{"id":219070,"date":"2010-01-14T09:28:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-14T14:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:magazine.nd.edu,2005:News\/14226"},"modified":"2010-01-14T09:28:26","modified_gmt":"2010-01-14T14:28:26","slug":"a-%e2%80%98massive-explosion-of-joy-and-music%e2%80%99","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/219070","title":{"rendered":"A \u2018massive explosion of joy and music\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"image-left\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/magazine.nd.edu\/assets\/19908\/okgo.jpg\" title=\"okgo.jpg\" alt=\"okgo.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Damian Kulash is absolutely right.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are not many people in the world who have the good fortune to be in a position where they can call Dr. Ken Dye and be like, hey, would it be cool if several hundred of your kids came out and made a video with us?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Chasing down crazy ideas like calling the director of Notre Dame\u2019s marching band and then trying to shoot a coherent short film in one take with the band and a small army of children is the kind of thing he likes to do when the moment presents itself, say Kulash, the OK Go frontman, while attacking a burrito in the Ricci Band Rehearsal Hall.<\/p>\n<ul id=\"callout\">\n<li>Related article<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=UJKythlXAIY\">This Too Shall Pass video<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The inventive rock group got this particular chance in October, working with the students for a week on a music video for their forthcoming single, \u201cThis Too Shall Pass.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOK Go is known for their videos,\u201d ND assistant band director Emmett O\u2019Leary says. Their 2007 power-pop hit \u201cHere It Goes Again\u201d may be better known as \u201cthe treadmill song\u201d from the one-take clip in which the four musicians perform a tightly choreographed dance ode to hilarity on eight treadmills. It earned the L.A.-based rockers a Grammy for best short-form video. More than 50 million people have watched it on the Internet site YouTube and not a few fans \u2014 including the creators of <em>The Simpsons<\/em> and the Band of the Fighting Irish \u2014 parodied the dance.<\/p>\n<p>Notre Dame\u2019s version, performed once at home and once at the Los Angeles Coliseum, also made the YouTube rounds, which is how OK Go discovered it last year while recording its new album, <em>Of the Blue Colour of the Sky<\/em>. \u201cFrom a bird\u2019s eye view, they make two giant treadmills with people walking on it,\u201d Kulash says. \u201cThis couldn\u2019t be more up our alley. It\u2019s big, it\u2019s absurd, it\u2019s this massive explosion of joy and music.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s neat to serve something into culture and then see someone hit it back in a slightly different way,\u201d adds bassist Tim Nordwind.<\/p>\n<p>That helps explain OK Go\u2019s latest marketing experiment: Getting other acts to cover their songs before they\u2019re even released. Should you hear \u2014 as Kulash puts it \u2014 \u201cacrobatic handbellers from California\u201d or mariachis or a section of the nation\u2019s oldest collegiate band playing an OK Go song during the next year, it\u2019s intentional.<\/p>\n<p>In Notre Dame\u2019s case, asking Dye &amp; Co. to record an arrangement wasn\u2019t enough. Soon the idea of a video in which the two bands perform the song together in a live recording emerged.<\/p>\n<p>Over fall break, OK Go staked out a field near campus and rehearsed with the student musicians. On the final day, producers added children from South Bend\u2019s Perley Elementary and Good Shepherd Montessori School.<\/p>\n<p>It required 20-odd tries to lasso the chaos into OK Go\u2019s trademark single take, but it worked.<\/p>\n<p>The group is tight-lipped about the content of the video, which should pop up on YouTube early this year. They extol O\u2019Leary\u2019s \u201chot\u201d marching formations, fellow assistant director Matt Merten\u2019s sound recording work and costumes created by senior saxophonist Angelica Hernandez. \u201cWhat else can I say about it?\u201d Kulash says. \u201cIt starts out with the four of us in a field and it ends up with 125 band members and 50 kids from local schools having a giant party.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Nordwind was school-age himself 20 years ago when he visited his older brother William \u201989, slept in William\u2019s Saint Edward\u2019s Hall room and went to football games. This time he got a charge out of hearing the students play fight songs to keep energy up through rehearsals.<\/p>\n<p>One of Kulash\u2019s favorite moments was senior drum major Aaron Hernandez marching directly toward the camera. \u201cHe\u2019s exactly the stereotype of what that perfect marching band guy is, except he exceeds that expectation somehow,\u201d he says. \u201cEvery time I see it I get this little shiver. . . . You could never dial that much style into rock and roll.\u201d<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p><em>John Nagy is an associate editor of<\/em> Notre Dame Magazine.<\/p>\n<p><em>Photo by Matt Cashore &#8217;94.<\/em><\/p>\n<hr>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Damian Kulash is absolutely right. \u201cThere are not many people in the world who have the good fortune to be in a position where they can call Dr. Ken Dye and be like, hey, would it be cool if several hundred of your kids came out and made a video with us?\u201d Chasing down crazy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4248,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-219070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4248"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219070\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}