To me, this movie is perfection.

Admirable film.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Denny Tedesco directed this documentary about a group of session musicians in the center of popular music during the 60's collectively known as The Wrecking Crew. One of the stuffy old timers proclaimed that these new young players would wreck the music industry. Unlike the old timers who sometimes look down on rock and roll, these kids love the new music and often collaborated with the artists. The exact number of musicians vary and nobody really agrees on its members. One of them is Tedesco's father Tommy. They were there at the dawn of rock and roll, playing for Brian Wilson among many others, and are the ultimate unknown contributors to everybody's soundtracks of their lives including TV themes and commercial jiggles.The accolades are well deserved. They are late in coming but better late than never. It's amazing how much of the sound of the day were created by these musicians. They not only played off the sheets. They also riff new sounds not on the sheets. The stories in the film are mostly divided into the personal and the musical. The personal stories of each musician are not necessarily the most dramatic. Essentially, they barely had a personal life. Their families rarely saw them. They were so sought after that artists waited for them before booking studio time. They worked non-stop. Glen Campbell seems to be the only one who made it big. The music stories are fascinating for nostalgic purposes and that most people never considered their favorite bands not playing their own music. There is a Milli Vanilli naivety to music listening and by the 70s, the newer bands have the musical rigor to their performances. Nevertheless, I was still surprised at how much they contributed to the recordings. The nostalgia factor works best if one grew up on these songs. My time was a couple of decades after this and this movie is mostly academic for me. This would make for a great musical film if one could get the licenses for the songs.

This is a very nice documentary made by Denny Tedesco, to honor the memory of his father, Tommy Tedesco who died in 1997 at the age of 67. Tommy was arguably the best studio guitarist back in the 1950s and 1960s and was part of a rag-tag group of studio musicians in Los Angeles that became affectionately known as "the wrecking crew." It was a name older coat-and-tie musicians bestowed on them, as in they were wrecking the established image of studio musicians.This documentary is especially poignant for a guy like me, who is also a musician and who grew up on the music of the 1960s. You see, the wrecking crew played the backup music in studio recordings of many of the biggest hit records of the late 1950s and the 1960s. When we listened to a hit record back then we never gave much thought to where the backup music came from. I suppose we just figured that the singer or the group had some musicians and we were hearing them play.That absolutely was NOT the way it worked. The 20 or 30 or so guys and gals that collectively were known as the wrecking crew were hired to play for recording sessions for all the big groups and most of the record labels. They were real musicians, they may only have a chord sheet or a simple line to work with and they would often invent musical lines that they thought would work well with the song. Seeing this documentary also makes it clear why groups often lip synced their records when they made live appearances or were on a TV show. Their traveling band could not play what was recorded in the studio, if they had tried to do it live it just wouldn't sound very good.Excellent film, I really admire those musicians and will think of them every time I now listen to music recorded in the 1960s.

I will try to put into a few words about this tribute to some of the finest studio musicians who ever recorded music on vinyl. Denny Tedesco's diligence, hard work, and love not only for his Father but the other musicians enshrined here shows through on every frame of film. The legacy of these musicians can not be overstated. If you lived in the USA in the 50s, 60s, 70s and into the 1980s you've heard their music, songs, hits, jingles, film soundtracks, and TV themes. They seemed to be everywhere all at once, but mostly anonymous when it came to actual credit on film and the backs of album covers. From Sam Cooke, to the Beach Boys, Buffalo Springfield, The Monkees, and beyond you heard their riffs, rhymes, and splendid musicianship. As a percussionist I've admired their music without knowing their faces or names (for the most part). Now, thanks to this labor of love I can connect those distant memories with the people who created them. This appears to be more than just a film but a mission for the director and his film company. Purchasing the rights to air the music The Wrecking Crew played is very expensive. Mr. Tedesco needs viewers like the IMDb community to support this film by giving it the high ratings it deserves here on IMDb and on online services like Net flix. Through that support he is able to raise money to keep making improvements by including more and more of the volumes of material this group of professionals created nearly round the clock for 2 full decades. This music may take you back to your teen years, and fill in the spaces as to who actually created the music of your youth.

For those of us born in the 40s and 50s, grew up in the 60s and 70s, the background of our lives was a soundtrack these guys created. Every tune you ever hummed, sang or tapped your foot to, these guys played it. Did you like the Monkeys? The Association? The Beach Boys? Glen Campbell? Name your favorite 50s or early 60s group. It was the Wrecking Crew. If you love music, if you play music, if you want to play music...this film is a must see for the history alone. But it is also well filmed and edited. The first person accounts of the musicians are priceless. The stories of the value of hard work and riding the wave while it lasts. Yeah, it's good. Watch it, learn it, love it.