Word: albums
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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EVERY ART has its social commentator. Comic strips have Doonesbury and music has Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson. Listening to a Scott-Heron/Jackson album is an educational experience unrivalled by the "education" obtained from such sources as the makers of Dow Bathroom Cleaner, your local Emmy-award-winning eyewitness news team or your favorite daytime game show. It's an experience that gives insight into answers to questions the game show wouldn't ask or events the news team wouldn't cover. It's really a musical eyeglass cleaner...
John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, of NBC's Saturday Night and other fame, have released a gem of an album under the guise of the Blues Brothers, an act first spawned to warm up Saturday Night studio audiences a year or so back. Perhaps you have caught a couple of their subsequent appearances on the show, decked out in black suits, fedoras, and shades that would have done a G-man proud (circa 1962). Steve Martin, who guest hosted one show on which the Brothers performed, was sufficiently impressed to ask them to open eight shows...
...striking thing about this album is that, despite its comic appearances (for instance, the gloriously cheesy cover photos), it does not come across like Saturday Night, or Animal House, or even the National Lampoon's Lemmings. The music itself is, for the most part, surprisingly straightforward. With the immediate intention of recording the September concerts, Belushi and Aykroyd took the opportunity to assemble a band of stellar musicians who would back them up in thoroughly professional style. Their collective sound virtually overshadows the few attempts at genuine comedy, although this remains strictly a good-time album if there ever...
...year."). On "Soul Man" Cropper delivers the same great riff he's been playing for years, and fellow MG Duck Dunn's bass line is downright thunderous. " 'B' Movie Box Car Blues" and "Flip, Flop & Fly" are fine, though not up to the standards set by the album's other tracks...
...Brothers' road to the top, as told on the back cover, and the appearance and stage act of the band are intended to amuse. Some of the songs are in a light vein, as well. But Belushi and Aykroyd did not record Briefcase Full of Blues as a comedy album. Belushi is clearly out to prove that he is a singer, not just a comedian who sings a little. His performances here, along with his renditions of "Louie, Louie" and "Money" on the Animal House soundtrack and his famous Joe Crocker imitation, show just how good a rock and roll...