Just as fans started coming out in larger quantities to watch the races and on the heels of Jared Mees securing his first AMA Grand National Twin championship on the 5/8-mile dirt oval H-D throws dirt in the face of the “Wrecking Crew.”

I’m talking dirt-track racing.  Dirt-tracking is a uniquely American sport, which matured on our nation’s multitude of county fairgrounds horse tracks, but the decision yesterday by H-D was to slash its AMA Pro dirt-track support programs for 2010.

H-D pulled the kill switch tether for “Wrecking Crew” riders Joe Kopp, Bryan Smith and even National Twins Class Champion Jared Mees. H-D will continue to support Ken Coolbeth, why I’m not exactly sure, as the official team rider whose equipment is prepared in the factory race shop.

It’s interesting to me that a typical H-D dealer has no one who cares or knows about flat-track.  This seems like a missed opportunity to evangelize the XR1200s and waterfall information/agenda’s to the various franchises.  Retaining Mr. Coolbeth may be damage control as media outlets would rain negative press on the company for bailing entirely on flat-track given the heritage.

Photo courtesy of H-D.

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Rotting Out (126)
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Some Images:

If you don’t already know, Bobby Chiu of Imaginism Studios hosts a weekly Live Streaming series called the Chiu Stream! He just finished up his interview with Comic Legend Mike Mignola creator of Hellboy (which you can rewatch on the stream)! Every week(or I think its still weekly) he hosts a contest with a subject from the artist hes interviewing and everybody has to draw their interpretation to get voted on… The winner of this gets a free sketch from whoever hes interviewing! Its a really great thing to be apart of and really fun. So if youre an artist you should give it a shot when he announces his next interview .

So, this week my Frankenstein image was chosen as the winner by Mike Mignola! I’m super pumped to get my original sketchhh, gonna get a nice frame mmmm. So yea, its totally worth it to participate! Although I do think I’ll be bowing out of the whole thing for awhile do to a massive workload looming on the horizon D:.

But yea, thanks again to Bobby Chiu and everyone at Imaginism for this awesome opportunity! And again, if you can you gotta participate! Just follow his twitter and he’ll probably announce the next one soon.

I should have a lot of stuff to post up soon! Good stuff I hope D:.

I’ll also be hosting my live stream on Mondays from now on(unless Bobby’s Streams are monday, in which case I’ll change it because I wanna watch em hahah)!

Thanks everybody!

more metal! Overkill – Wrecking Crew

Paul Rahe has some thoughts:

Obama and his minions understand, and this they want — the elimination of the foundations for American hegemony and the crippling of this country. They regard the role that we have thus far played in the world as shameful; they are intent on dismembering the alliances that gave us our heft in the world; and they are not only appeasing our sworn enemies but openly, publicly embracing them and their agenda.

See also; Krauthammer.

Por Alexei Barros

Estava com saudade das imaculadas performances da Lydia Hime no piano. Depois das irretocáveis execuções de Spelunker e Gradius no ano passado, ela voltou a gravar novas atuações, aparentemente até com câmera nova.

A escolha é do Wrecking Crew. Muitas trilhas antigas para NES do mestre Hirokazu Tanaka me marcaram durante a infância – Balloon Fight, Donkey Kong 3 e Urban Champion –, mas esse jogo não conhecia na época. Tal como Metroid e Kid Icarus me tornei apreciador tempos depois, e mesmo hoje fico estarrecido ao notar como as composições são simples, marcantes e geniais. Tal inspiração foi captada de maneira magistral pela Lydia em cada acorde interpretado com a desenvoltura que as originais exigem. Os chiptunes da introdução da “Stage 2” ficaram especialmente perfeitos na tradução para piano.

“Wrecking Crew Medley”
“Stage Intro” ~ “Theme” ~ “Stage 2” ~ “Stage Clear”

By Brian Michael Bendis (writer), Stuart Immonen (artist), Wade von Grawbadger (inker), Dave McCaig (colorist)

The Story: Norman Osborn and Doctor Harrow finalize the terms of their deal while both the New and Dark Avengers are still reeling from the effects of the power drainer. The New Avengers successfully escape a no-win situation, but Osborn’s not going to let them get off so easily, which could be especially bad for one Avenger.

