FACT TREK—The Death Slot (or: The Flying Fickle Finger of Fate)
- Thread starter Maurice
- Start date
Plenty of actual bands played their own instruments, that wasn't unique to the Beatles.
The point is that in the United States, bands weren't generally allowed to play their own instruments in studio recordings, even if they did on live tours (as the Monkees certainly did).
Source? That screams for a fact check.
@hofner @Christopher @Maurice @plynch @Neopeius @Ssosmcin
@JonnyQuest037 @The Old Mixer
If you guys take any interest in the Monkees, there's an item here you might have missed:
https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/star-trek-boots-seen-after-star-trek.310917/
and it involves an unsettled question. Thanks.
@JonnyQuest037 @The Old Mixer
If you guys take any interest in the Monkees, there's an item here you might have missed:
https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/star-trek-boots-seen-after-star-trek.310917/
and it involves an unsettled question. Thanks.
I'm only repeating what I've heard over the years. I don't have a source. This is a casual conversation, not an oral dissertation.
Translation: "I have no support for my dubious claim."
No. I've read it many places over the years; I'm frankly surprised you haven't heard about it before. It comes up all the time in articles about the Monkees. You can research it yourself like an adult who knows how to use the internet.
That is inconsistent with what I've read. Bands often played their own instruments in recording. They also augmented with session musicians. Sometimes bands didn't play at all on songs, instead using session musicians.
If the spores are a metaphor for drugs, you're right. But as straight science fiction, Leila had no control over her actions.
People are very clearly part of the spores' life cycle. When humans (and only humans -- suggesting a tailored weapon, perhaps) are infected, they have an overriding desire to abandon everything to live on the planet in the one environment the spores can thrive in. Each Enterprise crewman reacts the same -- they immediately want to beam down to the planet and live in a Berthold Ray-scathed environment within easy reach of the spores.
I'm not sure what benefit humans are to the spores, honestly. It seems they grow by themselves just fine, and it's not like they want to expand their reach -- if that were the case, they'd impel humans to transport them elsewhere. If you think about it, the spores actually make no sense at all.
It's a good episode, though.
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I have a love/hate relationship with this series. When it was at its best, it was terrifying and filled with paranoia. But it was a dead end series with an unsympathetic lead. It was so obsessed with being a clone of the just ended "The Fugitive" it couldn't go anywhere. Even the opening narration stresses David Vincent is an architect which has almost no importance to the format. Richard Kimble being a doctor was important. "How could a doctor take a life?" and "Kimble can't walk away from suffering" because of his oath. It opened up a lot of great plots. Being an architect? Why not a stock broker?
The show worked best as a guest star vehicle.
The point of this thread and many other Fact Trek threads are sourced, documented facts over hearsay or repeated myths. So in this case, asking for a source to back a claim isn't egregious here.
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This seems to be the biggest complaint people had about the show in the 'zines I read -- nothing but paranoia.
Fugitive and Invaders ran concurrently (I don't even know if it was certain Fugitive's fourth season would be its last).
Right. Fugitive was the answer to Route 66; Kimble being a doctor explained why he got involved, being a fugitive (and searching for his wife's killer) explained why he kept on the move. It was a brilliant setup, though I really liked Route 66, too, more than Fugitive, which I rank the second-best of the QM productions, after the first season of Twelve O'Clock High.
Michael Rennie's casting was brilliant.
Numerous American acts often did not play on their own albums (e.g., Elvis, The Beach Boys, Paul Revere and the Raiders, The Mamas and the Papas), or songs (The Byrds) with session musicians employed to give professional polish to their songs. It was not a rare occurrence in the production of certain kinds of American music.
When you make a dubious claim, the burden of proof is on you. I feel no need to research something that I know to be bullshit.
I don't think we're disagreeing.
Many acts employed session musicians. Many did not. The only debate would be on the number.I am not surprised The Mamas and Papas didn't do their own work. I have never seen them perform live on their own, EVER (in all the shows like Hullabaloo and whatnot).
The only time they actually performed (I think) was when they backed for Barry McGuire doing his performance of This Precious Time on Hullabaloo. That was AMAZING.
Whoops, thanks, I forgot my timeline. I've read they had an idea that they were gonna stop at that season, if not at the start, then as they went along. David Janssen was exhausted, you can even see it in the performances. The notion of a true finale was baked into the initial proposal. The series was kind of running dry by that time and the switch to color didn't really improve the series. For my money, it worked better as a monochrome noir series. They tried to jazz it up with more appearances of the One Armed Man, but a little of Bill Raisch went a long way.
For sure. We're very excited to watch it this summer!
A lot of shows had trouble with that transition, but to my mind, Fugitive was not one of them. It's a very modern, serious show, and filmed on-location rather than exclusively on sets. It's great seeing the world, "the real world" in color.
Perhaps some substantiation...
https://azpbs.org/horizon/2018/06/documentary-the-wrecking-crew-session-musicians/
Session players were bought into the studio for a number of reasons. Those in the band weren’t as skilled as musicians that they could hire to record. In the early 1960s there was only a single track so no one was allowed to make a mistake because everyone would have to start over. Most of the backing track from The Beach Boys in that decade didn’t actually feature any of The Beach Boys but session players instead.
Make of that what you will.
https://azpbs.org/horizon/2018/06/documentary-the-wrecking-crew-session-musicians/
Session players were bought into the studio for a number of reasons. Those in the band weren’t as skilled as musicians that they could hire to record. In the early 1960s there was only a single track so no one was allowed to make a mistake because everyone would have to start over. Most of the backing track from The Beach Boys in that decade didn’t actually feature any of The Beach Boys but session players instead.
Make of that what you will.
I looked over my albums at random for last year and started looking up bands.
Gary Lewis and the Playboys employed session musicians, but according to Gary, in an augmenting rather than replacing role.
Pretty sure The Cryan' Shames played their own instruments.
The Doors seem to have played their own instruments (early on -- of course, monstrosities like Touch Me had a whole freakin' band)
Tommy and the Shondells did their own playing.
Ditto The Young Rascals.
Herb Alpert, while not rock n' roll, certainly played his own music.
And started his own label (along with Stewart Moss -- "A&M")I'm not even touching the British bands, but I suspect the Stones, Who, and Kinks played their own stuff. Happy to learn otherwise.
Ventures and Shadows did their own stuff; that was kind of the point. Ditto Duane Eddy and the amazing Dick Dale (got to see him in one of his last concerts -- an absolute virtuoso).
This article lists some of the bands the Wrecking Crew worked with:
The Byrds, The Mamas And The Papas, Elvis Presley, Harry Nilsson, The Beach Boys, Sam Cooke, Carpenters, The Ronettes, Simon And Garfunkel, Frank Sinatra, and Nancy Sinatra.
And, of course, before '64, it was mostly singers over anonymous bands, so that'd mostly be session musicians. So there's another factor of this discussion -- what's the time frame? If we're talking specifically 1966-67, when The Monkees were excoriated for not being a "real band" then we're definitely in a transitional period.
Seriously? SERIOUSLY? You think that's an appropriate way to respond to someone?
