You've Never Heard Percussion Like This Before

Album: Blue Man Group - Audio
Label: Virgin Records No. 7243 8 48613 2 2
Medium: CD (HDCD) and DVDA
Released: 1999
Genre: In Your Face Rock & Roll / Techno
Reviewer: Scott Faller
Date Reviewed: April, 2001

Trivial Bits

I'm a die hard "junker". What I mean by that is I spend a lot of time in junk stores, second hand shops, pawn shops and flea markets looking for bargains. Most all of the places I frequent they have that black gold (vinyl), lots of used CD's and electronic gear. I always root through to see if anything new has arrived since my last visit.

Last summer I stopped in at the local Agape House store. It's a second hand shop where the proceeds go to the local poor and homeless. It's kind of a small towns version of the Salvation Army or Goodwill. I feel good giving them my money.

This particular day I struck it rich. Somebody donated just a ton of promotional CD's to the store. I guess a local record company promoter was unloading all of his old discs that he couldn't get the local radio stations to play. Actually, it was my (and soon to be your) good fortune.

All of the CD's were priced at Fifty Cents each. Ooou Baby, my kinda deal. So I loaded up with stuff that I thought I might like, paid the nice lady at the register, and out the door I went, pleased as punch.

One of the first ones I listened to as I drove away was a Spanish Rap artist, I can't remember his name, I didn't realize it was rap when I bought it (don't care for rap much), so I pulled it out and made a mental note to give it to my son. I rooted around in the bag looking for that odd looking cover, the one you see above. I thought to myself, that looks like it might sound interesting. Little did I know ……………

I popped in Blue … Man … Group. Hmmm. Never heard of them.
(Wait, lets pause for a second, you need more info) See, I drive a Lincoln Towncar. A big red one. I equate it to driving a sofa with wheels. I put one of those killer stereos in it. You know, the ones THOSE KIDS have in there cars, the ones you can hear two or three blocks away? Yep, that's me too. I get some pretty strange looks sometimes. Here I am, 40+, bald, conservative looking, driving a Lincoln, but there's this really loud noise coming out of it. Go figure. Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled program.
I usually do a quick flip through all the tracks picking up 20 or so seconds of each one to get a feel for the record. I did the same here. I liked what I heard so I flipped back to track one and settled in for some driving music.

Enough Already, Get To The Point

I went on to listen to the rest of the tracks, just driving around on a sunny afternoon with the windows down and the music at full blast. I'd occasionally pull over to get a better listen to a particular song. I thought to myself, this is great. But I didn't realize how great it was until I got home.

After pulling into the driveway, I ran downstairs and slid it into my reference system. See, I've got this obscene reference system that's tri-amped, pumping out 520 unadulterated watts per channel of pure solid state bliss. Best of all, my wife wasn't home. Yah Baby, I can crank it until my head implodes. So that's what I did.

Until I had gotten this CD, a lot of music was….well, boring sometimes. Don't get me wrong, I love music. It's my best friend (next to my wife and kids). Music takes me places I could never find on my own. On the other hand, I have never experienced multiple aural orgasms like this before. By track ten I was worthless (and there's fourteen tracks). I was just this quivering mass of fat, lumped on my comfy chair.