When The Blues Was Dues-Dan Ackleroyd’s “Blues Brothers-2000” (1998  ) With “Blues Brothers” In Mind  -A Film Review

DVD Review

By Zack James

Blues

It is not often that I, or anybody else at this publication has to “fight” over an assignment from Greg Green but in the case of the film under review Blues Brothers-2000 we were begging to be picked. (Usually reviewers are “running away from assignments like when Greg had his big idea that to “expand” our audience, to reach out to the youth we should start running reviews of Marvel/DC Comics film productions of their cohort of super-heroes and most of the older writers bucked before some buckled under or when he thought it would be a good idea to write book reviews of Harlequin-type romance novels. You get my drift.) Starting with older writers like Seth Garth, Josh Breslin and Sam Lowell who cut their teeth on the blues, country and urban, back in the early 1960s when what is now called classic rock and roll ran out of steam for a while and they were looking for something that spoke to their teen angst and alienation, what now would be called in the age of identity politics their oppression. Not only had they cut their teeth on the blues but when former site manager, then called administrator, Allan Jackson, several years ago put together a huge reflection series on the roots of rock and roll and such they were lined up overtime to work the project. A project that new site manager Greg had the sense to do an encore presentation of having the banished Jackson do the new introductions.

Of course no one from the older set, the 1960s cut their teeth set, picked up the blues on their own but had been guided along that path, as usual by Peter Paul Markin, the mad monk of their corner boy crowd in growing up poor Acre section of North Adamsville and something in the sound spoke to them. (In the interest of transparency which seems to be the watchword these days in all kinds of situations where before your word was your bond Markin always called Scribe was a very close friend of my oldest brother Alex but I was just too young being ten years younger to really remember much less be influenced by him like Alex and his crowd were.) That was the present at the creation tribe, the tribe that looked elsewhere when their foundation rock music crumbled for a while. Moving along to guys like me, not many of them here at this publication  whatever reason Allan had to keep the older guys around him especially a couple of years ago when he went over the deep-end with 50^th anniversary commemorations of every odd-ball event of their youth we grabbed onto the blues in the early 1980s when rock took another hiatus and we were scrambling from outlaw country music to Cajun-Zydeco and Western Swing to have a sound that spoke to us. A final grouping would include gals like Leslie Dumont and Laura Perkins, maybe Minnie Moore when she worked here, who didn’t live or die by the blues but who came to appreciate the sound second hand from their respective associations, their companionships is I think the word they use, with Josh Breslin and Sam Lowell. I won the “prize” for the very simple fact that I had recently written a review of the Neville Brothers and how Cajun-Zydeco music has been an important, if temporary, waystation in my own teen alienation and angst moments.                    

Maybe I should dig down a little deeper to explain how a retro-review of this film came about. Somebody mentioned that they had decided to watch the now ancient Saturday Night Live in order to check out Alex Baldwin’s rabid impersonation of one Donald J. Trump, allegedly the President of the United States or POTUS in tweet speak. Discussing that sent-up around the office water cooler one morning brought up, I think by Bart Webber, the start of the show back in the early 1970s with such now iconic comedians as Bill Murray, Steve Martin, Dan Ackleroyd and of course the late, lamented John Belushi. And that of course led to a discussion of the original Blues Brothers film where under the guile of an off-the-wall comic script John and Dan paid homage to the blues influences that had formed parts of their respective personas. The madcap adventures of the pair and a supporting cast of such blues, rhythm and blues, and classic rock and roll greats as Cab Calloway, James, please, please, please Brown, the recently passed on Matt “Guitar” Murphy and show-stopper Aretha Franklin (who came to the genre via her deep gospel roots) drove most of the action. Since that film had already been reviewed (by Seth Garth) the sequel was up for grabs once somebody checked the archives and found that former site manager Allan Jackson had not assigned anybody to do the film.               

Now a sequel, especially of an iconic film like Blues Brothers is a tough nut to follow although Hollywood seldom misses a chance to cash in on a blockbuster, and the producers Dan and John Landis (who co-wrote and directed both productions and again in the interest of transparency the latter who I worked with in the old Boston days at places like The Real Paper and the Phoenix) don’t really try to expand on the original concept. Part of the problem being, as dramatically pointed out in the front-piece dedication, that given the eighteen year interval between productions John Belushi, Cab Calloway and John Candy had all passed away.

That problem aside a certain context has to be provided and some continuity so naturally Dan, Elwood Blues, had to take a beating once he got out of stir in front of the old witch nun who gave the brothers hell when they were growing up in her orphanage. And a runt tagalong whom Elwood was supposed to “mentor.” Jesus was she totally crazy by then.

As the film opens once Elwood got out of that big house, got out of stir for whatever scam he got caught red-handed at, he automatically thought about starting up the band again. That gathering of the old crowd will drive the action for a while as these guys have grown long in the tooth and have “settled” down. But Elwood is persuasive, or maybe he was preaching to an already willing choir. With the addition of an out of work bartender at a strip club owned by one of the former band members played by John Goodman things are on the move. Almost. We need a short, well maybe not so short, diversion to put up a “brother,” a long lost son of old long gone Cab Calloway from his youth before he chained himself to that fateful orphanage and played “father” to the those two reprobates. Problem is this son is total Illinois state cop, a commander, and has no known DNA from papa on the blues scene. But he got “religion” at an out of doors revival stocked with plenty of well-known gospel singers- and James please, please, please Brown so before the end we have four men in black, the order of the day “uniform” for blues guys from a certain period. Well maybe three and one half, with the runt on that number thing.

Getting back on top though in the music game no matter the genre is a tough game and Elwood and mob slogged through the usual backwoods stops before hitting some pay-dirt in a battle of the bands down in the swamps presided over by some voodoo mama. A truly scary woman to set the heart beating. This is really what the film is all about-the homage to then still standing blues greats. The competition, a motley crew called the Louisiana Gator Boys just happens to be made up of B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Taj Majal, Junior Wells, Bo Diddley, Charles Musselwhite, Gary “U.S” Bonds, and a number of other lesser blues lights all first come to light for this reviewer via that blues records collection of my brother Alex cobbled together by the Scribe’s intelligence. In short, the last serious aggregation of blues greats still standing-then. Needless to say, Elwood and crowd who have their own not inconsiderable list of known blues greats like the late Matt Murphy lose to the “pros.”

The sad part of viewing this film at this remove is that many of the players seen in this sequel have also subsequently passed on headlined by B.B. King, Bo Diddley, Koko Taylor, and James Brown. My question, one which I intent to ask Alex when next we meet, is who will continue the tradition once that small coterie of white, mainly British blues artists like Eric Clapton from his youth fade from the scene as well. See this one to see what it was like when women and men played the blues for keeps. For when the saying “the blues was dues” meant everything.