Okay, Go!

I remain tragically and unapologetically unhip. Just ask my daughter, she’ll tell you. My music tastes remain unphased by anything much newer than 1995 or thereabouts. Yet still, every once in a while I’ll find something from a newer generation that really tickles my interests. OK GO is a quartet of musicians that seem to have been around for about five years. There are what might have been called “Alternative” in a previous era, or even “new Wavish” in a much earlier era. What makes them interesting to me is their sheer sense of fun and thoroughgoing understanding of viral media and social networking media channels.

My daughter had to explain, patiently, that they first became known back in 2006, with a video of the quartet dancing on a series of treadmills to the sound of their then current song “Here it Goes Again”. I remained blissfully ignorant– she went on to say the older video had “gone viral”, generating millions of hits, and landing the band a contract with Capital Records.

I only become of their existence from an article about embedding rights in a newsfeed.

You see, Capital Records doesn’t like the fact that their videos, past and present, were viewable and embeddable all over the internet. So now, the band that earned its fame from being viewed on Youtube cannot take advantage of the viral marketing channel it offers to promote its new CD, “Of the Blue Colour of the Sky”. That’s too bad, because I’ve seen “This Too Shall Pass” from them, and it’s a doozy. The Notre Dame Marching band and musicians wearing sniper’s ghillie suits. What’s not to love?

The irony of the record company preventing the very marketing device that made them famous seems not to have escaped the band. They recently posted a fictitious drunken apology to Youtube, in the manner of a spurned lover. I thought they were funny, and I think they are quite talented. Let’s hope they can maneuver in the information age with the collar their new masters have put on them!