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- CHilyard October 2007
- plane8order October 2007
- Surfer Rosa October 2007
New OK Go Interview
Dear all,
I write for a regional music magazine in England and I interviewed Tim back in February. Because of our relatively small circulation I thought, now a bit of time has passed, that I would post it here for anyone else that's interested to have a read. I must say I found him particularly intelligent, articulate and friendly and he was a pleasure to interview. (Note to mods - I own the copyright to this and am happy for it to enter the public domain via this forum).
OK Go
It’s not every day that you get a chance to interview a Grammy Award winner. Well, following their success at the recent ceremony in Los Angeles, where they pipped The Killers and The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, among others, Chicago’s OK Go now have the music industry's highest honour sat on their collective mantelpiece. I caught up with bassist Tim Nordwind a week before the ceremony, on the eve of their gig at Koko in London, their only UK show of 2007.
Koko is the second date on a two-month tour that also sees OK Go take in Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and ten shows on a German version of the NME tour, before they return to North America to tour with Snow Patrol. Already at the opening date in Providence, Rhode Island, the band have noticed a significant change in the crowd, both in quantity and the level of enthusiasm, since their previous tour last autumn, thanks largely to the explosion of interest in their videos on YouTube. Although no new material is being previewed, the band have devoted a lot of energy over the winter to the show itself, trying to ensure this tour is more of an all round spectacle than ever. They recognise the unusual situation they are in with their last album, Oh No, now being 18 months old, so are therefore having to keep the show new and fresh for long standing fans, yet at the same time cater for the large number of new fans who have not seen them before.
The North American tour will take OK Go to new heights back in their homeland with venues as big as 10,000 lined up. The band are very excited to see how they get on in front of such large audiences. Pointing out that the fun and creativity of OK Go and the MOR-ness of Snow Patrol didn’t seem like a very natural marriage, Tim agrees that they might not have much in common, but diplomatically asserts a respect for what the headliners do. Along with the Smashing Pumkins-esque openers The Silversun Pickups, the bill is certainly eclectic, something for everyone and bands that are all good at what they do, we are assured. Following that they will embark on one final tour with The Fray in June and July, incorporating another big leap in venue sizes, before retiring to commence work on album number three.
Second album Oh No was quite a shift in direction from their eponymous debut which was typified by their infectiously glamorous Weezer-ish single Get Over It. With a beefed up rhythm section they took a calculated step away from their ‘geek rock’ tag and produced a heavier more Hives-ie sound. Although each member has their own idea of where album three is likely to go, it will definitely be more closely related to Oh No than a return to their early sound and it will apparently attempt to be “more dancy, soulful and minimal”.
The YouTube phenomenon surrounding the videos for A Million Ways (one of the most downloaded videos of all time) and Here It Goes Again (similarly legendary and now Grammy winning) really brought the album back from the dead seven or so months ago when touring had seemingly ended and album three was beginning to be planned. A few months later the band found themselves performing at the MTV Music Video Awards, the first and, we are assured last, ever live performance of Here It Goes Again on the treadmills. Weeks of intense preparation and practice and a nerve racking build up culminated in a successful performance (a feat in itself) and an exhilarating experience for the band. They seem to possess a refreshingly genuine excitement and enthusiasm at being thrust into such an arena and still don’t seem to have come to terms with their sudden celebrity, reflecting on the experience there as being fun and surreally funny.
The DIY dance routine videos date back to C C C Cinnamon Lips from the first album (incidentally the only OK Go song Tim sings and hence where the tradition started of him lip syncing, rather than regular singer Damian Kulash). However, it was A Million Ways which exploded across the computer screens of the world last spring and summer. The sight of 4 smartly dressed indie boys doing a slightly ironic but wonderfully choreographed (by Damian’s sister) and performed dance routine in their back garden is one of the funniest and most successful virals since the start of the internet. Better was still to come with Here We Go Again’s treadmill video, the making of which surely contravened every self-preservation instinct and health and safety law in existence. 18 takes, 3 of which were successfully completed, a lifetime’s worth of bruises and treadmill burns, a couple of complete ‘wipe outs’, yet fortunately no breaks or hospitalisations, later and they had surpassed their own pioneering benchmark. The phenomenon of this video culminated in the ultimate accolade when it was awarded the Grammy for Best Short Form Music Video. Even before the ceremony (unless they had already been tipped the wink), Tim seemed fairly confident that it stood out so much from the standard form that he felt they had a good chance of going home victorious, and right he was proved.
