• printer friendly
• mail this article
• iPod format
• digg

Photo

  Blue Man Group (left to right) Matt Goldman, Phil Stanton and Chris Wink make up the Blue Man Group, which recently released a DVD of its music.

By Antero Garcia

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

When Matt Goldman, Phil Stanton and Chris Wink first created the Blue Man Group, they knew the characters weren’t just any ordinary, strange-colored, bald-headed men; in fact they’re quite picky when it comes to their music.

“Since we started the show back in 1991, we’ve wanted to do more music and record the music in the show, but we felt there was more in us and that the music could stand on its own,” Stanton said in an interview from the Blue Man offices in New York. “We really were very happy when we were nominated for a Grammy because we were recognized as music that could stand on its own.”

The group’s album “Audio” was indeed nominated for a Grammy for “Best Pop Instrumental Album.” Recently, the group re-released the album in a stunning DVD 5.1 surround sound mix.

The DVD mix is intended to be played in a five-speaker home theater setting and, according to the group, sounds much more vibrant than a typical CD that is recorded for two speakers. While listeners may be surprised to hear the improvement in the sound clarity, the trio claims that it is actually the form that “Audio” was intended to be heard through.

“It’s so many instruments and tracks,” Goldman said. “Every song has just about 48 different tracks. In stereo, you just cram these 48 tracks into two speakers.”

“We don’t necessarily believe that your five speakers should sound wimpy, so in the mix we gave equal weight to all five channels,” he continued. “It was a really great sound, but it made it so that I couldn’t listen to my stereo for about six months. After all that time of 5.1 stereo, it was just depressing.”

In addition to being nominated for a Grammy, Blue Man Group has also had the opportunity to perform at the prestigious awards ceremony alongside Moby and Jill Scott.

“It was awesome,” Stanton said. “It was the first time for us to work with a vocalist so it was just a great experience.”

“Moby wasn’t as big as he appears on TV,” Goldman added. “I don’t want to say he’s a shrimp, be he’s definitely not as big as he seems on stage.”

Before being noticed as a talented musical group, Blue Man Group was known for its unique theatrical show. With a funky mix of humor, music and audience participation, the show is currently being showcased in four cities – New York, Chicago, Boston and, most recently, Las Vegas.

While the the group initially wanted to open a show in Los Angeles, it was looking for a city with a large theater district and ended up finding it in Las Vegas, Goldman said.

With so many performances running simultaneously, the Blue Man Group has expanded from three Blue Men and three musicians to a 350-person company. Despite the large size, however, Stanton, Goldman and Wink still do much of the performing, including the Grammy performance, the Blue Man commercials for Intel and the album recordings.

When the Blue Man Group settled in its new home town of Las Vegas, the trio performed there as well, taking advantage of a larger theater to create more elaborate stunts.

“We did the first two or three months in Vegas,” Goldman said. “Right now we spend a lot of time in the recording studio and doing other projects, but performing is still near and dear to us.”

Despite all of the fancy stage technology and the massive amounts of Cap’n Crunch that the group uses on stage, at the center of each of the shows, as well as on “Audio,” lies the innate musical ability that each Blue Man possesses.

“There was something kind of ancient and primal about the character,” Stanton said. “When we brought the character to the stage years ago, he seemed like he would drum, so we looked for material that would be ancient and primal and modern at the same time.”

The group found that the material that best fits this description is PVC plumbing pipes, cut at different angles in order to create different pitches.

While the effect is a thrilling, resonating sound, getting each note’s pitch right has been a trying task, and tuning the pipes is difficult, Goldman said.

“There are so many weird properties to (the pipes). When the glue dries it makes the note a little flat. We’ve developed some good systems though. We have a screw at the end so that we can tune them more easily,” Goldman said.

Jennifer Judkins, UCLA’s assistant director of bands and a lecturer on music performance, commented on the group’s one-of-a-kind instrument.

“It’s an interesting crossover because the pipe provides the resonating body and you’re striking on it like a drum,” she said. “Since they are tuning the pipes, it adds a melodic quality to them. You can tell from the commercials alone that they are all musicians and know what they are doing.”

With the three Blue Man originators currently in the studio working on a sophomore album, the group does seem to know what it’s doing.

Ultimately, what separates the Blue Men from the boys, or at least from the non-blue theater world, is its authenticity.

“Performance art in the ’80s was so unemotional and when you go to ‘Phantom’ or ‘Les Miz,’ it’s all emotion and spectacle,” Goldman said. “What if we made something genuine? What if the Blue Man’s reaction was a real reaction? That’s what separates us from other shows out there and also what makes our show so enjoyable to perform night after night.”

MUSIC: The Blue Man Group’s album “Audio” is available both in CD and DVD format from Virgin Records. For more information on the Blue Man Group go to www.blueman.com.

Comments

Post a comment