Saw Blue Man Group last night with my family. My expectations weren’t exactly high, but I left Kemper thorougly impressed by the group, both due to the surprisingly large audience they drew and the fact that the show actually proved to be a fairly compelling artistic experience.
Really, the arena was fairly full. Not sell-out caliber, but impressive nonetheless. I wouldn’t expect them to make such an impact, but for the past week I’ve overheard quite a bit of chatter about those wacky blue guys. What makes the group so interesting for so many people? For most, novelty. But having seen the show, I think there might be something deeper.
My theory: the Blue Men brilliantly give audiences the opportunity to experience the joy of actually watching the creation of sound. Many people can’t connect to the performers and typical rock shows because they aren’t necessarily musicians, and can’t really relate to, for instance, a guitar player beyond the fact that he is moving his hands up and down a fretboard and plucking. The Blue Men play simple, percussive, large instruments. For instance, the first number had the trio sliding and striking a length of large piping to produce various pitches, and eventually, a full blown song. Non-musical viewers can see the pitches being created, and the structure of the song can almost be visuallized by the various forms of the piping. Cool! Similarly, opener/collaborator Mike Relm makes turntablism relatable by showing clips from well-known films and both visually and aurally scratching them, extending the art of scratching beyond just noise into something more tangible.
I was equally impressed by the amount of artistic integrity the collective maintain, even while playing at, you know, packed arenas. The “How To Be A Megastar” show actually lampoons the “rock concert,” creating a massively-scaled parody, and even letting the audience in on the joke. Screens gave a series of instructions to attendees, calling for fist pumps and yelling and “waving your hands in the air like you just don’t care.” At the end of the show, they even called attention to the inevitable “fake ending” and the following applause, then more applause, then that lapse when everybody gets worn out, and then even more applause. How SMART. They make an arena show into a very arty deconstruction of the “concert.”
The show had its lulls, but I left impressed. Blue Man Group seems to have found a perfect middle ground between the performance art it was founded on and accessible entertainment for the masses. I APPROVE.
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