Blue Man Group

The official Blue Man Group website, Blueman.com, states, “Blue Man Group is a creative organization dedicated to creating exciting and innovative work in a wide variety of media.”

Sometimes musicians are creative. Other times they are original. Occasionally they smash thru the basic trapping of genre rules and create category defying experiences unlike any other. The critically acclaimed Blue Man Group is just such a performance experience.

Perhaps you first saw BMG on those unique Intel Pentium television commercials, or maybe you have seen them on one of their numerous “Tonight Show” appearances, (13 to date, see www.bluemanlibrary.com). Or maybe you were one of the lucky ones to see their crowd pleasing set on “Moby’s” AREA 2 tour in 2002. Perhaps you have visited one of their permanent locations and witnessed their great theatrical performance. Where ever you may know them from, their trademark cobalt grease paint faces, funky yet technical performances and PVC drums leave an indelible impression.

The founding three members of BMG, Chris Wink, Matt Goldman and Phil Stanton started creating their own unique brand of multisensory experiences as early as 1988 on the streets of New York. Then, after a breakout run at LaMama (New York’s most prestigious experimental theatre) in 1990, they landed in the Astor Place Theatre in 1991 and have been there ever since. With this flagship venue in place, BMG kept expanding into more major market areas. To date BMG has permanent locations in New York, Boston, Chicago, and Las Vegas, with plans for a new Berlin troupe set to open in 2004. The organization has grown into a franchise comprised of over 500 employees including nearly 100 performers and musicians.

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Cibo Matto

Very few bands have had such an incredible debut album like Cibo Matto’s Viva L.A. Woman. Like an inexpensive sushi bar, Viva L.A. Woman was a Smorgasbord of contradictions.  Light, but heavy, simple yet complicated, joyful with a hint of homesickness in an electronic mix that never sounds the same way twice.

Yuka Honda and Miho Hatori, expatriates from Japan have fused Trip-Hop, rap, rock, jazz, Asian and Brazilian music into a sound of their own that has been described by music journalists as fun, precious, teasing, joyful, cheerful, good-natured, quirky, silly, carefree, ironic and wry.  Multi-instrumentalist Honda is a longtime member of the Manhattan art scene and was once in the Brooklyn Funk Essentials.  Hatori, a former member of the Tokyo rap unit Kimidori and a former club DJ, came to the States in 1993. After meeting in 1994, they started the short-lived band, Leitoh Lychee.  Honda and Hatori formed Cibo Matto, (Italian for “food madness") shortly afterwards.

Cibo Matto take their time in the studio, their latest release Stereo Type A appeared in the stores in 1999.  Although less edgy than Viva L.A. Woman, Stereo Type A shows signs of maturity and the affects of love and all the good and bad things that go with it.  I had a chance to interview Miho Hatori. 

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Claude Dorsey

To a generation of Milwaukeeans, Claude Dorsey was the musical centerpiece of the city’s nightlife. For 40 years, he entertained diners as the house pianist and vocalist at the Clock Steak House, a downtown crossroads of politicians, entertainers, and reputed mobsters. “It had great food, and the entertainment was pretty good, too,” Dorsey quipped. “The best meals were when Miss Addie was cooking. Whatever she made, it was the best.” In many ways, The Clock became the crossroads where Milwaukee met the Vegas Rat Pack culture. “All the cabbies recommended it to touring acts – that’s how Bob Hope came to see me a few times. [The] same with Nat ‘King’ Cole , Tony Bennett, and others. The cabbies were great at networking.”

Dorsey traces his roots to Gainesville, Georgia, about 40 miles north of Atlanta. “My daddy was the main minister of a church there,” he said. “I wanted to follow him – I tried, but I was always playing music.” Dorsey came to Milwaukee as a teen in 1928. “My dad became minister at Calvary Baptist Church,” he said. The approval of his father was an important factor in Dorsey’s career. “When he heard me play, he said, ‘you’re ministering here; you’re reaching people. That’s what it’s all about.’ I was so happy that my daddy approved of what I was doing; that he was proud of me,” he said.

