Blue Man Group’s music can stand up on its own
By Daily Bruin Staff
April 29, 2001 9:00 p.m.
 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.
