Stop The Earth!

On the same day that party in the park was happening in Leeds, I was checking out OK GO in Manchester at Academy 3. I got the chance to talk to Damian, the lead vocalist and musician of the group.

Why the treadmills?

It made a good video, it was fun.

So many things are fun, what made you think of treadmills?

It wasn’t meant to be a proper video, it was a practice dance we made to fuck with people. Rock shows have these sedimented rules where the crowd has to look cool and smoke and the band has to look cool and smoke. There’s a set of routines that exist around rock gigs and we wanted to break that rule. Within hours it had a shit load of downloads so we kept it online.

Do you perform that dance at any of your shows?

We used to, havent done for years. It’s not about the *de-ne-ne-na-na-na-nahhh*. The worst thing at a rock gig is when the crowd are in a bubble and not connected to the music. So we aim to make people shocked and make them look around and think about where they are again. Tonight, we are going to play a song on handbells, like church handbells.

Is Wikipedia correct, do you have rescue dogs?

Yea, they don’t go rescue them out of the ocean. I got them from the dog pound, I don’t believe in buying them from breeders and so on. Another thing is that you tend to get less inbred and funner dogs from the pound, they appreciate your company more. They have more of a personality. There’s something a little bit fucked up by buying a full bred dog, the whole point is companionship, not perfection.

 You guys got a really interesting and cool dress style, do you have a stylist or do it yourselves?

Thanks, no we do it ourselves. Sometimes we’ve had to call upon stylists to go out and buy stuff, especially for photoshoots. We’ve spent ourselves on clashing patterns now though, it’s so fun while it feels new but after you tour for 2 and a half years, it gets old.

We just had some beautiful clothes, Costume Nationale made us some primary colour suits, so we got red, blue etc… We’ll have those in October.

How do you guys like England?

We’ve toured the UK a lot and I love it. Driving through the English country side can be the most depressing thing, cold and wet so I’m glad we are here in the summer. The british model of a festival is so much better than the American way. The American festivals are anxiety promoting whilst you guys seem a bit more relaxed.

How long did it take to set up the video of “this too shall pass”?

About 6 months, it took 2 months to set up the machine itself but a long time to set up the actual logistics.

Are the guys screaming at the end of the video actually the engineers?

Yea, and my parents. My dad was one of the engineers and my mom was around making cookies for everyone.

How would you describe your band in one word or phrase?

A journalist recently wrote up that we are “arty party” and I like that. I like to think we are not cheap and disposable nor are we serious, so I think this works for us.

I ask everyone this, how would you define time in a single sentence?

The fourth dimension…Would you like a less physical definition?