Blue Man Group

Blue Man Group Berlin with examples of their PVC instruments

Blue Man Group is a creative organization centered on a trio of mute performers that present themselves in blue paint, latex bald caps, and black clothing. Friends Chris Wink, Matt Goldman and Phil Stanton (collectively referred to as CMP) conceived the idea during the 1980s while in New York City. They began appearing on the streets in Blue Man regalia, entertaining passersby and staging unusual events such as "The Funeral For the 80s." Originally appearing doing short bits as part of Tom Murrin's "The Alien Comic's" underground cabarets in "The CLUB" at La MaMa Experimental Theater Club, Meryl Vladimer, then Artistic Director of "The CLUB," liked what she saw in their work and comissioned Blue Man Group to create a full-length show. The resulting piece, "TUBES," took off after Vladimer persuaded The New York Times critic Stephen Holden to review it. Blue Man Group's popularity continued to snowball, eventually winning CMP an Obie Award and a "Lucille Lortel" Award, which led producers to take the show to off-Broadway. "TUBES" opened in 1991 at the Astor Place Theater. This critically acclaimed show, as well as frequent appearances on The Tonight Show, enabled CMP and Blue Man Group team to open similar productions and expand their concepts into other kinds of performances.

Theatrical productions

Blue Man Group's theatrical acts incorporate rock music (with an emphasis on percussion), odd props, audience participation, sophisticated lighting, and large amounts of paper. It is also noted for having a "poncho section" of the audience; in the front rows, audience members are provided with plastic ponchos in order to protect them from various foods, substances, paints, and so on, which get thrown, ejected, or sprayed from the stage. The shows are family-oriented, humorous, energetic and often employ thought-provoking satire on modern life. Much of the humor breaks the fourth wall, for example, interrupting the show to ridicule latecomers in the audience.

List of theatrical productions

"Tubes- Rewired" in New York at the Astor Place Theatre (1991—)
"Tubes- Rewired" in Boston at the Charles Playhouse (1995—)
"Tubes- Rewired" in Chicago at the Briar Street Theater (1997—)
"Live at Luxor" in Las Vegas at the Luxor Hotel Theater (March 10, 2000–September 15, 2005)
"bluephoria" in Las Vegas at The Venetian (October 10, 2005—)
Berlin at the Theater am Potsdamer Platz (2004—)
Toronto at the Panasonic Theater (June 20, 2005—)
London at the New London Theatre (November 2005—)

Musical instruments

As the shows evolved, Blue Man Group developed a set of custom musical instruments, many designed from the observation that common materials, such as PVC pipes, make interesting noises when struck. The group has invented several different instruments used in their shows and audio recordings. Listed here are a few of the more common and well-known ones.

PVC. The PVC is an instrument made out of 2" PVC pipe. The pipes are cut to exact lengths and the Blue Man plays the instrument by striking one of the open ends with a closed-cell foam rubber paddle. In the live shows, three separate PVC instruments are used, one for low, mid, and high octaves. This instrument also comes in a "backpack" variety for portability, which comes optionally equipped with confetti/streamer shooters. The "floor" PVC units are generally painted with phosphorescent dye invisible under normal lighting conditions, but of visibly different colors under ultraviolet light. During a performance, levels of such are generally adjusted to give the PVC the appearance of changing from white to colorful.

Tubulum. Similar in concept to the PVC, the tubulum (tuːbˈ.juː.lʌm) uses 4" PVC pipe and has cardboard or rubber "reeds" on the end that are struck with drumsticks. (These drumsticks are held reversed; it is the handle of the stick striking the tubulum, not the head. This can be observed in a live performance of Your Attention, in which one Blue Man alternates between drums and a tubulum; he retains the same drumsticks, but flips them when moving between instruments.) This gives the tubulum a more "updated" sound than the PVC; in fact, the synthesizer-like sound quality of the instrument inspired Blue Man Group's cover of "I Feel Love" by Donna Summer. The tubulum is designed for playing bass notes, so the tubes must be sufficiently long to generate the low sounds. Because of the unavoidably large size of this instrument, the performance venues for the theatrical shows in New York, Boston, and Chicago are not physically large enough to contain it. A more compact tubulum was used on the Complex Rock Tour (& in the video for "I Feel Love"); the tubes twist around for extra length, below the frame that holds the tube "heads". A backpack tubulum, with the same streamer-launching abilities of the backpack PVC, is used in the Las Vegas, Berlin, Toronto & London shows.

Airpoles. Airpoles are hollow fiberglass boat antennae of various lengths. The instrument is sharply swung to create a "swoosh" sound. These instruments come in three varieties. Sword airpoles are short and held on the end like a sword. Wiper airpoles are longer versions of sword airpoles. Angel airpoles are very long and are held in the middle so that both ends move in unison to create rhythmic sounds. This is supposedly one of the most difficult Blue Man instruments to learn, as it requires very precise muscle control that can take a long time to develop. Unlike most of the other instruments listed here, airpoles were not, strictly speaking, invented; they were discovered when one of the founders of the group swung a boat antenna through the air while experimenting to find new instruments.

Drumbone. The Drumbone is another instrument made from large-diameter PVC; this one uses two movable sections to alter the pitch. One Blue Man plays the instrument with drumsticks, another moves the horizontal slide, and the third Blue Man moves the vertical slide. The Drumbone is only used in the song of the same name, which is an audience favorite. Blue Man Group used a special Drumbone shaped like the number 4 for the Intel Pentium 4 commercials.