The Good: Say what you will about Bendis and his writing, but the guy has been steadily working on this book for some five years now without interruption and it’s hard not to admire that kind of dedication. This is a fun team, and the addition of Ronin and Mockingbird brings a bit of that old school expertise to the group. I honestly did not expect to enjoy having Mockingbird back, but she’s a wonderfully strong character, as evidenced by her double splash page in this issue. I’m also happy to see Immonen’s art again, having been a huge fan of his work on Nextwave. His work is expressive, dynamic, and as equally good at conveying action sequences as it is the quieter moments, like towards the end in the hospital.  I would love to see him stick around on this title for as long as possible because I really believe he does right by it.

The Not So Good: This power drainer has been a weak and ill-defined Macguffin that has utterly pissed on the plot. Since Bendis never really explained what it can and can’t do, it seems capable of doing whatever it needs to when Bendis calls for it. For example, if this thing is supposed to drain powers, then why was Ronin affected? As far as I know Barton doesn’t have any powers and is just a highly trained fighter. And why could Captain America be affected by this when he only has a cybernetic arm, is the power drainer capable of screwing up electronics as well? Finally, why has the power drainer messed with Cage’s heart of all things? I get that it has left the heroes feeling nauseated and shitty, but that’s still a far cry from the stroke-like symptoms Cage is experiencing. Are we to now believe that the power drainer causes severe health problems too? Hell, is there anything this device can’t do? Bendis doesn’t explain it either way and that’s unfortunate because it makes this issue fairly ridiculous on examination. Also, and I never thought I’d be saying this, but McCaig’s colors here are without doubt the biggest eyesore I’ve ever seen in a comic.  Seriously, his contributions to this issue are disgusting and bring down every background and environment he renders. If there was one reason not to buy this comic, it would be for what he’s done to it.

Conclusion: Some reliably solid character moments are unfortunately lost in the mire of a ridiculous plot that Bendis could have easily fixed if he’d wanted to. This issue was good, but not great, and certainly nothing you need to spend $4 on.

Grade:  C-

-Tony Rakittke

Tuesday night in Boston went down fairly well in my opinion.  Although the first time I played The Paradise I was skeptical about the sound of the room due to it being so shallow, having seen a few shows there recently I know that it’s a solid room.   The only show I saw there before moving to Boston was a hardcore matinee in 1990(?) featuring The Cro-Mags (w/ Harley but not John Joseph), Burn, and Wrecking Crew but I was too scared that day to notice the PA.  Back to Tuesday, the crowd was decent, the show was well received and we all had a good time being on stage.  We did a little hanging post-show with friends, family, and label moguls from Rounder and then it was off to bed.

Yesterday, Wednesday, we drove most of the way to Detroit stopping only to pick up James’ repaired Firebird and to eat at the Cracker Barrel.  Even though when I toured with Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit for a month we, no joke, ate at the Cracker Barrel almost every freakin’ day, I rarely stray from the breakfast menu.  In fact, I almost always order The Old Timers Breakfast.  Last night, I took a chance and ordered the roasted half-chicken from their seasonal Autumn Apple Harvest Menu.  Topped with apple gravy and accompanied by cornbread stuffing, green beans, and a ripe Gala apple, I’m happy to report that the chicken was tender, juicy, and completely satisfying.  Highly recommended.  And, I don’t really care for chicken.

Of course, I don’t have any photos of us in Boston so here’s one from when I played the Paradise with Jason Isbell.  Derry and Morgan in a heated mustache growing contest

by Brian Michael Bendis (writer), Stuart Immonen (pencils), Wade von Grawbadger (inks), Dave McCaig (colors), and Albert Deschesne (letters)

The Story: Mockingbird and the crippled Avengers battle the Wrecking Crew and their power drainer. Meanwhile, Dr. Harrow gives Norman Osborn an offer he can’t refuse.

What’s Good: About 85% of this issue is composed of action scenes surrounding the Wrecking Crew. As such, it’s an enjoyable, light read that’s certainly quite exciting. Mockingbird picking up and using Bucky Cap’s shield and gun was a definite highlight and one does get a sense of the impossible odds she’s up against.

I also liked the narration by Mockingbird, who’s been fairly neglected over the past few issues. It’s clear that Bendis has a lot of love for the character, as the captions succeed in adding character, touching repeatedly on some of her dissatisfaction with Clint while putting forward her brazen and sassy attitude, while also enhancing the feeling of desperation.

All in all, it’s a simple, fun issue and the opening scene with Mockingbird fighting the Wrecking Crew is golden. Also, Loki’s presence, however brief, is always welcome in any Marvel comic. He/She just wreaks of malevolence, as always.

