BiB: Damian Kulash - The Untold Story Behind OK Go's Wildest Music Videos

0:00 What is going on? It is Adam. Welcome back to Bringin It Backwards, a podcast where both legendary and rising artists tell their own personal stories of how they achieve stardom. On this episode, we had a chance to hang out with Damian of OK Go over Zoom video. We've actually had Tim of OK Go on our podcast, who about five years ago now during the Pandemic, they released a song All Together now. And we kind of got Tim's backstory during that interview and how the band started and all that. But this time around, we had Damian on the show, which was amazing. Got his backstory. Born and raised in D.C. he talks about how he got into music, recap a little bit about how he ended up meeting Tim and how the band formed in Chicago. But we dive really deep into this new album and we talk a lot about the music videos and the concepts and how they come up with all of these incredible ideas. And not only that, but the music is amazing as well. We talk about the video in the song Love Quite a Bit, which is the latest single from the new album. And they got a big tour coming up as well.

1:02 So make sure to check out the new OK Go album and the adjacent possible. And check out the video version of this interview on our Facebook page and YouTube channel Bringin It Backwards. It'd be amazing if you subscribe to our channel like us on Facebook, follow us on Instagram X and TikTok, RingInBackPod and if you're listening to this on Spotify, Apple Music, Google Podcasts, please rate and review the podcast. It helps us out tremendously. We'd appreciate your support. If you follow and subscribe to our podcasts. Wherever you listen to podcasts, we're bringing. It backwards with OK Go.

1:43 Bringing it backwards. Bringing it backwards. Bringing it backwards. Bringing it backwards. Bringing it backwards. Bringing it backwards. Hey, Damian, how are you? I'm good. And yourself? I'm great. Thank you so much for doing this. My pleasure. I'm very excited to chat with you. I'm Adam and this is about you and your journey in music. And we'll talk about the album and the tour and everything. Wonderful. Awesome. I actually had Tim on this show in the middle of COVID So like five, four or five years ago. I can't believe it's that long now. Doesn't it feel. I mean, I guess so much has happened since then, but also it feels like it's still happening somehow, right? It's. Yeah, it is weird. It feels like it was so long ago, but then like it wasn't really that long ago, but it kind of was. It's like. But yeah, you guys had put out All Together Now. We were talking about that at the time. So I'm super excited to kind of get your backstory and then obviously talk about this new album and everything you all have done since.

2:59 Thank you. Thank you. I'm excited to be here. Cool. So I saw you BORNS in the DC area. Indeed. Born in DC and raised in DC. I didn't move until after college. I mean, I went to school in Providence, Rhode island, and then moved to Chicago after that. But 18 straight years of D.C. wow. And then you met Tim and them at a camp, right? You'd go to a music camp or something? Yeah, we met at Interlaken. I started on violin, there was not a particularly good violinist, and switched over to visual art, which was my real love at the time. And he was there as a theater student, so it all kind of makes sense, you know, like.

3:46 I started on violin, there was not a particularly good violinist, and switched over to visual art, which was my real love at the time. And he was there as a theater student, so it all kind of makes sense, you know, like. We were doing it wrong from the beginning. Yeah, you're both very musical, but you also have like this total element that you can add to your band that just separates you so much from everyone else with the visuals and the videos you guys do are so good. It's funny, I mean, I think why I wasn't a great instrumentalist as a kid was that it was all about learning. It was such a rote type of learning at that point. And I remember my violin teacher telling my mother that he's incredibly musical, he just won't practice. And it was like, that's a. You know. And when I found punk music as a teenager, it was like, oh, now I get to be incredibly musical without ever having to learn how to play the damn thing. And now I love, of course, I mean, like, there's nothing I would enjoy more than just to spend the day practicing because it's so meditative and wonderful. But my brain isn't as flexible and as wonderful as it was as a, you know, 12 year old. I mean, I think we're pretty decent instrumentalists these days. And as a teenager, late teenager, my sort of understanding of myself shifted from being sort of primarily about visual art to

5:17 primarily about music, I think, because it stayed more magical to me. I have a great love of. Shape and color and geometry and. You know, visual arts. But there was, after learning a bunch of this, you know what I did love doing as a kid was practicing that. I loved just painting or drawing for hours and hours and hours at a time. And. And as I grew older. What became like the world of writing. Fine art basically becomes about the essay, about the work.

5:59 At some point, at least in an institutional setting. That doesn't have to be the case in the real world. But the things that drive museums and galleries and therefore, you know, art departments and universities and stuff are. Is the story that's told about the art much more than it is the art itself. And that was really disheartening to me and disillusioning to me. Whereas on the other hand, music, and especially pop music was kind of the opposite. It's just like it is what it feels like, and if it moves you, it moves you. And what's amazing about music that, you know, I think the other arts often strive towards is a very direct.

6:48 Brain stem chemical relationship to your. To your soul. You know, like literally you. When a loud noise goes off, your body jumps before your brain registers that you've heard it. Because your ears are directly connected to your brain stem like that. You're actually. They. Like there is a more direct connection of sound to your nervous system than there is to your. To your intellectual brain. And. But you know that on one end of the spectrum and on the other end of the spectrum, the sort of pure math of the fact that, like. You know, a perfect fifth is the relationship of three to two and an octave is the relationship of two to one. And there are all these. And like, the reason these things feel the way they do to us is just our bodies register, resonating with.

