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AN INTERVIEW WITH...
DAMIAN FROM OK GO.

SO FOR THOSE WHO DON'T KNOW, WHO IS IN OK GO AND WHAT DOES EACH MEMBER DO?
Daniel Konopka - drums, fortitude
Andrew Duncan - guitar, introspection
Timothy Norwdind - charm, bass
Damian Kulash - winking, sighing, anxiety.
HOW DID YOU ALL MEET AND COME TO FORM OK GO TOGETHER?
Three of us (Andrew, Timothy, and I) met at summer camp in our young teens. We were pen pals and long distance friends for many years, until we wound up in Chicago and started the band. On an unrelated note, Timothy was a very talented standing long jumper until he broke both ankles and one knee when his landing pit was cemented over as a prank. Awful prank. We later met Daniel at a gas station.
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR STYLE OF MUSIC?
Kind and somewhat confused. Sometimes ornery, but not mean-spirited or ill-intended. Salty, but a fairly sweet, with enough garlic and no artificial preservatives. Tall.
WHO ARE YOUR INFLUENCES?
The Pixies, Michael Chabon, Elvis Costello, Ira Glass, Prince, Bill Murray, Darrel Green, Sweet, Shudder To Think, beautiful people, and people who manage to do great things without worrying about it.
YOU RECENTLY PLAYED THE READING/LEEDS FESTIVALS. HOW DID THEY GO?
At Reading, I'd give our performance a B. At Leeds, I'd say we were an A or an A-. The weather was wonderful.
WHICH OTHER BANDS DID YOU WATCH WHILE YOU WERE THERE?
The Darkness, Mull Historical Society, Placebo, Interpol, Electric Six. Some others.
HOW DO FESTIVALS IN THE UK COMPARE WITH FESTIVALS ELSEWHERE IN THE WORLD?
In the UK, Festivals are fun because they are enormous, and everyone likes them. And the bands are usually pretty good bands.
In America, festivals are usually pretty awful. First of all, most Americans, or at least those who go to festivals, listen to Nu Metal. That makes for a bad day. Second, when people go to festivals, they tend to treat them like a cafeteria. Oh look, there's some great looking meatloaf over there, and ooh, check out that pudding. Maybe I'll have a spoonful of the fruit salad.
In Ireland, festivals are very similar to the ones in the UK.
In Germany, festivals are played very early in the morning to about a hundred people, all of whom are wondering, as you are, how you are supposed to feel about rock and roll when you're only half awake. Or at least that was our experience.
In the rest of the world, festivals do not exist.
DO YOU GET NERVOUS BEFORE GOING ON STAGE?
Not usually. We played somewhere in the neighborhood of 275 or 300 shows in the last calendar year, so we're pretty used to it.
HOW DO YOU STRUCTURE YOUR SET?
It's kind of like playing that game Mastermind. Do you remember it? It's the one where you try to figure out the proper color and order of a series of little plastic bits, by trial, error, and some deduction based on hints that the other player is giving you. Was that game as ubiquitous in the UK as it was in the states? That's more or less how you figure out which songs to play and when. The audience gives you vague hints, and you deduce based on some general rules, like 'too many ballads in a row is boring.'
WHICH TRACK DO YOU MOST ENJOY PERFORMING?
It changes day by day, but recently it has often been 'The Fix Is In.'
WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU DO AFTER A GIG?
Change. I am usually very very sweaty, and being sweaty all the time is just plain uncomfortable.
WHOSE IDEA WAS IT TO MAKE UP A DANCE ROUTINE FOR 'C-C-C-CINNAMON LIPS'?
Collective. We have a brain like a rhizome. Ideas sprout up in all of us simultaneously, and even if they are successfully extinguished in one individual, they persist elsewhere. It means that, once a choreographed lip-synch routine has reared its head. there is no hope of avoiding it. Fight as you will, you cannot be the victor.
WHAT IS IT LIKE HEARING YOUR SONGS ON THE RADIO AND SEEING YOURSELVES IN MAGAZINES ETC?
Weird. It's like being convinced that you just saw your girlfriend walking out of that store over there, and then catching up to her and finding it was someone who looks nothing like your girlfriend at all. Or it's like looking out of the window of a plane and seeing another plane flying a different direction a thousand feet below you. How did that get up here? Isn't the sky so infinitely vast that chance encounters are impossible?
DO YOU FEEL FAMOUS?
No.
WHEN WILL YOU BE STARTING WORK ON ALBUM NUMBER TWO?
We have already begun. So far we've got about five good ideas, twenty-five mostly-bad ideas that have some hope of being coaxed out of their badness, and several hundred bad ideas whose only hope is a quick an painless death.
DO YOU EVER READ ANY OF THE MESSAGES YOUR FANS LEAVE ON YOUR FORUM?
I used to when our fans were fewer and more psychotic. I don't know how far back you can go on there, but if you can get back to any of the threads from the summer of 2001 or so, there is some incredibly amusing stuff. Two eastern European philosophers/surrealists were having an open debate, a sixteen-year-old girl was trying to convince everyone that Morrissey was in the Pixies, a radical feminist was attacking us for being chauvinists, a couple rappers had a small battle, everyone's sexuality was questioned, and it was speculated that, when endangered, I can inflate to enormous size like a blowfish.
WHAT WAS THE FIRST EVER ALBUM YOU BOUGHT?
She's So Unusual, by Cindy Lauper.
WHAT WAS THE LAST ALBUM YOU BOUGHT?
Rufus Wainwright's new one, Want One.
WHAT FIRST MADE YOU WANT TO PICK UP A GUITAR AND FORM A BAND?
I'm not sure I remember. The first band I was ever in was with Tim, at age 12. I was voted guitarist, since I had played violin as a child, and was therefore familiar with strings. We had no drums, so we used metal folding chairs. Tim sang, and we modeled ourselves loosely, and sometimes not-so-loosely, after the Dead Milkmen. After that, I mostly learned to play by strumming 2 out of 3 chords to 'Satisfaction' while watching television. I never got very good, as a result.
WHAT IS YOUR ADVICE FOR ANYONE THINKING ABOUT STARTING UP A BAND? Don't suck. It sounds obvious, but many people make the mistake of thinking that people will cut them some slack or give them the benefit of the doubt once they are under the lights of the stage. In truth, it works the other way around. People look at those who have gotten up on stage and think, why does that looser think we should be paying attention to him? The lights on your first stage will undoubtedly be extremely unflattering. So don't rely on the goodwill of others. Edit yourself. Throw out your bad ideas. Do not be afraid of rewriting. Get good before you make all your friends come see you. You need them to return. Have endless faith in yourself in the abstract, but be endlessly dissatisfied with what you have done. If you are satisfied, you are probably boring everyone.

ALL QUESTIONS BY MR MARTYN.

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