What’s Not So Good: At first, I wasn’t entirely sure what the point was of having this internal narration by Mockingbird, only to have it end within 7-8 pages; but then later on I realized Bendis needed to cram in Dark Reign and couldn’t have Osborn’s conversation with Harrow without ending Mockingbird’s narration. I just felt a little cheated.

Speaking of the Dark Reign conversation, I’m not sure I buy Dr. Harrow being such a massive threat to Norman Osborn. I mean, this is Dr. Harrow we’re talking about here and his big trick is draining powers.  Surely, power drainers have been done a multitude of times before. It’s such a basic, unimaginative concept, that while it’s enough to make Harrow a legit New Avengers villain, no way is it enough to carry him to the upper echelons of the Marvel Universe’s power structure.

The power drainer itself is also a bit of a problematic plot device as well, since it basically leads to the Avengers groaning and limping around for an entire issue. The drainer isn’t lethal in and of itself, it just makes them sick.  It seems as though Bendis couldn’t decide whether or not the drainer would render them unconscious, so instead he has opted for some awkward middle ground of heroes lying around, then standing up for one perfectly timed action before collapsing again.

Meanwhile, I want to make clear that I love Stuart Immonen’s art.  That said, I’m still not sure that it fits a comic like New Avengers. Immonen’s art makes the Avengers look like an Image superhero comic, not an ultra mainstream blockbuster. It feels oddly diminishing. I think Immonen does great work, but I don’t think this is the right title for him to be on.

Conclusion: A solid issue that suffers from a few irritants and some curious artwork.

Grade: C+

-Alex Evans

I never intended R.I.P. to be a regular feature. Damned if life isn’t forcing my hand.

I’m not one who obsesses over calendars; I don’t have a list of who was born when and who died on any day, but I do have a couple of websites that are easily checked on occasion. The idea about the feature – and in fact the focus of some of the first columns – was to reminisce about artists who impacted my life greatly, like Rory Gallagher, Ronnie Lane and Frank Zappa. Being of a certain age, I sometimes take for granted that everyone is as familiar with these artists as I am, or at least has had the opportunity presented to them to be. Apparently nothing could be further from the truth.

And I guess because I did grow up following these artists and collecting their work, I shouldn’t be surprised that some of them are now leaving this mortal coil. Sure, we still lose too many too soon, but no one can say that Les Paul didn’t have a blue ticket ride on this Earth. But from my vantage point, late 60s is far from old age, and that’s when Larry Knechtel and Ellie Greenwich got the call.

Words plus music equals magic

Ellie Greenwich – where does one even start? As part of the Brill Building sound she - along with husband Jeff Barry –  gave us some of the greatest rock’n'roll songs ever written. Frankly, some of the bands you revere might not have been in your windshield without her. Hell, Brian Wilson admits that his entire being is merely a byproduct of “Be My Baby” (arguably the greatest pop song ever…and certainly in the upper echelon of anyone’s list). It’s sad that she doesn’t have the public recognition that some of the artists she helped make famous have. From The Ronnettes to The Ramones, from “Chapel Of Love” to “It’s My Party” to “I Can Hear Music”…Ellie Greenwich was rock royalty.

Larry Knechtel might not be a household name, but I’ll bet his handiwork is in your house. Own any albums by Simon & Garfunkel, The Beach Boys, The Doors or The Mamas & Papas? How about Elvis Presley’s famous ‘68 special? Fan of Duane Eddy? You’ve at least heard of Bread, yes? Well, that’s musician extraordinaire Larry Knechtel on bass and/or keyboards; an intregal part of Phil Spector sessions that we now know as the Wall Of Sound as a member of the famous Wrecking Crew. Like Ellie, almost 70.

Of course I was saddened to hear about the passing of Ted Kennedy, although this is a date I thought I saw coming many times before. I don’t politicize in the Prescription, and certainly there are a thousand in-depth articles that you will be able to read about the man, so I won’t expound on his faults or his gifts. But for someone who grew up in the Kennedy Era, who cringed and wept and feared for our country when Jack, and later Bobby, were assassinated, this is truly the end of a political dynasty, at least at Camelot levels. Yes, children and grandchildren remain, and we may yet see another Kennedy aspire to the upper ranks of politics, but that will be a sequel, not another chapter.

In a related passing, Dominick Dunne was also familiar with loss – his daughter’s murder resulted in a career pivot that saw this social observer become a watchdog for justice, albeit from a sideline seat. Perhaps his wealth and celebrity standing gave him a pulpit others would never have gotten, but in a society where Nancy Grace is taken seriously I prefer to think of his endeavors as an attempt to hold the famous accountable for their actions. At least his motivation was not as blatantly myopic as that of the former prosecutor.