The question was inevitably raised of what other ideas they had in the pipeline and how they intended to top treadmills. Although not wanting to give too much away at that point, the band had just finished shooting a video for new single Do What You Want, which had been done much in the spirit of the previous two. The only fillip we were given was that it involved lots of wallpaper, though it has of course now been released and can widely be viewed in all the usual places.
The videos however are just part of what makes OK Go unique, with the fun and enthusiasm in their performances being equally as infectious at their live shows. They are committed to a belief that playing a gig is like hosting a party and they are particularly fond of throwing “raisers” (as in raising the roof I assume, looking for an American slang dictionary). They like to have a good time and they like the audience to as well, so they set the tone and the crowd responds to it as each takes cues from the other. This is also complemented by the promotion of, and commitment to, the community around the band. They are keen to try anything that will bring people to the band and even if that is people mocking the dances, then that is really healthy because it means people are hearing the music.
This though brings us to the potential flaw in receiving exposure through places like YouTube. Although people now know the band and the videos, there hasn’t been a monumental increase in unit sales compared with their first album and the singles from it (Get Over It is still their biggest UK hit to date). Tim however believes that this is more a reflection of the recent changes in the nature of the record industry as a whole and that comparisons are best made between sales for the first year that the record was out and for the subsequent period following the videos. YouTube has only helped them and they believe that both the songs in question will go down as 21st century hits, with success already being measured in completely different ways than it was ten or twenty years ago. OK Go are a leading light in the middle of the revolution but even they find it hard to see what will happen as traditional formats are disappearing and people aren’t needing to pay to hear music any more.
OK Go are the latest of a series of American indie bands, along with the likes of The Postal Service and The Shins, who are puzzlingly not as successful in this country as fans and critics feel they should be, having not yet really crossed the threshold to become household names. Tim explains that the UK is a particularly tough market to break and that foreign bands wanting to succeed need to be over here a lot to stay in people’s minds. He makes an interesting comparison with the band’s close friends We Are Scientists. We Are Scientists have done well in the UK but have also been over here a long time, in fact pretty much the whole time that their record was out. This has therefore meant that they have become almost the inverse of OK Go, with each having had success on one side of the Atlantic but have not having really crossed over on the other. While bands like The Killers and The Strokes have consciously made their names in the UK before pushing on to the international stage, OK Go have chosen a different path and have not continuously come over at the expense of other countries. They do however love playing here and were insistent that they incorporated a date on this current tour while they were so close. As well as this reality, Tim is also very complementary of our domestic scene, commenting on how much good music there is in the UK that they have to contend with. Not, of course, that they see this as a bad thing as the competition pushes everyone to raise their game, which is great for audiences.
One aspect of the band that is especially likely to strike a cord with British fans is their outspoken criticism of the Bush presidency. They produced a document, the ‘How Your Band Can Fire Bush’ guide, which gave bands tips on working to remove the President and collected some interesting (and frightening) statistics about the Republican Party. Particularly in light of the cringe worthy and sanctimonious outbursts that we have to endure from the nauseating U2, Boomtown Rats and Coldplay front men, I was interested to hear why they felt it important that musicians get involved in politics. Essentially, they feel that it is something that is important for all citizens, to care about their rights and to have an opinion about what happens in their world. In America, the Republican Party is a very organised institution which, through its power in the Church, is able to preach its values every Sunday, while the Democrats don’t have such arenas to spread their word. A rock band like themselves have an opportunity to address the 18-34 year old demographic which is so notorious for its low turnout. Far more important than the rights and wrongs of political issues, the band feel that if people care, then they need to voice their opinions. They believe that many young people are scared that they don’t know enough to have an opinion, but to them it is very important to convince people that even a gut opinion is valuable enough to warrant exercising their rights. The band are open about being a liberal leftist band and they are happy to voice their opinions if people care to hear them, but they certainly don’t want to alienate anyone and what is ultimately important to them is to get people voting. Although their Bush removing wasn’t successful last election, it’s certainly healthy to see people like themselves and The Dixie Chicks trying to push participation and highlight the alternatives.
With a roller coaster few months having now culminated in a Grammy Award, it seems a particularly apt time to take stock. OK Go have been pioneers in embracing the new technology in music distribution. Fortunately they are anything but gimmicky and have a history before this recent mass exposure and a lot of substance behind the veneer. The audience is now expectant and the stage is set for them to reap the rewards when they return next year. And who knows what kind of new escapades they will have concocted to promote the new material by then?
