Twenty-five years later, The Blues Brothers still remains one of my top ten movies of all time. A new 25th Anniversary DVD Edition will be released soon, so if you’re looking to buy a Radical a early Christmas present, this would be it.

I can’t overstate the influence this movie and the Blues Brothers in general had in my life. I was just a 12-year-old kid back in 1980. I stayed up late Saturday nights to watch SNL, back in the Not Ready For Prime Time Players days. Dad was a musician, but I wasn’t so sure I wanted to take up music. I was a nerdy little kid, and had aspirations of becoming a rocket scientist. No, really; I was big into science and science fiction.

But then, late one Saturday night, Belushi (already my favorite from the Samurai Delicatessen skit) and Aykroyd appeared onstage as The Blues Brothers (and before that, as the Bees doing “King Bee”). After suffering through my father and mother listening to the Charlie Rich-themed country of the 70’s, I felt as if a light just turned on. That music! That train-like steady throbbing of Donald “Duck” Dunn’s bass kicking out the groove to “Can’t Turn You Loose”, followed by the Steve “The Colonel” Cropper guitar wailing the opening lines of “Soul Man” — this was MY music. And Duck Dunn, so cool in his shades and curly hair, smoking a pipe, hardly moving as he set the foundation, was my prophet of bass guitar.

I promptly purchased the “Briefcase Full of Blues” album the Blues Brothers released, recorded live at the Universal Amphitheater* as they had opened up for Steve Martin. I wore out two record needles listening to that album. The music convinced me of my calling on the bass, so much so that I joined orchestra in 6th grade just to play the double bass, and chose between the academically-weaker of the two junior highs in Nampa, Idaho, because it had a jazz band where I could play bass guitar.

I honed my chops on every track of that album, so much so that I can play the entire album’s bass parts and sing all the songs, from memory, in order, even including Belushi’s intros and ad-libs, and the short bit of tuning and diddling at the very beginning.

When the movie came out, I was in heaven. It introduced me to John Lee Hooker, James Brown, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, and Cab Calloway. It was like a blind man suddenly given sight! And the band! Matt “Guitar” Murphy! Tom “Bones” Malone! “Blue” Lou Marini! Paul “The Shiv” Shaffer! Steve “Getdwa” Jordan, Tom “Triple Scale” Scott! “And ‘Mr. Fabulous’ himself…” Alan Rubin! (I was destined to have a quotation-marked nickname.) The grit of Chicago, the cool camaraderie of musicians, the slapstick humor, the interaction of black and white folks; it all took me away to a place far from the humdrum lily-white ticky-tacky agrarian-based neighborhoods of my experience. I wanted to BE John Belushi. I wanted to BE Duck Dunn.

I have seen The Blues Brothers countless times, and could probably recite the movie from memory. On the other hand, Blues Brothers 2000 is a blasphemy and marks the moment I lost all respect for Dan Aykroyd. Like Highlander (another of my top ten), there can be — and SHOULD be — only one.

* “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Universal Amphitheater. Well, here it is, the late 1970’s going on 1985. You know, so much of the music we hear today is pre-programmed electronic disco that we never get a chance to hear master bluesmen practicing their craft anymore. By the year 2006, the music known today as the blues will exist only in the classical records department of your local public library. So tonight, ladies and gentlemen, while we still can, let us welcome from Rock Island, Illinois, the blues band of Joliet Jake and Elwood Blues… the Blues Brothers!” From memory, 25 years later.