Day: November 29, 2008

Men in blue

With Studio 100 turning K3 into an international franchise, and girls in England recently auditioning for UK3, it’s fitting that today I saw Blue Man Group. The Blue Men, who are not Blue Meanies, are in various cities, with interchangeable, essentially anonymous performers.

Blue Man Group has been at the Charles Street Playhouse in Boston for almost fifteen years. Carol saw the show with a friend more than ten years ago, but today was the first time for Eric and myself. If you’ve ever doubted the entertainment potential of so-called performance art, Blue Man Group will erase all doubt. We loved it!

There’s a video featuring the current Boston trio, which makes them less anonymous, that will give you an idea of what it’s all about. (The program book lists two other Boston Blue Men, so I assume there must be some rotation.) Once again YouTube has the video aspect ratio wrong, so I’ll put it here with the correct shape.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2008/NOV/BlueMan.flv 448 252]

UK3

My post last night about French pop star Alizée elicited a comment from Joachim Mairböck in Germany Austria. (Google translation into English of his blog is here.) Joachim pointed out a YouTube link from Studio 100 UK.

I had talked about Studio 100’s ambitions of expansion beyond Belgium and the Netherlands, yet I’m disappointed that even as they were promoting K3’s tenth anniversary they were auditioning for an English-speaking K3, to be called UK3.

In September, Studio 100 posted a video of Wir3 from Germany with an English overdub. The caption reads “Basic version of U.K audition pop song. Learn the words and the basic dance moves to increase your chance of being chosen. Good luck. Best Regards Peteer”. As often happens, YouTube got the shape of the image wrong, so I’ve corrected it here.

[flv:http://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Video/K3/UK3HEYMAMAH.flv 448 268]

Then, just a week ago, Studio 100 posted the results of that audition, with this caption — “Emily, Lauren and Tahnee, 2 days after meeting for the first time ever, create a decent music video in less than 4 hours. Amazing!”

[flv:http://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Video/K3/UK3demo.flv 512 288]

Well, there it is. The house that K3 built moves on. Karen, Kathleen, and Kristel are now all 30 and over, and it’s time for younger women, who are native English speakers. UK3 looks like just another fabricated fluff girl group, and I couldn’t be less interested. Again I say it’s the people, not the package. Studio 100 got lucky with K3, who were already together before Studio 100 found them. Less than six months ago I didn’t know K3 existed, and now it’s disconcerting to contemplate that they may be getting closer to the end of their run.