The Blues Brothers
“We’re on a mission from God.”
When I was younger The Blues Brothers movie always mystified me. It only seemed to come on late at night and I would almost always fall asleep during my attempts to watch it all — sometimes waking up at a later point in the movie in that weird sleep daze where it feels like you’ve been sleeping for hours but in reality it was more like minutes. Because of this, I always thought the movie was like 3 or 4 hours long and just… well, weird. “What is going on? Why is that little red car falling to the Earth?” But I always liked the music.
Now that I’m older, I can appreciate all the things in this movie that I didn’t understand as a boy. I get all of the jokes now and the music is even better than I remembered. I don’t dance much anymore but the closest I get is when I listen to “Shake a Tailfeather” from the soundtrack — I can’t help but move — of course, having Ray Charles on the track doesn’t hurt either… and the whole movie is a like a who’s who in rhythm and blues music — James Brown, Aretha Franklin, John Lee Hooker is in there for a second and Cab Calloway! It kind of makes me sad to think that, if it hasn’t happened already, a lot of those names will be forgotten by the coming generations which is why this movie is as important as it is funny. It’s a document of some performers that were/are/always will be legendary and it should be mandatory viewing in high school. Besides, where else are they going to learn how to defend themselves against Illinois Nazis?
Recent Comments