Won’t You Stay Here With Me — OK Go

Ambassadors of creativity OK Go brought their Live Music Video Show to The Soraya at California State University, Northridge on Sunday, November 3, 2019. I hesitate to call them a band because their output since making their name known has included so much more than music. Damian Kulash, Tim Nordwind, Dan Konopka, and Andy Ross combine their talents inspired by the fields of theatre, visual art, computers, and music (and who knows how many other interests) to develop projects that boldly go far beyond what other bands are doing.

I’m not going to describe every single video/song they played at the show here. If you haven’t seen a video for one of the songs mentioned, I urge you to head over to the OK Go YouTube channel and watch it. Instead, I’ll share some of our personal experiences and information from the Q&A sessions.

I knew of this band from its early days, having seen notes about it in my university’s alumni newsletter back when they were the house band for NPR’s “This American Life.” And I was paying attention to that, because I had met a young Tim Nordwind in the summer before he began attending the university. But having lived overseas in the early 2000s, I didn’t actually start following their music until I had moved to California and heard “Here It Goes Again” getting regular play on the radio.

It’s rare that a show comes around that I want to take both of my kids to see and this one could be considered exceptional for that alone. OK Go, while not a band aimed at children, is fairly kid-friendly material (aside from a few curse words in songs, which they alter live). A few years ago my now 9-year-old son went through a phase of watching certain OK Go videos repeatedly. In fact, I specifically remember keeping him happy with OK Go videos on my phone while I listened to speeches for the March for Science back in 2017 prior to the actual marching. My 13-year-old son is interested in music and performance, so it seemed like a natural fit to take him.

Of course on the weekend of the concert, neither of them wanted to go! The 13-year-old was worried about a homework assignment he had to complete and that his whole afternoon was going to be taken up by going to the show. The 9-year-old was in a general protest mood plagued with uncertainty and thinking that he would be bored. Neither of them wanted to endure the 50 minute drive to the venue. Luckily, the assignment was completed before it was time to leave, so at least one kid felt better about going. I assured them it would be entertaining and off we went.

Once we found our seats in the Loge and the show got started, “It all seemed so perfect. It all seemed so fine. Until it was not.” (Fitting lyrics from OK Go’s “Another Set of Issues.”) But more on that later.

The show began with OK Go’s first video, shot for a local TV show in Chicago (On Chica-go-go), in which the guys imitated what they thought were boy band dance moves while lip syncing to “C-C-C-Cinnamon Lips,” a rare song where the lead vocals are actually sung by Tim. Damian later noted that Peter Sagal and Ira Glass were in their “backing band” in the video.

Meanwhile, the living versions of the band members remained off stage until the start of the second video, “Get Over It.” During the live music performance, every few songs, OK Go would take questions from audience members, with Damian generally leading the responses. Some insights learned from the completely informal Q&A sessions:

• Budget for the videos is dependent on if OK Go is financing it themselves or if they are being sponsored.
• Somersaults on treadmills are painful.
• It takes a whole day to figure out how to fit eight treadmills in a small room.
• The video of “WTF?” is one continuous take, and uses a lot of objects from the dollar store, along with a special effect. Pretty sure this is one they financed themselves.
• The band has been avoiding working on areas that have fallen out of favor with them and thus fans have not heard any new music for a few years. Instead they have focused on creating videos, their Sandbox project, and the live video tour.
• OK Go has a lot of music half written and three of these songs have been on Damian’s mind. (That’s because you want to finish them!)
• 75% of the band is terrified of geese, with Damian likening them to raptors, and remarking how he understands their evolution from dinosaurs.
• Andy (the braver 25% of the band) was in charge of trying to scare the geese away during the filming of the “End Love” video in Echo Park, but that one goose really liked Andy and just wanted to hang out with him. Andy had to learn how to “choose love.” Damian mentioned the goose died last year.
• OK Go does not support their song “Shooting the Moon.” Damian claimed that in writing there is a spectrum ranging from that which is imaginative and that which is a lie, “somewhere in the middle is conspiracy theory.” He talked about working with someone who believed the moon landings were a conspiracy, which was the inspiration for this song.
• Damian spent six days learning how to be a stunt driver for “Needing/Getting.”
• Each of the pianos in the video “Needing/Getting” had their strings tuned to one note, so when the car hit that piano’s keys, it couldn’t get the note wrong.
• Old pianos were purchased for the video by sending a person with a U-Haul around California and buying whatever pianos that could be found for under $200.
• They pick who is “singing” in their videos this way: if it requires complicated dance moves and coordination, it is Tim, if it requires not being nauseated, it is Damian.

Here is the set list for the show, which I believe is fairly typical of all of the video shows they are performing.

1. “C-c-c-cinnamon Lips” from the album Ok Go
2. “Get Over It” from Ok Go , the band first appeared on stage and the confetti cannons started firing during this song
3. “A Million Ways” from Oh No, the guys also recreated the dance from the video on stage
4. “Here It Goes Again” from Oh No
5. “Do What You Want” from Oh No
6. “WTF?” from Of the Blue Colour of the Sky
7. “This Too Shall Pass” from Of the Blue Colour of the Sky
8. “End Love” from Of the Blue Colour of the Sky
9. “All is Not Lost” from Of the Blue Colour of the Sky
10. “White Knuckles” from Of the Blue Colour of the Sky

INTERMISSION

1. “Shooting the Moon” from Of the Blue Colour of the Sky, played on bells
2. “What to Do” from Ok Go, also played on bells, with the audience playing along on the OK Go app, styled after a popular guitar music game.
3. “Last Leaf” from Of the Blue Colour of the Sky, Damian played this song solo acoustic in the aisle while the stage was cleared of the bells. Audience members clapped along, but many of them were anticipating the beat and it sounded sloppy. This might be why Damian is cracking a smile in the photo.
4. “Needing/Getting” from Of the Blue Colour of the Sky
5. “The Writing’s on the Wall” from Hungry Ghosts
6. “I Won’t Let You Down” from Hungry Ghosts
7. “Upside Down & Inside Out” from Hungry Ghosts
8. “Obsession” from Hungry Ghosts
9. “The One Moment” from Hungry Ghosts, I’ve used a lyric from this song for the title of the post

ENCORE

“Skyscrapers” from Of the Blue Colour of the Sky, performed without the video

“Song 2” — cover of a song by Blur

Both of my kids had a good time during the show and I could see how wrapped up in it my 9-year-old son was. The 13-year-old didn’t realize the videos would be playing (I am sure I told him they would be), so he thought that was cool. They both liked playing along on the OK Go app.

The exception to the enjoyment was that during the middle of “Skyscrapers” when the 9-year-old announced he needed to go to the bathroom, so off we went. We got back to our seats just as “Song 2” was about to start and OK Go had already invited all the kids in the audience on stage (and it was a matinee, so there were a lot). How cool is it that the band welcomes their fans on stage with them at the end of a show? However, my son became upset and was crying because he wasn’t able to go on stage with the other children (“it looked like it would be fun” — it was a case of FOMO, after a couple hours of over stimulation). He was not getting over it, so I took him out of the auditorium and he missed the very end of the show. Ugh, we almost made it though.

But never mind that, enjoy this video I shot at the show of OK Go playing along to “Needing/Getting” with some makeshift percussion instruments. They told us the PVC pipe was tuned to D and my son with perfect pitch verified that it was, though he wished they had another PVC pipe tuned to another note so they could alternate the bass line. I missed filming the first few seconds while I was getting my camera out. Will definitely go see them again and hope that they will release new music (and more videos) soon.

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