www.okgo.net

» Find Tickets OK GO Doors 7:30pm/ Show 8:30pm

OK GO
w/ Earl Greyhound & Robert Francis

Thursday, May 13, 2010
Doors 7:30pm/ Show 8:30pm
All Ages
$15 General Admission
Tickets go on sale Friday, March 5 at noon!
www.ticketalternative.com

Okay, let’s just get this part out of the way. Most people know OK Go from their videos, especially those treadmills. Any video that’s well enough known to be parodied on The Simpsons is a cultural force in itself and, checking the YouTube rating right before sitting down to write this, I was amazed to see that the number of views on the band’s YouTube page alone now stands at 47,788,229. That’s a lot. That many people and a brother who’s the Governor of Florida is pretty much enough to win you a presidential election. Add the zillions who've seen it elsewhere, and you might not even need the brother.

So if you’re reading these words, you’ve probably seen that video. I find even more endearing the video dance to “A Million Ways” that hundreds of amateur foursomes – kids and adults and church groups and school groups – have imitated in what certainly must be the world’s first international YouTube dance contest. If you haven't had the pleasure, Google it right now and prepare to lose two hours of your life.

But I am here to say that OK Go is more than those videos. The band’s frontman Damian Kulash sometimes makes big declarations like “We're trying to be a DIY band in a post-major label world” or “Our whole bag is having good ideas and making cool shit.”

I find that convincing.

Some of the other cool shit they’ve made lately: a record accompanied only by trombones, a play, an essay in the best-selling collection Things I’ve Learned From Women Who Dumped Me, op-eds in the New York Times and Huffington Post. They’ve testified before Congress and played in the Senate chambers. I repeat: they played music in the chambers of the United States Senate. They’ve been commentators on All Things Considered. They interviewed a member of N’Sync in the bathroom of Radio City Music Hall. They have a project where they walk the streets with fans handing out burritos to the homeless. They raised most of the money to buy a house for soul legend Al Johnson, so he could move home to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

All these extracurriculars make a great story, and this is the story that gets the space in The Wall Street Journal and USA Today: OK Go is the polymath band who – with only five bucks and a camcorder – did what none of the giant record labels could, inventing a new way for a band to connect with fans and changing the way people think about music and the Internet. Great story, though it overlooks the most important thing about the band: its music. What makes OK Go great is that they write and perform great songs.

With this new record they seem determined not to let us forget it. Of the Blue Colour of the Sky is adventurously, emphatically musical – intricate, emotional, completely self-assured while it stakes out new musical territory. The ear-worm catchiness of their earlier records is still there, but the writing is more focused and sure-footed and the guitar sound broader and more dimensional.