OK Go

OK Go
OK Go performing in May 2006 (from left) Tim, Dan, Andy Ross, and Damian
Background information
Origin	Chicago, Illinois, USA Washington, D.C., USA
Genre(s)	Alternative rock Power pop
Years active	1998 – present
Label(s)	Capitol
Website	Official site
Members
Damian Kulash Tim Nordwind Dan Konopka Andy Ross
Former members
Andy Duncan

OK Go is a Grammy Award-winning rock band originally from Chicago, now residing in Los Angeles.

History

The band's singer, Damian Kulash, met bassist Tim Nordwind at Interlochen Arts Camp when they were 11. Damian was in for graphic design, Tim for music. They met over a game of Ping Pong in which Damian won. The band name comes from their art teacher, saying "Ok...Go!" while they were drawing. They kept in touch after camp, often exchanging mixtapes which influenced each other's musical taste and their future sound. They met the band's original lead guitarist and keyboardist, Andy Duncan, in high school, and drummer Dan Konopka in college. They formed OK Go in 1998. Andy Duncan left the band in 2005 after they had recorded their second album, and was replaced by computer-programming whiz Andy Ross, who auditioned for them in Chicago. The band's best known singles are "Get Over It", "A Million Ways", and "Here It Goes Again."

OK Go's most frequently cited musical influences are Pixies, The Cars, Cheap Trick, T. Rex, Queen, Prince, The Zombies, and bands from the Washington, D.C. punk rock scene, especially Fugazi and Shudder To Think. They share management with They Might Be Giants, with whom they toured before signing to Capitol Records in 2001.

OK Go has gained significant recognition for its self-produced low-budget music videos, most significantly "Here It Goes Again", which features the band performing an intricately choreographed dance on eight treadmills. Having had some viral success with the unauthorized "A Million Ways" video, showing them dancing in a backyard, the band devised a video using rented treadmills.^[1] Damian's sister, Trish Sie, choreographed the routines in both the "Here It Goes Again" and "A Million Ways" videos. The "Here It Goes Again" music video was filmed in one continuous shot and was uploaded to YouTube, where it has been viewed over twenty million times. The video was popular enough to earn them the Grammy award for "Best Short-Form Music Video" in 2007 ^[2] and the YouTube 2006 Video Award for "Most Creative Video" ^[3].

The band's unique part-glam, part-geek rock fashion sense has also gotten a lot of attention. They are known for combining loud, clashing patterns and wearing waistcoats, sweater vests, ties, dress shirts, suspenders, dress pants, and an unusual amount of jewelry, particularly brooches. Some have noted similarities between their style and that of Weezer, They Might Be Giants, The Hives, and hellogoodbye, but the band have said in interviews that their influences were Oscar Wilde, David Bowie, "Republican assholes," and "other people too wealthy to know how crazy they look."

The band also served as the house band for public radio program This American Life on the show's fifth anniversary tour. The band performed an early predecessor to their wildly successful music videos-- a choreographed dance to the song "C-C-C-Cinnamon Lips". Ira Glass, the show's host, wrote their first official bio, calling them "living catnip" and describing their songs as "part indie rock, part stadium rock, part straight up pop with the occasional whiff of Weezer or The Cars or Elliott Smith."

Breakthrough

After OK Go's exposure on This American Life and their relationship with They Might Be Giants, the band released its self-titled debut album in 2002. In the United Kingdom, "Get Over It" debuted at No. 21 ^[4] (reported on OK Go's site), in the singles chart on March 16, 2003, and the band performed it on that week's edition of Top of the Pops. Also that week, the single's video was named video of the week by Q magazine. The single was featured in the EA Sports video games MVP Baseball 2003 and Madden NFL 2003. Also, their song "Do What You Want" was featured in the video games EA Sports NHL 06 and Burnout Revenge.

The band contributed a cover of "This Will Be Our Year," the Zombies classic, as the lead track of Future Soundtrack for America, a political benefit album put out by Barsuk Records in the fall of 2004. Lead singer Damian Kulash also became somewhat politically active during that election cycle, writing a heavily downloaded how-to-guide entitled "How Your Band Can Fire Bush" for bands hoping to help unseat President George W. Bush.

In 2007, OK Go wrote the fight song for the Chicago Soccer Team, Chicago Fire (soccer). The song was offered on the team's official website as a free download.

The band was recently made honorary members of the Harvard Lampoon.

Music video fame

The band performs the music video for "Here it Goes Again" on treadmills.

The band's second album, Oh No, was recorded in Malmö, Sweden, and produced by Tore Johansson (The Cardigans, Franz Ferdinand) in the fall of 2004. Released in August 2005, it gained popularity for its first single, "A Million Ways," thanks to its video, which proved to be a viral Internet phenomenon in the fall of 2005. The ultra-low budget, long take video featured the band in their back yard performing a dance choreographed by lead singer Kulash's sister, Trish Sie. Using a camera borrowed from a friend, the video was produced for under ten dollars, and was apparently released without the knowledge or consent of their label, Capitol Records. By August 2006, the video had become the most downloaded music video ever with over 9 million downloads.^[5] The band performed the dance live on British TV show Soccer AM.

