Multichannel Messiahs
The Group members have a har d time understanding musicians who can 't be bothered to give surround a try. Goldman says, “I've asked a few artists, ‘Did you guys do a surround mix?' And they'll say, ‘Oh, yeah, yeah.' But then I find out they just hired somebody to throw something together. So the result doesn't have any of their artistry or passion because their label decided it's not a priority. But for us it's like, ‘This is our chance to do exactly what we want to do,' so we don't let the label decide.”


From left to right: the author with Wink, producer Todd Perlmutter, Stanton, engineer Andrew Schneider, and Goldman.

Nodding in agreement, Wink adds, “If people don't work hard enough on the surround version, it diminishes the whole category. If hack surround makes it into the catalog just on the weight of an artist's name, it's bad for multichannel music.”

The depth of the Group's frustration is obvious as they talk about the sad state of DVD-Audio. “We want music in surround to win, and to do that the artists have to get involved,” says Goldman. “Sure, there are market forces and the appeal of the format and all that. But the artists are the ones who have to make it happen. They have to let people know that multichannel music isn't just some corporate gimmick.”

Wink adds, “I want to tell other artists, ‘Come on, check this out .' They need to give it their attention and then tell other musicians about it. I'm talking about artists who reach a lot of people — more than we're going to ever reach.”

It's not that Blue Man's sales are shabby — the Audio CD went Gold and The Complex Rock Tour Live DVD went Platinum. (“That's a lot of videos for guys like us,” says Stanton .) But the Group members concede that the Pink Floyds and Radioheads of the world are in a better position to get the masses excited about surround.

“It's fun to be in this small pond, though,” says Goldman, “because we're never going to be able to compete with people's love of their old albums like Dark Side of the Moon. What we can do is focus on multichannel and say to people, ‘This album was created with this format in mind.' And that gets us up there with the big boys.”

Blue Man's Big Score
As music from The Complex has worked its way into Blue Man's stage shows, so has surround sound. This fall, they'll close their show at Las Vegas's Luxor hotel and move to a made-to-order theater in the Venetian that features a new wall-of-sound stage set and state-of-the-art surround.


The Group founders with the metal instruments — many homemade — they used for creating the score to the new animated movie Robots.

Meanwhile, the members of Blue Man continue to branch out beyond their theatrical roots. Their latest musical adventure is the score to Robots, the new movie from Ice Age director Chris Wedge. Written with composer John Powell (Shrek, The Bourne Identity), the music finds the Group abandoning the thumpy, bongy sound of their PVC creations for a new array of tinkly, crunchy homemade metallic instruments. (“Some of them actually look like robots,” Stanton points out.)

As we're wrapping up, I ask the Group if they'll do a multichannel album of their Robots music. They're not sure, but once the possibility is raised, the boys immediately run with it.

Stanton gestures toward the recording stage. “We had four percussion stations set up out there.”

“Right,” says Goldman, “and John Powell would stand in the middle of them to conduct, so it was already like a 5.1 setup.”

“We could add one more station,” suggests Wink, “so we could do a live mix.”

“Yeah, and we really should use these instruments again,” says Goldman.

If DVD-Audio died tomorrow, the members of Blue Man Group would find someplace else to channel their seemingly inexhaustible creative energy. And with the stream of new releases barely qualifying as a trickle, DVD-Audio's future does look bleak. But as long as Goldman, Wink, and Stanton maintain their childlike enthusiasm for the format — that Forrest Gump thing — and continue to sing its praises, they can buy it some badly needed time.