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The Dirty Three

I had no idea what to expect when I got to the door of the East End, the short-lived club on Madison’s east side in the mid-nineties. I was there for the Man… or Astro-Man show as they were on the cover that month. What I didn’t know was that the opening act, The Dirty Three, would be a band I would love for years to come. That was October of 1996.

Prior to the show, I hadn’t heard much about this Australian band, except that they traveled around the country, in an old, black Cadillac, going show to show without breaking. I’d heard stories about the band’s leader and violinist Warren Ellis, and his love for whiskey.

When I ran into him at the show, bottle in hand and wearing black, he was just as mysterious and foreboding a figure as I’d heard about. In fact, they were all very quiet.

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The Dirty Three - Warren Ellis

The fluid ease with which Dirty Three create the romance of tidal pulls and the despair of lonesome oceans in their new CD, Ocean Songs, is both tranquilizing and electric. Drums, guitar and violin serve a common purpose, swirling with deliberate ingenuity that lulls and soothes while cutting against the grain. Billowing sails and creaking timbers have room to stretch out. Gurgling mysteries lay simmering beneath the trio’s simple nuances and subtle twists.

Formed in a bar on the rough side of Melbourne, Australia, Dirty Three sound both weathered and full of life, deliberate, yet lazy. Warren Ellis’ winding gypsy fiddle skims and plummets while the cavernous drums of Jim White sound like sharp splashes and plodding depth charges. Their spacious longing can turn romantic and does so several times, stunningly in, “Sea Above, Sky Below,” while the sullen, barren slogging of “Authentic Celestial Music” forms a musical mechanical contraption that starts out of breath then steps up the pace. The ambling ambiance is both hypnotic and ambient, gracefully stumbling in slow motion then turning dangerously monomaniacal. No better example of this appears than Mick Turner’s breezy guitar playing on the whispery “Distant Shores,” a three-hundred-and-sixty degree turn from his crashing, savage churning in “Deep Waters.”

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Jessie Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter

Ever since two cavemen started beating sticks on hollow logs it has apparently been the goal of musicians to be louder. Symphony orchestras, Celtic, Polka, bluegrass, country, rock and roll and sometimes-even jazz, strive to amp up the volume. Now I love nothing better than to have my eardrums blown out by great live music, but not long ago I found myself on a road, miles from any sign of human inhabitation. I stopped my car and stepped outside. The quietness was deafening. A rushing white noise, phase shifted through my ears, like the beginning of some bad rock song from the 1970’s, but after a few minutes I started picking out the chirping of birds and insects. A minute later I could hear the leaves of trees rustling in the slight breeze. I was amazed at the complex audio beauty of a seemingly silence place. The same thing happened to me the first time I saw Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter. There are few bands in the world as quiet as Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter. You can literally hear a beer glass fall on the floor while they are performing.

Fresh off a twenty-day tour of 2,000 seat theaters opening for Bright Eyes, Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter is hitting the road again. Their latest CD, “Oh My Girl” on Barsuk Records has been selling steadily and has landed on the Best of 2004 lists by such notable publications as the New York Times, The L.A. Weekly, Harp and Maximum Ink.  The band isn’t resting on its laurels.  “When you get home from a tour,” said Jesse, “it’s like, what do I do?”

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Katy Pfaffl

Light grooves and soaring melodies circle and dive with Latin jazz accents, soul throaty climaxes and soft, sophisticated pop. Fluid flowers of pan-global sensitivity blossom into polysyllabic rivers that dance among the keyboards, guitar, hand percussion and bass. Sounds conjuring wide-open spaces find strange bedfellows in Manhattan - a crowded city of subways and skyscrapers, but that is exactly where Katy Pfaffl found her muse - New York, by way of Amsterdam, Cincinnati and Milwaukee.

Born and raised in Milwaukee, Katy was a Sukuzi violin student, competing as a classical pianist before she entered high school. While she feels lucky to have grown up in Milwaukee, she found the city’s arts scene limited and more concerned with stability than change. “I’ve always had many interests and was always told I had to choose only one and commit to it,” she explains, “I believe that if you have a lot of talents and interests then use them all, explore them all so you can keep growing and expanding.”

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