Unfocused music scene gives OK Go green light

Instead of “The OK” or “The Go,” Damian
Kulash and his bandmates chose OK Go. The not-so-hipster name
exudes an air of excitement and anticipation for the start of
something new, or at least welcome relief from the currently
accepted standards for artistic merit.

“I just feel that there’s enough depressing music
out there,” Kulash said. “It’s sort of a shame
that in the last 10 or 15 years, for something to be considered
good, artistic, or intelligent, it has to be sour and
brooding.”

OK Go’s power pop is reminiscent of witty and quirky bands
like Weezer, the Cars, and especially Cheap Trick. Comprised of
Kulash on lead vocals and guitar, Tim Nordwind on bass, Dan Konopka
on drums, and Andy Duncan on keyboards and guitar, OK Go has been
touring in support of its eponymous debut album. The Chicago-based
quartet will bring its indie-pop-meets-stadium-rock flavor to
Westwood Plaza this Thursday.

A semiotics student at Brown University, Kulash is fond of
pointing out the patterns of pop culture.

“For 50 years, it’s been smart, excitable, happy pop
music,” Kulash said. “There’s nothing
particularly stupid about Cheap Trick or the Beatles. (But) for
some reason, in the last ten years, things are without credibility
if they’re too happy.”

The millennium has seen the Strokes-led “garage rock
revival” usurp Creed’s “dear diary” brand
of music and Limp Bizkit’s testosterone-infused rap metal.
However, Kulash has a different slant on rock’s unstable
state.

“I don’t so much believe that rock ever died and
needed to be revived,” Kulash said. “There’s no
one selling 20 million records right now in rock, which is a good
thing for rock bands and a bad thing for labels, considering how
and where they make their money. It means there’s some
freedom out there. It’s all exciting and refreshing after
years of Grunge, Post-Grunge, and Post Post-Grunge.”

A utopia where bands have the liberty to explore on their own
without the burden of appeasing record labels sounds enticing, but
Kulash understands that reality bites.

“Obviously we want to sell records, we want to expose as
many people to our music as we can,” Kulash said.
“It’s just that as soon as there’s one obvious
way to make money, that’s where all the record labels will
try to go. If there were one band right now that all of a sudden
started selling 20 million records, you can be sure that every
label would be combing the streets looking for other bands that
sound exactly like them.”

Formed in 1999, OK Go came out of the gates in a hurry by
scoring its first radio hit, the infectious, hand-clapping romp
“Get Over It.” However, OK Go has yet to approach the
mega-stardom of *NSYNC, whose dance routines have often been
parodied by the band.

“I still feel like we’re definitely in the
backstreets looking for the on-ramp to the road to stardom,”
Kulash said. “We’ve been very lucky, and we worked our
butts off.”

OK Go plays at Westwood Plaza Thursday at noon.

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