Keith Fildes
I write for a regional music magazine in England and I interviewed Tim back in February. Because of our relatively small circulation I thought, now a bit of time has passed, that I would post it here for anyone else that's interested to have a read. I must say I found him particularly intelligent, articulate and friendly and he was a pleasure to interview. (Note to mods - I own the copyright to this and am happy for it to enter the public domain via this forum).
OK Go
It’s not every day that you get a chance to interview a Grammy Award winner. Well, following their success at the recent ceremony in Los Angeles, where they pipped The Killers and The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, among others, Chicago’s OK Go now have the music industry's highest honour sat on their collective mantelpiece. I caught up with bassist Tim Nordwind a week before the ceremony, on the eve of their gig at Koko in London, their only UK show of 2007.
Koko is the second date on a two-month tour that also sees OK Go take in Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and ten shows on a German version of the NME tour, before they return to North America to tour with Snow Patrol. Already at the opening date in Providence, Rhode Island, the band have noticed a significant change in the crowd, both in quantity and the level of enthusiasm, since their previous tour last autumn, thanks largely to the explosion of interest in their videos on YouTube. Although no new material is being previewed, the band have devoted a lot of energy over the winter to the show itself, trying to ensure this tour is more of an all round spectacle than ever. They recognise the unusual situation they are in with their last album, Oh No, now being 18 months old, so are therefore having to keep the show new and fresh for long standing fans, yet at the same time cater for the large number of new fans who have not seen them before.
The North American tour will take OK Go to new heights back in their homeland with venues as big as 10,000 lined up. The band are very excited to see how they get on in front of such large audiences. Pointing out that the fun and creativity of OK Go and the MOR-ness of Snow Patrol didn’t seem like a very natural marriage, Tim agrees that they might not have much in common, but diplomatically asserts a respect for what the headliners do. Along with the Smashing Pumkins-esque openers The Silversun Pickups, the bill is certainly eclectic, something for everyone and bands that are all good at what they do, we are assured. Following that they will embark on one final tour with The Fray in June and July, incorporating another big leap in venue sizes, before retiring to commence work on album number three.
Second album Oh No was quite a shift in direction from their eponymous debut which was typified by their infectiously glamorous Weezer-ish single Get Over It. With a beefed up rhythm section they took a calculated step away from their ‘geek rock’ tag and produced a heavier more Hives-ie sound. Although each member has their own idea of where album three is likely to go, it will definitely be more closely related to Oh No than a return to their early sound and it will apparently attempt to be “more dancy, soulful and minimal”.
The YouTube phenomenon surrounding the videos for A Million Ways (one of the most downloaded videos of all time) and Here It Goes Again (similarly legendary and now Grammy winning) really brought the album back from the dead seven or so months ago when touring had seemingly ended and album three was beginning to be planned. A few months later the band found themselves performing at the MTV Music Video Awards, the first and, we are assured last, ever live performance of Here It Goes Again on the treadmills. Weeks of intense preparation and practice and a nerve racking build up culminated in a successful performance (a feat in itself) and an exhilarating experience for the band. They seem to possess a refreshingly genuine excitement and enthusiasm at being thrust into such an arena and still don’t seem to have come to terms with their sudden celebrity, reflecting on the experience there as being fun and surreally funny.
The DIY dance routine videos date back to C C C Cinnamon Lips from the first album (incidentally the only OK Go song Tim sings and hence where the tradition started of him lip syncing, rather than regular singer Damian Kulash). However, it was A Million Ways which exploded across the computer screens of the world last spring and summer. The sight of 4 smartly dressed indie boys doing a slightly ironic but wonderfully choreographed (by Damian’s sister) and performed dance routine in their back garden is one of the funniest and most successful virals since the start of the internet. Better was still to come with Here We Go Again’s treadmill video, the making of which surely contravened every self-preservation instinct and health and safety law in existence. 18 takes, 3 of which were successfully completed, a lifetime’s worth of bruises and treadmill burns, a couple of complete ‘wipe outs’, yet fortunately no breaks or hospitalisations, later and they had surpassed their own pioneering benchmark. The phenomenon of this video culminated in the ultimate accolade when it was awarded the Grammy for Best Short Form Music Video. Even before the ceremony (unless they had already been tipped the wink), Tim seemed fairly confident that it stood out so much from the standard form that he felt they had a good chance of going home victorious, and right he was proved.
The question was inevitably raised of what other ideas they had in the pipeline and how they intended to top treadmills. Although not wanting to give too much away at that point, the band had just finished shooting a video for new single Do What You Want, which had been done much in the spirit of the previous two. The only fillip we were given was that it involved lots of wallpaper, though it has of course now been released and can widely be viewed in all the usual places.
