at the Roxy Club. It’s considered the earliest known live footage ofThe Clash.
The film — which includes interviews and other footage from 1977 interwoven with the live performances — has been streaming on the BBC’s site, but is now available to see outside the UK, Watch the full film below.
The BBC’s description of the program: Built around the earliest, until now unseen, footage of the Clash in concert, filmed by Julien Temple as they opened the infamous Roxy Club in a dilapidated Covent Garden on January 1st 1977, this show takes us on a time-travelling trip back to that strange planet that was Great Britain in the late 1970s and the moment when punk emerged into the mainstream consciousness.
Featuring the voices of Joe Strummer and the Clash from the time, and intercutting the raw and visceral footage of this iconic show, with telling moments from the BBC’s New Year’s Eve, Hogmanay and New Year’s Day schedules of nearly 40 years ago, it celebrates that great enduring British custom of getting together, en masse and often substantially the worse for wear, to usher in the New Year.
New Year’s Day is when we collectively take the time to reflect on the year that has just gone by and ponder what the new one might hold in store for us. Unknown to the unsuspecting British public, 1977 was of course the annus mirabilis of punk. The year in which the Clash themselves took off, catching the imagination of the nation’s youth. As their iconic song, 1977, counts us down to midnight, we’ll share with them and Joe Strummer, in previously unseen interviews from the time, their hopes and predictions for the 12 months ahead.
The Fat Angel Sings 