I Can Hear Music...and thanks to these musicians, I want to.

I should mention that although I was aware of Knetchel’s passing the day it occured, I did not want to make it the headline of the day. I figured I’d drop a relevant post-script into another piece during the week as a way of paying my respects. However, when the number of famous names passing in but a few short days skyrocketed and I decided to air another obituary, I certainly did not want to omit him. Please know he is not an afterthought; I have great respect for his work.

But keeping up with the bad news has been daunting. We’re not quite two-thirds of the way through 2009 and already the losses have been staggering. Many of us have suffered our own personal losses as well.

If nothing else, this week is another reminder that life is short and unpredictable. No grudge is worth keeping. No warm feelings toward someone are worth hiding. No card or letter or email or call is worth putting off. Don’t procrastinate. Because you can’t take your love and warmth and appreciation with you…you must share it.

Peace.

Ellie Greenwich website.

Larry Knechtel website

Ima sell cocaine/ get a gold chain/ 4 piece rang (ring)/ and a gun that go bang/ (bang bang, sell cocaine)

Another track from the Hot Dogs & Coke (Coney Island Shit) Mixtape recorded at T’s studio. When I heard the Madlib beat I feel in love and decided to spit some crack over it, T mixed in some sick samples and we made a classic. This track is for my brother who is no longer with us Rob V, I love u bee WRECKING CREW! HHTT APPROVED Brother Menelik (Av) – Sell Drugs (Cocaine)

I was struggling to think of tonight’s sketch, I really was.  But then a friend suggested Thunderball, an oft-ignored Marvel Comics supervillain who basically wields an indestructible wrecking ball.  With a schtick like that, he deserves way more fame, frankly.

The sketch itself is pretty spartan, but I had fun with the pose, and that, sad to say, is probably one of the best lengths of chain I’ve done.

 VS. 

Confession: Like so many warriors, I didn’t do my homework when I first went to Arms from Protection. In a rush to spec DPS for our first 25-man Naxxramas attempt, I picked talents that seemed good but was lost on how to spend my last six points. With a shrug, I put two in each of three talents, didn’t change my glyphs, and started beating on things with a De-Raged Waraxe. Then I cackled in glee. It was fun!

I was oblivious, delirious, and wasting talent points on Enrage with this 54/17/0 build.

A Story of Two Houses (aka Talent Trees) & One Proc Effect

In Deep, Deep Arms resides a talent named Wrecking Crew. When your melee attacks crit, this talent procs a buff that increases your damage by 2-10%.  It’s Very Nice!™

Not so deep, deep in Fury is a talent named Enrage. Enrage’s effect gives you a 30% chance to gain a 2-10% damage bonus when hurt by attacks. This seems nice until we realize that they proc the same effect and therefore do not stack, but rather renew each other.

Being enraged has a few benefits:

1. It enables Enraged Regeneration. If you’re a DPS Warrior and you aren’t popping ER during healing-intensive bosses to help your healers, you ain’t doing your job. Period.
2. 10% more Damage for 12 Seconds. It’s awesome. Did I even have to list it?
3. It makes the Tiki Mask of Doom animation. It’s a scientific fact that Heigan the Unclean is 83% more likely to shart when the Tiki Mask pops. It’s true. (Ok, it’s not. 83% is totally made up.)
4. 10% more Damage for 12 seconds. Yes, I guess I did have to list it. Twice.

Which Should I Take?

When I was new to Arms and in blue and green gear, I had an 18-21% crit chance or so. Wrecking Crew didn’t proc on much other than Overpower because I wasn’t critting often and then really only due to Improved Overpower. Raid damage like the lightning bolts from Thaddius or the Shadow Bolts and Rain of Fire from Faerlina or even the poorly placed acid rings on Grobbulus help me keep my Enrage up.

Now that I’m sporting ilvl 200-226 epics, I approach 50% Crit chance fully raid-buffed and Wrecking Crew has me almost constantly Enraged. Proccing Enrage off of the occasional raid damage rather than a Crit Strike is so situational that you could be much better served putting those points into a Howl, Shout or perhaps Improved Bloodrage. (As always, Your Mileage May Vary. PST if it does!)
If you’re moving all the way to Bladestorm in your build (and I highly reccomend it!), you’re likely going to grab 5/5 in Wrecking Crew. Unless your Crit Rate is through the floor, skip Enrage. I think you’ll see better returns picking up other talents. 

