Under ordinary circumstances one would not expect to find musicians playing PVC pipe and might even go so far as to expect self-proclaimed “rock musicians” to do their own singing. Beyond this, one would not expect to find mimes donning blue grease paint with a large backup band to be remotely interesting. However, Blue Man Group outright defies these expectations and manages to transcend the usual age stratification that most other music groups have.
Perhaps that’s why they played to a full house at Saratoga Performing Arts Center last Saturday, in spite of unexpectedly chilly weather on the second to last stop of their Complex Rock Tour. The fame they garnered from the series of Intel processor ads may have had something to do with it as well. But this show had much more depth than any commercial the Blue Men ever did.
The first opener was Tracy Bonham, whose voice is vaguely reminiscent of Sarah McLaughlin. While mostly relying on a keyboard and two acoustic guitars throughout her set, Bonham also played the electric guitar and violin for some of her songs. In an attempt to set her band apart from Blue Man Group there was also a “Rock ‘n Roll spoon solo” by keyboard player Peter Adams.
Bonham was received fairly well by the audience (not nearly as well as Blue Man Group), although none of her music particularly stands out when looking back. It was definitely obvious that she was having fun with her performance.
The second opener, Venus Hum, instead of having fun with their performance, actually seemed to be a part of their music. Annette Strean, the lead singer for the group had nothing, if not a lot of energy and enthusiasm for her art. Her music had a techno/artsy/bohemian feel to it and was a lot more overwhelming than Bonham had set the audience up to expect.
The material for the songs was not particularly weighty—it was more or less just fun. The audience reacted more favorably to her, but that could also be because they were getting antsy while waiting for Blue Man Group to finally put in an appearance on stage.
Once Venus Hum left the stage, there was a little audience-interactive fun with teleprompters while the stage was set up for Blue Man Group. There was a little left versus right teleprompter action going on throughout intermission.
And as the teleprompters finally turned off, “Rock Concert Movement #8—The Blackout” was projected onto the curtain as the lights dimmed, and there was much rejoicing from the audience. Shortly after the Blue Men started dropping onto stage behind the curtain, lit by a simple white strobe light, they started playing their PVC pipe.
The theme of the show was how to put on a good rock show, so various Rock Concert Movements were peppered throughout the performance—from the basic head bob to getting a closer look at the audience (which involved a camera trip down the throat of a person).
On first look, the setup of the stage appeared to be fairly straight-forward: There was a raised platform where the musicians all played, smaller drums on either side of the stage, the exposed insides of a piano, PVC pipe instruments, and a large drum.
The lighting was pretty simple for the most part, but during certain songs the set revealed hidden features—for instance vertical lighting panels throughout the platform that housed the band. There also was a horizontal lighting panel across the bottom of the stage and lighting inside the smaller set of drums that lit dust as it bounced into the air when the drums were hit in WinAmp visualization style.
Throughout the performance Tracy Bonham was brought on stage to sign in accordance with “Movement #15—Bring up a guest vocalist,” adding a new dimension to the vocal stylings of Peter Moore who was also playing keyboard. Strean, wearing a dress that had various horizontal strips that lit up, also made an appearance due to “Movement #63—Bring out Venus Hum.”
Shortly thereafter Blue Man Group pulled “Movement #78—Fake Ending,” and just walked off the stage. When they returned to stage they were wearing PVC pipe instruments that had lots of black tubes connecting the pipe to the amplifier on the back looking like something that could have come out of Ghost Busters.
Overall, the show was nothing short of amazing. There was a lot of audience interaction, introduced in “Movement #27—Say hello to the people in the cheap seats”—and “Movement #28—Get audience member on stage to dance”— and in the last song which combined “Movement # 1—Basic Head Bob,” “Movement # 2—One Armed Fist Pump,” “Movement #3 - Up and Down Jumping Motion,” and “Movement #6 - Two Arm Upward Thrust with Yell.”
The Blue Man Group definitely played to the audience while spoofing on everything that a typical rock concert might contain. If you ever have the opportunity to see one of the shows put on by one of the Blue Man Group troupes, definitely take advantage of it.
