Blue Man Group
IN LIVING COLOR
With The Complex, the Blue Man Group Get Deep -- and Deeply Funky, Too
Fifteen years ago, they were just three guys with a penchant for wearing blue paint. Now that they're a multinational touring machine with more than 500 employees, it seems the Blue Man Group fill a previously vacant niche somewhere on the frontier of performance art, rock band, and cottage industry. The three-man troupe -- Chris Wink, Phil Stanton, and Matt Goldman -- have grown in scope over the years, but they've never abandoned their initial concept: the exploration of isolation and the interactions of modern society, topics that feed directly into The Complex. It's the men in blue's second album (the first was the Grammy-nominated Audio), but The Complex is their first to have both lyrics and a consistent theme. With the help of many musical friends -- including musicians that have worked with them in live performance as well as nonaffiliated fans such as Dave Matthews, Esthero, and Tracy Bonham -- the Blue Man Group have created a richly layered disc that's both playful and provocative, intriguing even if you don't have a libretto in hand. The Blue Men painted Barnes & Noble.com's David Sprague a vivid picture of what's behind The Complex.
Barnes & Noble.com: What, in a nutshell, is the concept behind the new album?
Chris Wink: The word "complex" has a lot of different definitions. First, there's the idea of the city, which, at this point, is not really a tribe or community; it's an assembly of dwelling units in proximity to each other. One of the things the Blue Man is doing is mourning that, the loss of the tribe, the loss of the connection, the primal. To the Blue Man's eyes, the city is an odd place where everyone is alone. The complex is also used to describe a psychological state, like getting a complex. In the song "Persona," the person is singing about that, about needing to put a mask on to get through the day: He needs to wear it to fit into the complex, but he also finds it's giving him a complex. We were designed, as creatures, to live in the hunter-gatherer period of the late Paleolithic era, and there's always going to be this disconnect, this haunting little voice telling you there's some more essential you that leads back to that.
B&N.com: I know your initial shows were largely silent. Is this the first time you've worked with lyrics to any great extent?
Phil Stanton: This is the first time we've experimented with lyrics. We've always had a version of "White Rabbit" in the set, as sort of a sing-along for the audience. When it came time to record a new record, we knew we wanted to do a version of that song, so we needed a singer. One day, Chris came in with the song "Sing Along," and that was the first one that had a real structure, and it spun off from that
CW: We look at The Complex as the secret key to what we've done over the past 15 years. It's kind of an unmasking of some of the themes that lurk below the surface. In the shows, things aren't really spelled out, and I think a lot of people were confused by the idea that they would be. From our perspective, it's the people out in the city that the Blue Man is exploring that are doing the talking, and that gave us the chance to put words to thoughts that have been there all along.
B&N.com: "Sing Along" is an interesting song. What was the basic thought behind those lyrics?
CW: It's a simple thing that just flows off the tongue easily: "If I sing a song, will you sing along, or should I just sit here singing by myself." You can hear that and not think too much about it, but on closer inspection, we were trying to create a situation of someone trying to connect. The third verse is more about following along. At what point do we feel we've been validated?
B&N.com: And "The Current"?
Matt Goldman: We've all had jobs that took us away from what we really wanted to do, and seemingly away from the human experience. We pictured that as a job below the surface, in the bowels where all the Internet wires are moving current. They go down, down, down, making sure everyone else can communicate with each other, but they have no one to communicate with. It can be like that being on the Internet, all alone, but with the world at your fingertips.
B&N.com: How did you go about putting the vocal collaborations together?
MG: We didn't seek out singers until the songs were basically done. Sometimes, the singer would bring additional ideas to the table, and, of course, you have to help them make it their own for it to be a real collaboration. On something like "Sing Along," there were multiple collaborations. The rhythm track was programmed by Dan the Automator -- and we usually stay away from programming, since we are a percussion-based group -- but we thought it was neat to get away from our normal comfort zone. We had Dave Matthews come in and do harmonies with himself, and that took him out of his usual comfort zone, which he liked doing.
B&N.com: You seem to actively encourage that in your audiences as well, with participation and such.
CW: Audience participation has been given a bad name by both the stand-up comedian who makes fun of an audience member and the sort of performance art that's going to be super scary by busting through the fourth wall. We don't try to do audience participation per se: We see the Blue Man as overseeing a ritual. There's a desire to connect with the audience, whether that means walking out into the audience or simply making eye contact while performing to them. The Blue Man wants to build the audience's confidence, wants to connect to each person.
B&N.com: Will you be staging this as a live performance?
PS: The approach is really layered. Because we make shows, the entire time we were writing and recording the CD, we were also writing the show and planning videos, both broadcast videos and videos that could be used during the live shows. There will be videos in the tour that will be different than the ones used on the DVD. It'll allow you to completely immerse yourself in the work.
April 29, 2003
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