Watching all those old clips of Booker T and the MGs on YouTube gave me an itch to watch the Blues Brothers film to see Cropper and Dunn in action again.  This evening I sort of scratched that itch and watched Blues Brothers 2000 instead.

The film comes in for a lot of criticism because its not as good as the original, but I like it.  The plot is a bit weak, but its essentially the same as the original and what you really watch it for is the musical performances.  Towards the end of the film I was getting depressed by recognising all the people in it who are now dead.  A bit ironic really as the start of the film makes references to characters in the first film who died before the second one (and where the performers themselves were dead) and the film is dedicated to them and John Candy.  In fact the whole franchise seems to have one of those curses on it and watching it now is a bit like watching Dad’s Army.

From the first film the casualties are Cab Calloway, John Belushi, Ray Charles, James Brown, John Candy, John Lee Hooker and Carolyn Franklin (Aretha’s sister who was one of the three backing singers in the soul food cafe scene).  From the second film there is James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Bo Diddley, Isaac Hayes, Billy Preston, Lou Rawls and Grover Washington Jr. and two of the three Ridgeway Sisters (Aretha’s friends in the car showroom scene). Also Kathleen Freeman (the nun in both films) is dead now.

If I was Aretha Franklin I would be getting worried…