{"id":43083,"date":"2024-05-01T18:34:57","date_gmt":"2024-05-01T22:34:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/?p=43083"},"modified":"2024-05-03T18:35:16","modified_gmt":"2024-05-03T22:35:16","slug":"the-blues-brothers-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/2024\/05\/the-bookworm-sez\/the-blues-brothers-book\/","title":{"rendered":"The Blues Brothers Book"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The first time you saw it, you knew you\u2019d have to see it again.  You were obsessed with the comedy.  You couldn\u2019t get enough of the music.  You still remember the first-third-fifth time you saw the movie, alone or with friends, in a theater or on TV.  And in the new book, \u201cThe Blues Brothers\u201d by Daniel De Vis\u00e9, yours wasn\u2019t the only addiction that took hold.  As the audience quietly fidgeted and cameras readied on the night of April 22, 1978, no one was sure how the opening skit of Saturday Night Live would be received.  Its stars, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi had talked about starting a band together for years.  This would be their debut.  It would have to work.  And it did: the audience seemed slightly unimpressed by the Blues Brothers at first, says De Vis\u00e9, but they were \u201cstirred to jubilation\u201d by the skit\u2019s end.  Born in early 1949 to immigrant parents, John Adam Belushi grew up skirting discipline by making his mother laugh at his antics and his wit.  He deflected problems at school in the same way, but his clowning belied a straight-laced aversion to drugs and alcohol.  With a father who worked for the National Film Board in Canada, it\u2019s almost no surprise that Daniel Edward Aykroyd, born in 1952, would be drawn to the limelight.  A talented mimic, Dan began classes at a local Ottawa community playhouse at age twelve.  He briefly considered becoming a priest because his parents seemed to want it, but eventually the Aykroyds were told that perhaps Dan wasn\u2019t suited to the priesthood.  It was just as well.  Comedy was always his thing \u2013 in fact, he was working with Second City Toronto in the early 1970s when an \u201coddly proportioned, white-scarfed Albanian\u201d joined the troupe.  Aykroyd liked the guy, and he introduced Belushi to the blues.  The sarcasm and wit are still there.  The music sings to your youth.  Stream the movie this weekend and enjoy, but even if you\u2019re a longtime fan, you may be surprised to read the back-story of that iconic movie in the book that bears its name.  Author Daniel De Vis\u00e9 has a nice variety of obscurities to share in The Blues Brothers, and they extend well beyond both big and small screens.  He starts by introducing readers to Aykroyd\u2019s and Belushi\u2019s earliest influencers, blending in other Second City and SNL alumni and relevant people when appropriate.  This absolutely invites reminiscing.  The timeline for the movie can be lengthy and sometimes overly detailed, but the narrative seems fresh despite its age.  With the feel of a class reunion or like paging through your high school annual, this book will very much appeal to readers who can still quote the movie or sing its songs.  Start \u201cThe Blues Brothers\u201d book, and you\u2019ll be hooked, just like the movie.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first time you saw it, you knew you\u2019d have to see it again.  You were obsessed with the comedy.  You couldn\u2019t get enough of the music.  You still remember the first-third-fifth time you saw the movie, alone or with friends, in a theater or on TV.  And in the new book, \u201cThe Blues Brothers\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":43085,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-43083","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the-bookworm-sez"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43083"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43086,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43083\/revisions\/43086"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}