I just re-watched the Blues Brothers movie (the 1980 one). In that scene at Bob’s Country Bunker (they have both kinds of music!), the band drinks $300 worth of beer.
How much would a bottle of beer cost in a trucker bar like Bob’s Country Bunker?
From memory, here are the band members:
Jake
Elwood
Alan Rubin (Mr. Fabulous) (Trumpet)
Matt Guitar Murphy (Guitar)
The sax player who works with Matt (Sax)
Murph (from the Magic Tones) (Keyboards)
Willy Two Big Hall (Drums)
Tom Bones Malone (Sax?)
Donald Duck Dunn (Bass)
The other guitar player, from Murph and the Magic Tones (Guitar)
That’s 10 people, unless I missed someone.
It seems like $2/beer would be a lot in 1980, but even at that price, it’s 10 beers each.
Anyway, any estimates as to how much beer cost in 1980 in a place like that?
I think $2/beer is the absolute most it could have been. When I was in college in the late 80s in Pittsburgh, one place had a 25 cent beer/$2 pitcher night.
BTW, that second guitar player was Steve The Colonel Cropper. Any idea why they used Murph instead of Paul Shaffer? Better screen presence? Shaffer was on their Briefcase Full of Blues album.
Cleveland Indians had 10 cent beer night in the 70s. You can pretty much guess what that led to. There was a riot and the Indians had to forfeit the game.
I love how this thread is taking the “physics” of the Blues Brothers movie seriously.
Now, let’s see, if Jake was doing those backflips in his 30s (Belushi’s age at the time of the movie release), would he have needed help getting up, or even a walker, after his acrobatics?
And hey, what about the aerodynamics of driving off that unfinished bridge?
(Being from Milwaukee, we all cracked up… that bridge was half-done and hanging out in space like that for years).
Next, the quantum mechanics of Bill & Ted…
OK, but how much would a bottle of beer (import or domestic) have cost in 1980 in a bar like Bob’s Country Bunker? I was only 13, and I lived in Queens, so my experience wouldn’t count.
According to this, the average price of a pint was $1.42 in 1980. So, with today’s average being $4, according to that chart, the cheap bars here have beer at $2 a bottle, so I’d guess maybe 75 cents a bottle at a place like that? Maybe 50 cents if you’re lucky?
Man, you’re all kinds of helpful today. First, you confirm that I’m not insane about the tempo of Dazed and Confused, then you provide a beer price cite!
So, at $0.75/bottle, $300 comes to an impressive 40 beers per person! Maybe they were 3.2 beers.
This thread prompted me to read this great Vanity Fair piece about the history and making of The Blues Brothers. Belushi and his cocaine habit; Lew Wasserman and his rage at spiraling costs; racist theater owners…Im looking at you Mann Brothers. What a fun read.
What date did they play Bob’s Country Bunker? Early June. That means a long day, and the band arrived well after sundown. Call it 9:30-10pm.
When was mandated closing in Illinois in 1980? 2am? That’s a maximum of 4.5-5 hours of beer drinking.
That’s a beer per person every 7.5 minutes for 5 hours straight. Then subtract performance time. Hard to drink while you’re playing. At least 4.5 hours of that set were playing. So the band basically killed $300 worth of beer in 30 minutes.
