OK Go Goes 3D - An Economic History of OK Go Videos

After appearing at the Dear New Orleans Benefit Concert Tuesday night, DC native and OKGo front-man Damian Kulash was interviewed by NPR’s Neda Ulaby to close out the summit on Wednesday. In an amiable conversation, Damian covered the history of OK Go videos, the embedding controversy, and the split with EMI.

An Economic History of OK Go Music Videos

The band first started choreographing dance moves in preparation for their appearance on a Chicagoland cable access show: Chica-go-go. The show couldn’t handle live performances, but “we didn’t want to lip-sync unless we were really swinging for the fences.”

So they rented some N’Sync and cheerleading videotapes to come up with a dance routine, which they used to end their live shows for a few years. The first video, for “A Million Ways” was filmed in Damian’s backyard, with choreography by his sister, a ballroom dancer. Budget: $5 (plus Starbucks runs).

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T Bone Burnett vs. the Internet

T Bone Burnett shook up the Future of Music Coalition Policy Summit at Georgetown University on Monday by boldly declaring at the beginning of his segment: “The future of music is…” wait for it, here it comes…”analog”.

While much of the conference focused on digitization as slayer or savior, and the Internet as love child of the universe and musical cash register, T Bone turned the conversation towards the quality of recorded music. Portions of the audience seemed stunned by some of T Bone’s thoughts, here are a few highlights:

• He finds it shocking that artists allow their music to be distributed in such a degraded form as MP3s.
• MP3s should be free, because they’re not worth anything.
• The Internet is a broadcast medium, not the omega point.
• Any musician who uses the word “monetize” should be ashamed of themselves.
• Musicians should not spend time marketing and analyzing data, they should be focused on making great music.
• To someone starting out at as an artist today, his advice would be “stay completely away from the Internet.”

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