Blues Brothers - 30 Year Anniversary in 2010

I've written about Breaking Away as an important movie in my life, inspiring a fascination with racing bicycles, Italy and la dolce vita.

That was 1979. Here comes 1980. Last year of high school, and The Blues Brothers hits our NZ screens.

A year ago I rented the original 1980 movie to watch with Noah (with handy ear covers ready for the obvious bits), and was pretty disappointed. Sound was so-so, the picture was grimy, and the story hinged on the high points of musical performance, plunging into dull periods of conversation and inaction.

I recall yawning and reminding myself that memories can play tricks on you.

We rented it again tonight.

And discovered to our joy that John Landis has managed to pull together an extended edition with remastered sound, new scenes and extended dialogue in various places. It's back to being a classic!

What a tragedy that the original cut, tested in a movie theatre in Los Angeles and declared by studio executives as "only going to attract a black audience", has been lost forever. They forced Landis to shorten the movie so it required no intermission.

With its 30th anniversary next year, it's time to celebrate what the Blues Brothers did to create an interest in the blues for people like me as far from Chicago as it is about possible to get on this planet. This must be the greatest B-movie ever made, with more superstar cameos than the V&A museum cameo collection.

And to file under 'subliminal influence', Ray's Music Exchange (with the subsequent 'Shake Your Tailfeather' dance spectacular) has always been my favourite scene - check out which guitar the kid is trying to steal when Ray shoots 2 well-placed warning shots into the wall from the other end of the shop!








That's pretty much how I would have looked if I hadn't been able to take my black stratocaster that fateful day in April! And why going into music shops can be such fun when there are people browsing the shelves around you who, despite not being Ray Charles, Steve Cropper or Donald Duck Dunn, could highly likely still light the place up in an instant.

“It's 106 miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses.”

“Hit it.”

Movie Review: Live Forever

So that's what happened in the 1990s.

I think when our little boy Noah asks the inevitable "what was it like last century Dad?", I will likely give him this DVD to watch. Provided DVD players still exist by the time he gets cheeky enough to ask such a question.

If I remember correctly, the 1970s were basically an oil crisis with rock music, the 1980s were an economic crisis accompanied by punk rock music, and the 1990s were a decade of better things, with at last some hope for the future.

The internet, mobile phones, cheap air travel, and the joy of being thirty-something.

Live Forever, the rise and fall of Britpop (made in 2003) tells the story of the UK before the year 2000 with a narrative knitting together the emergence of post-Thatcher liberal politics, personified by the young Tony Blair; music from Oasis, Pulp and Blur providing the soundtrack; Jarvis Cocker proffering the decade's street philosophy; London emerging as a fashion powerhouse again; and artists like Damien Hirst shoving dead sharks in tanks of formaldehyde to shock the art establishment globally.

The humour and drama that emerges from this video's astonishing interviews with the Gallagher brothers makes the whole thing worthwhile on its own. But you also get the reflective Damon Albarn of Blur, the insightful Jarvis Cocker (Pulp), and brilliant Ozvald Boateng - whose fashion sense fueled the whole 'Cool Britannia' sensibility, clothing and beyond.

My prized souvenirs of the era are memories of trips to London as a wide-eyed kiwi boy accompanying my fashion and street-savvy wife Lesley, plus a beautiful, tailored, purple shirt. Ozvald Boateng of course.