OKGO opens for They Might Be Giants in SLC
“Ahhhh!” yells Damian Kulash, lead singer of OKGO warming up for the group’s concert in Salt Lake City. “Ahhhhh!” he screams, as his voice fluctuates from extreme highs to extreme lows.
When his voice is sufficiently warmed up and he can hit all the notes needed for the first song, this tall, slight, indi-rock sensation claps his hands and exclaims, “All right. It’s on.” He immediately drops to the floor to start knocking out push-ups.
He explained moments before that he was trying to make himself nervous for their performance, opening for the legendary They Might Be Giants.
“We’re only good when we’ve been nervous I think,” said Kulash. “If I’m not a little bit nervous before a show then I end up not having any energy when I get up there.”
Andrew Duncan, the keyboardist/guitarist for the Chicago-based quartet, warns Kulash not to hurt his wrists as he continues to do push-ups, now with his feet up on the wall, going up and down.
“Now I’m fired up,” said Kulash as he tossed a water bottle around. “See how fired up I am?”
Kulash sits down to put on some old brown polished shoes to go with his black polyester slacks and Colt 45 T-shirt with cut-off sleeves and the topic of conversation switches to fashion, specifically hair cuts. The center of attention has now become OKGO bassist Tim Nordwind.
It’s hard to explain Nordwind’s hair. He basically starts out with a blank-canvas of a head and then has a thin line of black hair that spirals a few times around from the back of his head down around his chin and then up the other side.
John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants enters the dressing room and interrupts the fashion discussion by bringing up the optimum playing time for each band. Soon the conversation changed again from the year 2001 to N-Sync to the Super Bowl half-time show with Brittney Spears.
“Five minutes, ladies and gentlemen. Five minutes to the top of the show …,” announced a man over a speaker in the dressing room.
Without stopping the conversation, OKGO started the ascent from the subterranean dressing room to the black-on-black stage.
Flansburgh, from They Might Be Giants, has become like a mentor to OKGO since they started touring together a few months ago on the East Coast. OKGO drummer Dan Konopka said the reason They Might Be Giants likes them so much is because OKGO wants to be professional and They Might Be Giants can remember when they were a new band and wanted the same thing.
Flansburgh said the reason was simple, “They’re going to be big. That’s the only reason to take a band on. I don’t want to sound cynical, but if you think somebody is cursed, you’re going to stay away from them.”
It seems everybody involved with OKGO knows they’re going to be big. From the managerial Flansburgh, to OKGO’s resident photographer Jason Lazarus, to the first-time listener, it all seems obvious that OKGO is really going somewhere.
By now they’ve reached the backstage area. They pass congenially by mullet-coifed roadies in black Kiss T-shirts and wait by the curtain. The house lights dim and a man announces the show.
One of the most impressive things about OKGO is the band’s stage presence. You could almost turn the music off and still be entertained. But who would want to do that?
Kulash explained what they want their live performances to be like.
“What I like about cheesy, big, major-label, fabricated pop shows is that their shows are just sensory overload,” he said. “Seeing a Madonna show or seeing a Brittney show is like going to see Broadway theater with opera singers and circus acts at the same time. I’m sure that seeing Elvis Costello just sitting up there with his guitar and rock is just as fantastic. But it would be nice to have our show be that entertaining. But I’m not sure if I could say that we’ve done that yet.”
“We just try to have fun. That sounds so cliché, but I think that most people like our stuff because it seems fun,” Kulash said. “And it only seems fun if were having fun.”
They definitely seemed to be having fun, even if they felt a bit out of place at Kingsbury Hall on the University of Utah campus. The venue was not the typical setting for a rock concert. With it’s murals of theatrical fancies and burgundy velvets seats, it seemed more prone to one-acts and operettas than to be hosting one of the hippest acts on the pop scene.
They started out the show with a breathy power-pop version of the classic Smiths’ song “Panic” to shouts of appreciation from the crowd.
Moving from song to song, they presented an eclectic mix ranging from minimalistic funk to hip-hop punk. They used great three-part vocals that round out their sound incredibly well.
Konopka kept them steady as they changed through various compound meters and jammed through various samples.
Konopka said he enjoyed playing in the hall because of the good lighting. He couldn’t see the crowd because of the set-up, so he said he felt like they were just jamming on a stage.
At one point near the end of their set, Konopka nailed a rim shot on the snare and sent half of his stick rocketing about 10 feet above his head. Without missing a beat he leaned over, picked up an extra stick and kept on going.
Duncan showed his versatility by slinging the guitar out of the way just in time for the keyboard part, or hammering on the timbales then deftly throwing the sticks behind him to come in right on cue on the next needed instrument.
In the middle of the show they stopped to tell the harrowing tale of their struggle of driving through blinding snow from Nebraska to Wyoming just to get to the show on time.
“We almost died for you,” Duncan said.
Kulash conceded that the secret of their survival the night before had everything to do with Nordwind’s special N-Sync watch, which plays N-Sync music videos on a little LCD screen. The crowd was impressed as Nordwind played a sample for them.
Near the end of their set they played a song titled “It’s Tough to Have a Crush When the Boy Doesn’t Feel the Same Way You Do.” It’s more of a standard jazz ballad that went over very well, with at least one girl in the crowd who yelled out, “I know, I do!” in the middle of the song.
When the opening act was over and the crews began to set up for the headlining act, OKGO immediately began to load up its equipment into a small trailer to prepare for departure to San Francisco. Kulash oversaw the whole operation with his laptop in hand, taking inventory of every piece of equipment as it went in.
This inordinate organization could be part of the reason OKGO has enjoyed such success opening for the likes of Elliot Smith, Promise Ring and TMBG without even having a full-length album out yet.
Konopka said the group got its name when Nordwind and Kulash were in art school together in Interlochen.
“They had this art teacher who was pretty eccentric,” Konopka said. “He would bring you outside and sit you down and basically tell you, ‘Look at the sky. Now look at the canvas. Now look at the tree. Now look at the canvas … OK! Go!'”
OKGO is currently an unsigned band. Kulash said they will probably sign on with a record label, but they want to make sure it’s the right one. Fans will be able to get a full length album this summer. In the meantime, they have posted three songs on their Web site, www.okgo.net
Konopka said when he first started with OKGO, he didn’t know what to expect, but he has found their music is “well thought out and smart with a lot of credibility behind it.”
But more than anything else, OKGO just plain rocks.