The nontraditional video for "A Million Ways" is not without precedent for the band. Previous oddball video efforts featuring OK Go include their Ping Pong Instructional Video and the Federal Truth In Music Project. They also performed a choreographed dance for the song "C-C-C-Cinamon Lips" at shows after the release of their first album. It was based on N'SYNC dance routines, which they had developed for the cable access show Chic-a-go-go, which required bands to lip-sync their songs.^[1]

On July 31, 2006 the band released a video in a similar vein for "Here It Goes Again" featuring an elaborately choreographed dance on treadmills, also directed and choreographed by Trish Sie. This video was viewed by over one million people on the media site YouTube in the first six days. As of the end of August 2007, the original video upload for "Here It Goes Again" has been viewed over 21 million times, putting it in 11th place for the most views of any video and 3rd place for most favorited video of all time on YouTube. If the statistics (for) all copies of the video on YouTube are tallied together, the video has been viewed many more times. The band has worked with both world-renowned and relatively unknown directors including Francis Lawrence, Olivier Gondry (brother of Michel Gondry), Brian L. Perkins, Scott Keiner, and Todd Sullivan. On August 23 2006, Damian Kulash appeared on The Colbert Report to talk about the unconventional popularity achieved with "A Million Ways" and "Here It Goes Again". The latter video won 2006 YouTube Award in the Most Creative category^[6].

In OK Go's choreographed videos, their bassist Tim Nordwind lip-syncs instead of their lead singer, Damian Kulash, following the format from the dance choreographed for the song "C-C-C-Cinnamon Lips", which Tim sings. On August 31, OK Go appeared live at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards performing their treadmill routine for "Here It Goes Again". Since the VMA performance, sales of the album & single have increased, especially on the iTunes Music Store where, as of September 5, 2006, the single has reached #11 and the album #2. On November 7, 2006, OK Go released a deluxe limited edition CD/DVD of the album Oh No. The DVD contains their music videos (dancing and playing instruments), a video of 180 fans performing the "A Million Ways" dance for a YouTube contest, previously unseen footage, and a behind-the-scenes look at their treadmill rehearsals for the "Here It Goes Again" video and for the MTV VMAs.

In May 2006, they toured with Panic! at the Disco; in September they were in the U.K. supporting Motion City Soundtrack, and will continue their U.S. tour supporting Snow Patrol into Spring 2007.

On January 12, 2007, OK Go made a guest appearance on the NBC show, Las Vegas. The episode, entitled "Fleeting Cheating Meeting," incorporated many songs from their Oh No album.

On February 11, 2007, OK Go and Trish Sie took home a Grammy award for "Best Short-Form Music Video" for their viral music video, "Here It Goes Again".

From Late July until Mid August 2007 OK Go have tour dates throughout Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, Korea and Japan.

Members

Current

• Damian Kulash – vocals and guitar
• Tim Nordwind – bass guitar and vocals
• Dan Konopka – drums and percussion
• Andy Ross – keyboards, guitar and vocals (2005–present)

Former

• Andrew Duncan – guitar, piano, keyboards, vibraphone, vocals (1998–2005)
• Burleigh Seaver – keyboard, percussion (2002)
• Ara Anderson – keyboard, percussion, trumpet (2002, 2004)

Discography

Albums/EPs

Singles

Compilations

• 2004 "This Will Be Our Year" off the Future Soundtrack for America compilation.
• 2006 "Invincible" off the She's the Man soundtrack compilation
• 2006 "Letterbox" off the Hello Radio: The Songs Of They Might Be Giants compilation.
• 2006 "This Will Be Our Year" off the John Tucker Must Die movie soundtrack.
• 2006 "Here It Goes Again" off the Now That's What I Call Music! 23 compilation.
• 2006 "Father Christmas" off Kevin & Bean's Super Christmas

Nominations

• MTV Europe Music Awards:
  • Nominated: Best Video (2006) for "A Million Ways"
• Vh1's Big in '06 Awards:
  • Nominated: Big Web Hit (2006) for "Here It Goes Again"
• Grammys:
  • Won: Best Short Form Music Video (2007) for "Here It Goes Again"

References

External links

• Official website
• Band Blog
• "Rocking the Paisley Three-Piece Suit", PopMatters interview (10/2005)
• Interview: Tim Nordwind of OK Go Here It Goes Again Treadmill Video
• Audio Interview recorded November 2006
• Federal Truth in Music Project video series featuring OK Go
• Ok Go's Music Videos
• Interview with Damian Kulash and Tim Nordwind of OK Go about making of treadmill video and how to be a rock star.
• Cornell Daily Sun Interview with Damian Kulash
• Interview from Hate Something Beautiful
• Interview at Brightest Young Things
• Interview with Tim Nordwind at GeeksOn.com

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