Several weeks ago my son Christian and I were watching a Blue Man Group concert on TV. I'm not sure if he'd ever seen them before, and I'd never seen them do a full show before. We were both pretty captivated by what we were watching. In a weird bit of coincidence I saw on the news the very next morning that they were coming to Lexington in just a few weeks. Knowing it would excite the both of us, I made plans and got the tix.
In case you are not familiar with Blue Man Group, this is not your typical pop or rock or techno band. I don't know if they've ever had a song at the top of the charts. I know I don't hear them on the radio along with all the other big names. Their music is different in a lot of ways. The "front line" is made up of three "bald" guys in black jumpsuits. Their hands and face and neck and head are all a very deep and penetrating blue. (It's hard to picture I know.)
On the stage they are backed up by a band and singers. The blue men play instruments that are as hard to describe as their looks. Basically they've connected several dozen pipes (looks like pvc pipe) of varying lengths and widths that are sized to play different notes. They hit the pipes with huge mallets to create an almost techno sound. They have several other odd instruments that they play too. At a couple of points in the show the stage lights go down and they beat the tops of barrel drums that are filled with a fluorescent liquid. When they play them it splatters everywhere, including in the audience.
Even with all of that going on, I think the thing that fascinated me most about the whole spectacle was that these three blue men who looked almost identical were able to leave the thousands in the audience with a sense of individual personality without saying a single word - not one single word. Yet we knew which was the mischievous one, which was the responsible one and which was the instigator.
It's true. Sometimes actions do speak louder than words, and drums.
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