The Blues Brothers Band
Thebarton Theatre
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
There is a scene in the Blues Brothers movie when the eponymous Jake and Ellwood are putting The Band back together. They go to an empty dinner club to find a remnant of the group in musical purgatory -dressed in mulberry velour playing easy listening kitsch nobody wants to hear. Billed as Murph and the Magictones they epitomise the fate of all has-beens and nevers-were. Sadly, they also prefigure the “unique concept” of the Blues Brothers Band and Movie which has just concluded its national tour.
The Blues Brothers has been described as the most expensive Roadrunner cartoon ever made. Expanded from the Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi sketch on Saturday Night Live the movie blends homage to R’n’B- particularly the Stax sound of the Mar-Keys- with the kind of stunt slapstick that eventually led director John Landis to fatal disgrace in the twilight zone. Considered a wunderkind filmmaker after the success of Animal House, Landis really let go with the Brothers Blue. In an orgy of demolition he blew the budget from fifteen to nearly thirty-five million (1979) dollars.
The stunts were state of the art excess. In one scene Ellwood and Jake completely wreck a shopping mall. In the final chase there are three hundred collisions destroying more than sixty cars. Against warnings Landis ordered that his crew dynamite a petrol station (instead of using less explosive black powder) shaking an entire neighbourhood and blowing out the stained glass windows of a nearby church. The footage wasn’t even used in the final cut. When Landis saw the rushes of the Bluesmobile finally falling to bits he decided it wasn’t spectacular enough and demanded it be done again – at a further cost of several hundred
thousand dollars.
These days, despite the cameos by James Brown, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and John Lee Hooker, The Blues Brothers has lost most of its charm. Devotees still get out the black suits, the fedoras and the ray-bans but, with Belushi gone and Aykroyd at the fat farm, the movie now looks pretty much like the Eighties – an expensive mess that is still being paid for.
Besides, even if you love the Blues Brothers movie- and many still do- it turned out to be a very extended overture to the Return of the Band. And since most people already know every crinkle of the movie they also know it takes forever to finish. The crowd at Thebarton cheered the songs as if that might hurry things along – or magically conjure up the musicians themselves. Others just sagged into boredom as the cars piled up, the tanks coverged on Daley Plaza and Steven Spielberg pretended to be a minor public official.
When the credits finally began to roll and the Blues Brothers Band took the stage it was as a trio- Donald Duck Dunn on bass, Leon Pendarvis on organ and Steve Cropper on guitar- playing a thumping version of the Booker T classic (and Cropper composition) Green Onions. At last, we thought. But then the rest of the band appeared and patience frayed when Duck Dunn began extensive introductions. Just play some music will yer, yelled a wit who’d had enough foreplay for one night. Dunn, unable to get the message, mugged- `I don’t understand yuh, ahm from the South.’ And on he went. Ten in the band – five original Blues Brothers – Cropper, Dunn, Matt Guitar Murphy, Blue Lou Marini and the Al Mr Fabulous Rubin, augmented by Pendarvis, Birch Slide Johnson on trombone, drummer Steve Potts, vocalist Larry Thurston and, direct from cryonic suspension, special guest Eddie Floyd.
The whole ensemble lurched into a presentable version of Baby Elephant Walk – smart keyboards and strong, crisp horns. These good ol boys can play. Thurston took over with Gimme Some Loving and reminded us by contrast that, legends though Jake and Ellwood may have been, they couldn’t sing for toffee. All the same Thurston was staying in second gear. Eddie Floyd, the main man you understand, was still in the wings. Thurston gave a creditable Taj Mahal-influenced version of She Took the Katy and then the band started pumping the band’s new Red White and Blues album with You Got the Bucks, a clone by Marini and the diffidently satiric Blues in an Air Conditioned Room.Cropper and the horns sloped off and Matt Guitar took the spotlight for My Grief is Gone- playing that kind of interminable B.B.King riffing technically known as mucking around. At this point a show that had taken two and half hours just to get going, started seriously falling apart. The band hashed their way through Sweet Home Chicago and the Blues Brothers theme, Can’t turn You Loose, while the drum rolls gathered for Mr Floyd.
He swooped in with a medley of Wilson Pickett numbers- In the Midnight Hour and Land of a Thousand Dances. The Blues Brother ring-ins jumped on the stage again – a cheer squad in suits and shades complete with a six year old munchkin in full regalia. Eddie and Cropper dialled up 634 5789 (that phone number that’s been very good to them over the years) and the band went through the motions. Pendarvis prodded at the keyboard, Mr Fabulous looked glassy-eyed. Eventually, Eddie Floyd, half throttled by his body jewelery, launched into a ten minute version of his Greatest Hit, Knock on Wood. He worked hard, did Eddie. He knocked on so much wood he was sweating through his coat. But despite all the effort, it was not, as they say, much chop.
Someone sent out a flare and Mr Fabulous arrived back for a blast of brass on Soul Man and the band once again shuffled off stage. Larry Thurston returned for the first encore, What She Did, then Eddie hit the lead and up came the Blues dancers for a rattly finale of Everybody Needs Somebody. Introductions all round and the band took a bow for the fourth time. But not even the infectious riffs of a soul classic could mask the fact that this band couldn’t save an orphanage. Undeniably talented and unfailingly genial, they were, nevertheless, trapped in a desperate concept. Doomed to being their own tribute band, they were too bored to shake a tailfeather.
The Adelaide Review, April, 1993.