Drumulum. The Drumulum (drʌmˈ.juː.lʌm) consists of a drum and a sliding PVC pipe (or "ulum") under the drum. The length of the tube determines the pitch of the drum.

Hammered Dulcimer and Cimbalom. Although they are not inventions of the Blue Man Group, these instruments are played with drumsticks rather than the usual felt hammers. This gives the instrument a much move aggressive sound with a sharp attack. Because of the nature of Blue Man Group's music, only a few notes of each instrument tend to be used on any given performance; to minimize the odds of sour notes, multiple adjacent strings are generally tuned to the same note [1].

Chapman Stick. Used in the backup band, the Stick is most notably heard in the "Mandelbrot" series of songs (of which there are 4), "Synaesthetic", and "Your Attention". In addition to "tapping" the instrument, the Stick player also "bows" the lowest two strings (with a .110 gauge bass string cut approx 10" long) in the "Mandelbrot" songs.

Zither. Blue Man Group uses a custom-built electric zither, most notably in the chorus of the track "Sing Along". Along with the Chapman stick player & drummer(s), the zither player fills out the "basic" backup band for Blue Man Group. Another zither used is called the Pressaphonic, which has 86 strings & is played by pressing down on the strings with a glass slide. This instrument supplies the main riff in "Rods & Cones".

Dogulum. This instrument is "played" by taking Chris Wink's dog and stroking him rhythmically until the dog enters a state of Zen-like complete contentment; the dog is then recorded, and the vibe is included on the album mix.

Piano Smasher. The Piano Smasher is a piano stripped down to its frame and stood up on its side. It is played by hitting the strings with a large soft mallet, resulting in a clangy, almost discordant sound. In live performances, this instrument is generally played with a MIDI system, using sensors behind the strings, as the instrument goes out of tune very quickly. Each Piano Smasher is tuned to only one or two notes, as it would be otherwise impossible to get anything resembling a musical tone from the instrument.

Shaker gong. A Shaker Gong is a matrix of ball bearings inside a steel casing, suspended from a frame by surgical tubing. It is struck with a mallet to produce a sharp, lingering sound vaguely reminiscent of a rattlesnake.

Gyro Shot. This was a failed instrument from the Audio sessions. It consisted of ball bearings inside spinning tubes. Although it looked futuristic, the only sound Blue Man Group managed to get from it was a weak rain stick-like sound.

Music and tours

In 1999, the group released their first audio recording, appropriately called Audio. Although it contained the music from the venue production, it was less of a soundtrack and more a collection of full-length instrumentals that featured the new instruments. The group participated in Moby's Area2 tour in 2002, giving a more rock-oriented performance than in the theatrical shows. Songs developed during this tour appeared on 2003's The Complex. Unlike its predecessor, The Complex featured a variety of vocalists including Tracy Bonham, Dave Matthews, Gavin Rossdale and Venus Hum. The record spawned its own 2003 tour, the first headlined by the Blue Man Group. The tour cleverly deconstructed the traditional rock concert experience into its often clichèd parts and was later chronicled on DVD in 2004.

Appearances and other work

When Blue Man Group was still solely in New York, they ran a variety of fake advertisements in The Village Voice.

Since 1992, Blue Man Group has appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno 16 times, most recently on 6 October 2005.

The group achieved widespread visibility when they appeared in an Intel advertising campaign for Pentium 3 and Pentium 4 CPUs as well as Centrino technology (Centrino advert).

Blue Man Group also "appeared" on animated tv show The Simpsons as part of one of the couch gags, had guest appearances in The Drew Carey Show, and appear in an informational video played continuously at security checkpoints in McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, NV. Throughout the entire second season of Arrested Development, a running subplot was that of Tobias Fünke (David Cross) attempting to join the group. The group themselves were featured at least once. The Blue Man Group was also parodied in the Family Guy movie, Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story where Peter mentions that he and Lois went to Las Vegas to see the "Jew Man Group".

In 2005, the group collaborated with artist David LaChapelle and produced several new images for upcoming ad campaigns, including their show "bluephoria" at the Venetian in Las Vegas. These images are radically different from any of the group's previous advertising and can now be see on the official webpage.

In December 2005, Blue Man Group appeared at the Royal Variety Performance in Cardiff, where they performed I Feel Love with Katherine Jenkins on vocals. They also created a piece of Yves Klein-inspired art by daubing comedian Joe Pasquale in paint, attaching him to a pulley, and swinging him against a large canvas; Blue Man Group also performed their popular "spin art/marshmallows" skit. Videos of each of these segments are available on the Blue Man Library (see link below).

Blue Man Group also provided music for two movies. "The Current" was featured on the soundtrack for Terminator 3 and Blue Man played various percussion instruments on the score of 2005's Robots.

Community

Blue Man Group has a large following comprising a diverse group of fans from all over the world. The community is centered on the message boards on the official website, as well as fan-based web sites like Blue Man Library. Blue Man Productions, the company responsible for Blue Man Group, has been extremely supportive of the fan community. Blue Man Group employees will often post messages exclusive to the fan base and participate in regularly scheduled chat sessions at Blue Man Library.

Controversy

Announcing their debut in Toronto, Ontario in 2005, the Blue Man Group attracted considerable controversy for opting not to use unionized workers for their show, which many labor groups regarded as being highly unusual for a show of its size in Canada.

Their June 20, 2005 premiere in Toronto was picketed by members of the Canadian Actors' Equity Association, the Toronto Musicians' Association, and two locals of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.