I just pledged to the Kickstarter campaign for a film called “The Wrecking Crew.” I saw a version a few years ago and loved it! It kind of felt like my LA life of seeking out musicians and hearing their stories. When people disparage Los Angeles, I always laugh because I know I get this: access to people who’ve been in the heart of shaping our culture just by proximity and a little curiosity. My father stoked this. He was a psychologist from Jackson, Mississippi, but he always kept an ear out for musicians he thought would inspire me and he could b.s. his way into about any backstage to facilitate a connection. The biggest coup was Stevie Wonder visiting us in Irvine when I was a little kid, but that’s a story for a different time. But it was meeting people like George Bohanon and engineer Cal Harris that kind of opened me up to the idea that people made music, worked hard and would generously share their experience and resources with you. It made creating music tangible – and these guys worked on “Let’s Get it On!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xs2kJn6PBE

Denny Tedesco started putting “The Wrecking Crew” together after his father, the great guitarist Tommy Tedesco, was diagnosed with terminal cancer to capture the stories of the musicians that played on so many of the classic records that came out of Los Angeles in the 60s and 70s. (For five straight years “The Wrecking Crew” were the players on the Grammy award winner for Record of the Year.) Like “The Funk Brothers” who played on the Motown hits, the musicians of “The Wrecking Crew” were the regional sound of pop music. The Beach Boys, The Monkees, Phil Spector, even Frank Sinatra and Simon & Garfunkel used “The Wrecking Crew.” It’s an awesome story and this film is like sitting down for an intimate conversation with the guys that were hustling from studio to studio humbly adding their expertise to music that’s become the fabric of the world’s cultural consciousness.

As a testament to the continuing value of the cultual product, it’s been stalled by licensing royalties. There’s so much cultural value in these musicians’ stories, that I’d really like to see it get a wide distribution.

Take a look and help if you can. (And if you join their mailing list, from their website, wreckingcrewfilm.com, you’ll find a thrilling collection of outtakes for music geeks!)

When I first met the legendary (Little) Jimmy Scott, I told him how I first saw him singing with Lou Reed on the “Magic and Loss” tour the day the LA Riots began. I told him how I’d only listened to that album once because every time I’d try again, I’d start to cry uncontrollably. I asked him how Lou could sing a song like “Harry’s Circumcision” in such a detached almost comic way. Jimmy looked at me directly in the eye, put his hand on my knee and said, “He doesn’t feel those things like us.”

Thank goodness for that. Whatever it was that Lou had, and it definitely made him sound like a jerk sometimes, it led him unflinchingly to a truth. One of my favorite Elvis Costello lines is, “The truth can’t hurt you, it’s just like the dark. It scares you witless. But in time you’ll see things clear and stark.” It seems Lou had no fear of darkness. And his stark portraits created a huge space for the listener’s empathy.

Howie Klein gave me a compilation that Sire Records was using to promote the upcoming “New York” album that started off with “Dirty Blvd.” then kicked into a retrospective beginning with “Heroin” by the Velvets. I was obsessed with it. I’d had the Velvet Underground Andy Warhol record and knew it was supposed to be great, but I never got it until I heard it all in context. Lou was the anti-baby-boomer. He took all the confusion of that generation and handled it introspectively. But he also kept in touch with the streets and the music that could transcend, if not on this plane, but further out. When I think of Lou I hear (one of his heroes) Dion sing, “Fly, fly, fly away” at the end of “Dirty Boulevard.” It’s one of the grittiest descriptions of New York imaginable, but the hope is still there in both music and lyric. Lou showed us the grit, but in that sober portrait, the transcendent always seemed possible.

Fly in peace.

Just stepped out to take out the trash this evening and could feel autumn in the air. I know those of you who come from places other than Los Angeles may be giggling at this. But it’s true. Even the subtlest of changes can inspire the feeling of heart soaring possibility.

So this is where I start. My site is new. It feels fresher, cleaner. I get so much of my inspiration in the shower, I don’t know why exactly but since I upgraded to a ShowerHeadly shower set up, I can feel even more songs coming to me.

As a song changes from performance to performance, there may be changes, different riffs we’ll explore before the next site comes along (probably sooner than the four years it’s taken for this wholesale redesign to come about). But this is the foundation from which I hope to reach you for the next piece of time. Hopefully things will make you laugh, smile, breath and maybe get you off the web and into action occasionally (perhaps that includes coming to a show – Angelenos, there is one October 26 in Glendale at Left Coast). I’m hoping it will inspire me to interact more regularly with you in a place away from Facebook (though I’ll stay active there). And I’m hoping to bring more music and other musings to fire our senses. Life is good!