Alex Koppelman and Mike Madden, Salon, December 13, 2008

WASHINGTON — On July 15, Bob Corker was a happy man.

“I cannot think of a more exciting day, even more so than Election Night, for me,” the Republican senator from Tennessee said in a conference call that day. The reason for his elation was the announcement that Volkswagen, lured by up to $500 million worth of incentives from the state government, had agreed to build a $1 billion plant near Chattanooga, Tenn. That is, not just in his home state, but in the suburbs of the city he once served as mayor.

Add VW to Nissan, which already has two plants and its North American headquarters in Tennessee, and you begin to see why Corker was so aggressive this month about trying to block — or at least dramatically rewrite — a proposal to float billions of dollars in emergency loans to domestic automakers. Most of the focus during this debate has been on lawmakers who represent Michigan, the home of the Big Three — Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. But Corker represents the other side of the coin: Tennessee and other Southern states have recently come to depend on foreign automakers and their non-union factories. If you’re from those parts, what’s good for American car companies may no longer be what’s good for the country — because your economy now depends on their foreign competitors instead.

The fiercest opposition to the loan proposal — and nearly a third of the 35 votes against ending debate on the deal — came from Southern Republicans, and the ringleaders of the opposition all come from states with a major foreign auto presence. Not coincidentally, nearly all of those states — except Kentucky — are also “right-to-work” states, which means no union contracts for most of the employees at the foreign plants. The Detroit bailout fell victim to a nasty confluence of home-state economic interests and anti-union sentiment among Republicans.

This week Southern Republicans had a chance to go to bat for foreign automakers while simultaneously busting a union. At a hearing last week, Corker explained that his constituents “have a tough time thinking about us loaning money to companies that are paying way, way above industry standard to workers.” Which may explain why his proposed alternative to the loan agreement between Congress and the White House would have required the United Auto Workers to agree to significant wage cuts next year, based on a spurious claim that union workers earn significantly more than non-union workers.

Even George W. Bush’s White House didn’t push to crush the UAW the way Corker and his buddies did, say Democrats involved in the negotiations with the administration. “It was all about the unions,” one senior Democratic aide said. “This is political payback for lots of things, and probably even more to come.” Labor officials expect Republicans to keep taking shots at unions whenever they can. “This cynical stance they took last night — they’re willing to jeopardize 3 million jobs so they could gain some advantage in their war against unions — is appalling,” said Bill Samuel, the chief lobbyist for the AFL-CIO.

As the Republican Party consolidates in the South, the fight this week could turn out to be a preview of many battles to come over Barack Obama’s economic plans. If those plans involve the domestic auto industry, the GOP pushback will come from somewhere down I-65, the new auto corridor that runs from Kentucky south to Alabama. Expect to hear more not just from the very vocal Bob Corker, but from the rest of a core group of Southern senators whose bread is buttered by the Japanese, Germans and Koreans. Here’s a guide to the major players.

Read More Here

How Conservatives Rule

A few offhand allusions have been made in the comments here to Thomas Frank’s latest book that’s been described as “A no-holds-barred exegesis on the naked cynicism of conservatism in America” and so perhaps it’s especially appropriate at this moment to trot out this talk he gave back in August at Powell’s in Oregon about the central thesis of the book…

The Wrecking Crew is something of a companion piece to his marvelously insightful 2004 work What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America that examines in more detail the modus operandi of the ruling coalition that’s dominated American politics for the past thirty years.

In his new book, Frank explains that, rather than dismantling and cutting down on the “big government” they claim to hate and despise, they have instead simply sold it off, and rendered it largely impotent through a combination of deregulation, defunding and the deliberate cultivation of bureaucratic and administrative incompetence.

Legendary New Orleans drummer on endless hits by artists as varied as Fats Domino, Frank Sinatra, Monkees, Little Richard, Frank Sinatra and Phil Spector 60’s mega hits dies at age 84 in Los Angeles, CA.   They just aren’t making drummers this good anymore….

NYT Obituary

I turned on the radio last night midway through “Fresh Air” to hear someone talking about the manner in which conservative governance that has typified government in America for the last 40 years by intentionally and industriously destroying government from within. Instantly I thought to myself, “Somebody read Tom Frank’s article in Harpers from 2003. Good catch.”