The videos however are just part of what makes OK Go unique, with the fun and enthusiasm in their performances being equally as infectious at their live shows. They are committed to a belief that playing a gig is like hosting a party and they are particularly fond of throwing “raisers” (as in raising the roof I assume, looking for an American slang dictionary). They like to have a good time and they like the audience to as well, so they set the tone and the crowd responds to it as each takes cues from the other. This is also complemented by the promotion of, and commitment to, the community around the band. They are keen to try anything that will bring people to the band and even if that is people mocking the dances, then that is really healthy because it means people are hearing the music.
This though brings us to the potential flaw in receiving exposure through places like YouTube. Although people now know the band and the videos, there hasn’t been a monumental increase in unit sales compared with their first album and the singles from it (Get Over It is still their biggest UK hit to date). Tim however believes that this is more a reflection of the recent changes in the nature of the record industry as a whole and that comparisons are best made between sales for the first year that the record was out and for the subsequent period following the videos. YouTube has only helped them and they believe that both the songs in question will go down as 21st century hits, with success already being measured in completely different ways than it was ten or twenty years ago. OK Go are a leading light in the middle of the revolution but even they find it hard to see what will happen as traditional formats are disappearing and people aren’t needing to pay to hear music any more.
OK Go are the latest of a series of American indie bands, along with the likes of The Postal Service and The Shins, who are puzzlingly not as successful in this country as fans and critics feel they should be, having not yet really crossed the threshold to become household names. Tim explains that the UK is a particularly tough market to break and that foreign bands wanting to succeed need to be over here a lot to stay in people’s minds. He makes an interesting comparison with the band’s close friends We Are Scientists. We Are Scientists have done well in the UK but have also been over here a long time, in fact pretty much the whole time that their record was out. This has therefore meant that they have become almost the inverse of OK Go, with each having had success on one side of the Atlantic but have not having really crossed over on the other. While bands like The Killers and The Strokes have consciously made their names in the UK before pushing on to the international stage, OK Go have chosen a different path and have not continuously come over at the expense of other countries. They do however love playing here and were insistent that they incorporated a date on this current tour while they were so close. As well as this reality, Tim is also very complementary of our domestic scene, commenting on how much good music there is in the UK that they have to contend with. Not, of course, that they see this as a bad thing as the competition pushes everyone to raise their game, which is great for audiences.
One aspect of the band that is especially likely to strike a cord with British fans is their outspoken criticism of the Bush presidency. They produced a document, the ‘How Your Band Can Fire Bush’ guide, which gave bands tips on working to remove the President and collected some interesting (and frightening) statistics about the Republican Party. Particularly in light of the cringe worthy and sanctimonious outbursts that we have to endure from the nauseating U2, Boomtown Rats and Coldplay front men, I was interested to hear why they felt it important that musicians get involved in politics. Essentially, they feel that it is something that is important for all citizens, to care about their rights and to have an opinion about what happens in their world. In America, the Republican Party is a very organised institution which, through its power in the Church, is able to preach its values every Sunday, while the Democrats don’t have such arenas to spread their word. A rock band like themselves have an opportunity to address the 18-34 year old demographic which is so notorious for its low turnout. Far more important than the rights and wrongs of political issues, the band feel that if people care, then they need to voice their opinions. They believe that many young people are scared that they don’t know enough to have an opinion, but to them it is very important to convince people that even a gut opinion is valuable enough to warrant exercising their rights. The band are open about being a liberal leftist band and they are happy to voice their opinions if people care to hear them, but they certainly don’t want to alienate anyone and what is ultimately important to them is to get people voting. Although their Bush removing wasn’t successful last election, it’s certainly healthy to see people like themselves and The Dixie Chicks trying to push participation and highlight the alternatives.
With a roller coaster few months having now culminated in a Grammy Award, it seems a particularly apt time to take stock. OK Go have been pioneers in embracing the new technology in music distribution. Fortunately they are anything but gimmicky and have a history before this recent mass exposure and a lot of substance behind the veneer. The audience is now expectant and the stage is set for them to reap the rewards when they return next year. And who knows what kind of new escapades they will have concocted to promote the new material by then?
Keith Fildes
Comments
I love hearing and reading new things about Ok Go, it makes me happy.
Thank You!
I love hearing and reading new things about Ok Go, it makes me happy.
Thank You!
Thanks a lot - really appreciate the feedback. Glad you enjoyed it
Rosa