Blue Man Group: The Complex Tour

Wow, the Blue Man Group performance last night was incredible! Justine, Brad, and I had second row center seats. They were technically row 4 seats, but the first and second rows were actually at the sides of the stage so there was only one row between us and the stage.

Here are some of Brad's pics from the show.

The first opening act was Tracy Bonham, who's an extremely talented singer, violinist and guitarist. The next act was Venus Hum, who had a really weird lead singer! She wore a big flower in her hair, red plastic glasses, purple dress with white, orange and green flower prints, large bright green bracelet, and no shoes. She danced around like a 5-year old kid and had a Björk style of singing in a few songs. Her first song sounded pretty bad, but it turned out that she was a really good singer and had a few pretty enjoyable songs.

While waiting for Blue Man Group to come out, there were two LED marquee signs on either end of the stage displaying messages that opposed each other. The left sign was the fun, laid-back sign ("Now is the time to go pee Or to buy some overpriced beverages"), while the right one was the serious boring sign dispensing facts about the internet. Both were bickering with each other ("The sign on the left is bitter because it did not make it into the show") and got the audience memebers to say things like "The sign on the right sucks". It was pretty cute!

The Blue Man Group performance was based on the idea of becoming a rock star. The show was an instruction manual teaching one how to be a rock star by following guidelines. Throughout the show the audience would be introduced to a rock movement:

Rock movement #1: The Head Bob
Rock movement #2: The One-Armed Fist Pump
Rock movement #3: The Jump
Rock movement #8: The Blackout
Rock movement #9: The Show
Rock movement #54: Bringing out the Guest Vocalist

There were many other rock movements including Saying Hello to the People in the Cheap Seats, The Fake Ending, and Getting Closer to the Audience, where the group had a camera look down a man's throat. At one point of the show they started playing their drums that splattered paint upwards. To create the music they used a creative variety of instruments like air poles, pvc tubes, and even a grand piano laid on its side for banging the strings. At the end of the show they were playing a backpack tubulum that allowed them to move around the stage and play and had rockets attatched to the sides. They later used those rockets to fire a mass long strings of confetti into the audience, which was really cool.