SOUNDTRACK: BLUE MAN GROUP Tiny Desk Concert #567 (September 26, 2016).
This Tiny Desk Concert is probably the most fun right from th get go.
It opens with three men in blue marching through the NPR offices. They go through backstage places, grabbing items. The go through the DJ booth and even interrupt Corva Coleman’s weather forecast.
They even pull Bob away from his desk as they set up. And then we see the blue men in action.
I remember seeing ads for Blue Man Group when I worked in Manhattan decades ago. But I never actually saw them (something i regret). And indeed, I’m not the only one who remembers their humble beginnings:
Josh Rogosin, our engineer for the Tiny Desk, first saw them in their early days, some 25 years ago at New York’s Astor Place Theatre. He told me how the Blue Men would retrofit some of their theatrical magic — including their custom-made instruments, confetti cannons and streamers — to fit this small desk space. instead of installing their entire signature PVC instrument, what ended up behind the desk was about a third of it. On the right side of the desk, their Shred Mill makes its internet debut: It’s a drum machine triggered by magnets that changes rhythm depending where they are placed on the home-made variable-speed conveyor belt. They also invented something called a Spinulum, whose rhythmic tempo is controlled by rotating a wheel that plucks steel guitar strings.
So the guys, covered in blue (closeup cameras suggests to me that they are wearing gloves and masks?) play a number of home-made instruments (you can read a full description on the instruments below). In addition to thw home made instruments, there is a Chapman stick bass guitar and a conventional drummer.
And they sure do get some cool sounds out of these items.
“Vortex” has its melody on the PVC pipes with the spinumlum and once the song really gets going in the middle, with the stick playing a cool melody and the cimbalon playing a sweet plucked melody, it’s really quite a pretty song.
For “The Forge,” the stick plays some cool scratchy melodies while two guys play the PVC tubes (I like that there’s a mirror mounted above them so you can see what they’re doing). The cimbalon is put to good use in more pretty melodies.
“Meditation for Winners” is hilarious. They play an old scratchy record with a really intense guy doing intense meditation. They play really catchy music behind it. They go into the audience and grab people to breathe in and out, and stretch. Or doing dragon breath. Then they chant a positive affirmation “I am the best at being relaxed.” The way the meditation goes from Namaste into something else is pretty great as are the confetti cannons.
This makes me wish I had seen them 25 years ago even more now.
[READ: February 15, 2017] Chew: Volume Twelve
This is the concluding arc to the amazing (and disturbing) series Chew. It covers issues 56-60 and includes Demon Chicken Poyo.
Chapter 1 begins with an introduction to Tony Chu, Cibopath. By now we know who he is and what he does–he eats things (or people) and knows the history of whatever he just ate. We are reminded that the only food that he does not get a psychic sensation from is beets.
The end of the previous book showed the death of Mason and his instruction that in order to save the world Tony must eat him. Tony does not want to (obviously) but he must. But the joke is on him because the last thing that Mason ate before killing himself was a big plate of beets–meaning he is totally blocking Tony’s abilities and that Tony will have to suffer through Mason’s long and tedious explanation of everything (this makes Colby crack up, which is quite funny). (more…)
I Just Read About That... 