Zen Haiku: Usability, General Topics & A Bit of Poetry by Chad Lundgren

Blue Man Group

I went to see Blue Man Group as couple of nights ago with my girlfriend Karen and her family. My two word review: very cool.

The opening acts were Tracy Bonham, who plays a wicked fiddle version of Led Zeppelin, among her other musical talents, and Venus Hum, which was more like Venus Ho-hum with their lead singer's voice barely audible on the first song and an incomprehensible drone or whine on the other tired techo songs. You can share in some of the crapiness by visiting their twitchy website.

The concert used huge video screens to have the audience do Rock Concert Movements such as #1 which is of course the head bob, and #3, which is the downward jump. Blue Man Group managed to simultaneously mock rock concerts, with a sarcastically large backing band, and throw a pretty good concert, all while keeping their trademark inventiveness and visual eye-candy intact.

I was worried for a second when they brought Venus Ho-Hum out again, but even they couldn't ruin a piece together with Blue Man Group that was a re-working of Cream's "I Feel Free". The ending was a resounding version of Baba O'Reilly that worked beautifully with Tracy Bonham playing some wicked fiddle.

No, I don't have pictures. I'm not that guy.

Posted by Chad Lundgren on Sunday, August 3, 2003 (Link)