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Category:    Home > Reviews > Concert > Instrumental > Electronic > Comedy > Blue Man Group – How To Be A Megastar Live! (DVD/CD Set/Rhino)

Blue Man Group – How To Be A Megastar Live! (DVD/CD Set/Rhino)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: B-     Extras: C     Concert: C

 

 

What is the Blue Man Group?  A joke?  A fraud?  An act designed to mock the audience?  Well, this is the kind of thing that happens to acts that seem like they are only pulling your leg.  If you must answer that question sooner, you can try this link for our coverage of the first title we received from them:

 

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/1557/Blue+Man+Group+-+The+Complex

 

 

A DVD-Audio format release, you can see the group is willing to push the limits of technology.  Though they are no DEVO or Art Of Noise, they have a following for how they take apart media and technology with a one-note point if that, though Jacques Tati has nothing to worry about.  Fans seem to get very excited about them, which you can witness in the new DVD/CD set How To Be A Megastar Live!

 

However, the fans often perpetuate the myth that all media is B.S. and that eventually complicates other issues, while the anti-B.S. stance can run al the way to an anti-individualistic realm which becomes a separate essay.  As for the band, as elaborate as their jokes, physical humor and other gags run, they are sadly a one-joke act.  They also do not believe in spontaneity, are not big fans of anything involving the counterculture and want to be Dilbert as hipsters.  Their “revision” of the Donna Summer classic I Feel Love epitomizes the backwardness.

 

The actual music becomes a joke too, not very memorable, but also with no other point.  The result is that audiences are made to think they are smarter than they really are, which is always a moneymaking ploy, but no matter what they seem to do, someone else (Firesign Theater, for instance) has done it better.  So needless to say this is for fans only, something that after a few encounters with the band, seems a valid summation to me.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image can be good at times, but has one too many occasions of motion blur and softness to be as good as it could in this format.  The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is better than the 2.0 Stereo on the DVD, and equal to the 16bit PCM 2.0 Stereo on the CD, which seems lacking on that disc.  Playback is good, but not great.  Extras include the CD if you wish to count it and we do not, the I Feel Love music video, Mono Makes A Plea – Save The TVs Campaign and Inside The Tube documentary (about 39 minutes) where the creators/actors discuss the formation of the band.  That was the best by default.

 

At least they seem like good guys!

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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