When Terry Gross’s fill-in host Dave Davies announced Tom as his guest, I immediately became sad that nobody else had caught on to what’s a pretty apparent point about recent American governance, really an extravagant form of contra-governance, if you will. Yet I was thrilled. I knew that Frank was working on the follow-up to his extremely well-received What’s the Matter with Kansas?, but I didn’t know what exactly he was working on.

I’m happy to announce that Mr. Frank stuck with that important point about conservative governance from his 2003 article and dug deeper to produce his fourth and latest authored work, The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule. If his interview and audiobook excerpts are any indicators, they bring the allusive and caustic style he cultivated with his journal The Baffler to bear on what is a systematic corrosion of governance in the United States. Frank suggests that this mode of governance is supported by a laissez-faire ideology linking an amorphous ‘market’ as the key operator of the public good and a favoritist modus operandi establishing a private industrial apparatus lingering alongside government to serve public functions. Such an arrangement builds a ‘revolving door’ between the public and private sectors, effectively blurring the lines between the two, and supplants a competent and committed civil service. Instead of delivering on a promise of a more efficient and cost-effective delivery of government service, Frank notes that this system of outsourced governance has made the work of acheiving the public interest increasingly expensive, arcane, feverishly corrupt, and largely devoid of public accountability. This isn’t to exclude the possibility that the justice and fairness of such arrangements are highly questionable in the first place.

(Full Disclosure: I have worked as The Baffler’s ad sales person from Issue 14 to present. It was a natural extension from my work selling ads for multilple publications, including Hermenaut, Loud Paper and n+1.)

Tom Frank will be visiting the Boston area on October 1at the end of a two-month book tour for an appearance at the Harvard Bookstore.

A   sophist named Andrew Stunich

In the Lawyer game he’s  really found his niche

Resource extractors he loves to enrich

Scraps  off Charlie’s table they do bewitch.

Unattributed quotes just a minor glitch

Defends chicken hawk cowards loitering  in Mich

He’ll twist the truth like a mortars hitch

With political rhetoric  based on fear and  kitch

At the mention of Muslim’s his face will twitch.

He knows that ,for  blowing up America ,they   have an insatiable itch

Regurgitates think tank drivel with a far right pitch

Jesus says “step all over Grandma if helps you  to get rich”

Helps the wrecking crew run America into the ditch

On Armageddon he’d like to throw the ignition  switch

Legendary studio musicians Carol Kaye (electric bass), Hal Blaine (drums), Don Randi (piano) and Chuck Berghofer (upright bass) will perform live in Los Angeles on June 28th.

This exclusive reunion takes place after the Los Angeles premiere of Denny Tedesco’s documentary movie The Wrecking Crew as part of the Grand Performances Program in downtown Los Angeles. According to Carol Kaye’s forum Glen Campbell and Nancy Sinatra will probably perform, too. Though this has yet to be confirmed.

In the nineteen-sixties Carol Kaye, Hal Blaine, Don Randi and Chuck Berghofer were part of a big group of Los Angeles studio musicians – many of them jazz musicians – who worked day and night in the music studios. Together they left an indelible sonic mark upon thousands of pop songs, movie soundtracks and commercials. They actually were not a group. Studio musicians were all hired individually, usually by contractors. But because they performed together on famous records, music lovers and journalists often wrongly think that the studio musicians were a kind of a rock band.

Here’s just a small example of artists Carol Kaye, Hal Blaine, Don Randi and Chuck Berghofer played for together or individually: Beach Boys, Nancy Sinatra, Simon and Garfunkel, Elvis Presley, Henry Mancin, The Mamas & Papas, Connie Francis, Herb Alpert, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, James Brown, Sonny and Cher, Quincy Jones, Bobby Darin, The Monkees, Barbara Streisand, Diana Ross, Neil Diamond, Phil Spector and Motown productions and … OK, I think you get the picture. The list would go on and on.

You ask for more? Fine, here are some movie and TV soundtracks they played on: Mission Impossible, Planet Of The Apes, The Bill Cosby Show, Streets Of San Francisco, Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid, In The Heat Of The Night and, The Pawnbroker, Airport and, and, and…

Related links

• Electric Bass Legend Carol Kaye: L.A. Studio Musicians Were Never Called ‘Wrecking Crew’
• Chuck Berghofer And His Most Famous Bass Slide
• The Invisible Musicians Who Played On All The Sixties Hits
• ‘Variety’ Gives Music Docu ‘The Wrecking Crew’ Thumbs Up
• The ‘Wrecking Crew’ Movie – Documentary About L.A. Studio Musicians Of The Sixties