Mini-Review: “Song Sung Blue”

The film follows a Neil Diamond-Patsy Cline tribute act.

By Lindsay Eanet

Published March 2, 2008

Milwaukee is not the city one would normally go to in order to find the stuff of legends. Years of living in the shadow of its neighbor to the south, Chicago, hard-luck sports teams (does anyone ever go to Miller Park hoping for a win anymore?) and plenty of negative stereotypes of its residents as portly drunks.

But then again, Milwaukee does have Lightning and Thunder, the city’s most renowned Neil Diamond-Patsy Cline tribute act. Greg Kohs’s film, “Song Sung Blue,” chronicles the rebuilding of the band––consisting of husband-and-wife duo Mike (Lightning/Neil) and Claire (Thunder/Patsy) Sardina––after Claire loses half of her leg in a freak accident.

Kohs’s film is, above all else, a love story. It’s about a love for the inoffensive, romantic tunes of Neil Diamond, a love for performing, but even more it’s about the love between two people. Kohs captures the duo’s struggle with brutal honesty and rawness, not the turn one would expect to take in a film about Neil Diamond. It’s not so much about the music––except in a hilarious and uncomfortable scene where the duo performs “Forever in Blue Jeans” with Eddie Vedder at Summerfest––as much as it is about a couple overcoming the obstacles in life.

Kohs’s greatest strength is his ability to make the audience care very deeply about his subjects. He captures the couple and their children with unbelievable intimacy, showing them at their best and worst unflinchingly––even when a painkiller-addled Claire bellows at him to turn the camera off. And by bringing in two very real people and portraying them as such, Kohs creates the ultimate picture of the American rock star dream and the tenacity the duo has to continue performing in spite of health, family, financial and marital problems. And you can’t help but root for the band for going for their dream.

By the end, the audience became so attached to Lightning and Thunder, they couldn’t help but sing along to Mike’s solo version the film’s title track.