7:44 What'S so beautiful about a particular mathematical relationship. And that. That will inside of your soul turn into feeling. Right. Like that. All it is is sound waves through air. And yet somehow what you experience it as is, you know, the weirdest mix of joy and hope and. And hopelessness and lust and fury all at the same time in some indescribable thing like that. That is what makes it worth being alive in general. Right. Something that's deeper and wonderful and more human than humanness. And so music, as you can see, took over my soul in my late teen years, I think, because that mystery doesn't go away. Right? Right. I don't think it needs to in film or in painting or in writing either or. But the academic version of those things so often does kind of.

8:45 Remove the sensuality and put in the intellectual. And my brain already wants to go like it pulls me towards the intellectual already anyways. What I need is the pull in my life towards the sensual. Okay, yeah, you didn't ask that question. But there's the answer. No, no, no. I love that. That was. And it always gets me thinking because I remember seeing videos online. I'm not a great musician, but I love music. I've been a music, you know, consumer forever. But I've seen videos where like, you know, certain notes will make certain patterns on water, like with the sound waves and like you can like. And then like you were saying, like, you know, these things are supposed to go together and then it makes you feel a certain way. Just like all like what sound can do is just so it blows my mind. Like I can't even like begin to wrap my head around it. Like when you start talking about like it's almost mathematical when you're writing a song, I would imagine if you know what's supposed to go where.

9:41 Well, there is, there's a component of that that works. But what I guess what's amazing to me is I don't think that anybody. Fully understands it. Right? Like, like, of course. And you don't want to write like that. Of course. You can. There's always a deeper level of understanding to be had from a sort of mathematical, scientific perspective. And music theory is an unbelievably beautiful. Universe of relationships and dimensions.

10:21 It's sort of like. The fact that you can slice through all of this with math, or you can slice through all of this with neuropsychology, or you can slice through all of this with, you know, geometry. Like there are all these beautiful ways to think about it in all these amazing ways to understand it, but none of them get it. What. It's sort of like the hard problem of consciousness, right? Like you can understand how brains work. That doesn't mean that you're going to understand where, what a person is, right? Where consciousness come from or what. And it's the same thing in music to me that like you can understand why like that, you know, major thirds have a different emotional effect than minor thirds do. And when you start combining them in interesting ways, you get interesting results. But that's not, that's not the same as on like the fact that some songs will, will move me to tears, that won't do anything to you, you know, or vice versa. And there's just. And in a weird, almost.

11:35 Selfish or like. Self involved way. Writing music becomes an exploration of yourself, right? Like you. Because what you find is what resonates with you. Like you're all these things Present to me when I'm writing as. You know, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring. Amazing, right? Boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, amazing. And those little dots of amazing when you add them all up, when you figure out the way to get those all into a song, it becomes a reflection of what moves me.

12:18 And yes, of course, I hope that moves other people. I like, I'm not as, as pure as, you know, the Rick Rubins of the world who believe that like you ignore the audience entirely. Like, it's hard for me not to think about how this will, how people will hear this, but I know from the get go that like nothing, that all it really is is what's moving me. Like if it moves me, maybe it'll move somebody else also. And I mean perhaps that's the same as the Rick Rubins of the world, I don't know. But the. It becomes. It's. A document of your own. Unique response to the universe, you know? Sure. And then when you're finished and then you present it to the world, then you're almost. Then you're giving it away at that point because you said it was selfish in the beginning. But then you're also. Oh yeah. I mean it is. Once you're done with it, you stop. Like you have no.

13:20 You have no control over what it is in the world after that, you know, and, and, and that it can be a beautiful thing. That can be an incredibly sad thing. That can be like. It can be so disheartening to have something that you love so much go off into the world into silence, you know, or just like not or just to sort of eh. You know. But, but on the other hand, like there are things that you like. Yeah, that was a nice one. Like become the biggest thing of your life, you know, like even. I mean the strangest. Happenstances of the world around you. Like none of us know the world in which we are putting things out. You know, like you just have no idea what's going to happen to it. And they. And that's. It's gorgeous.

14:10 You know, it is. It's just as confusing and wonderful as the music itself. Have you had an experience as I, I love this. I've had a lot of artists on talk about like putting something out that they were like either super vulnerable about and they were like, I'm gonna kind of hold like I don't know if I'm feel comfortable putting this out or they put something out that they liked and they just didn't assume the reaction or they put something out that they had a certain meaning towards. And then once the public got it, it flipped and it still became a thing. Like, have you had that with any of your music or a song that. You can think of? I mean, on some level there. It's all like that. Like. Like I've never. With the exception of our first album, like. Like get over it. I think that.

14:54 Which, you know, we wrote. I wrote that in. 1996 or 97. You know, it's like, oh yeah, yeah. You'Ve been to a while. And I mean at least pieces of it. It changed a couple times in those few years. But like. It. By the. That because of the fact that like that was the song that would. Had gotten assigned to a major label. Like, I knew that was the one that was one they cared about. Right. But with the exception of that, there's. We've never known what. What song would be a single, so to speak, or would. Would grab people's attention as we've written it.

15:37 You know, like. And I don't think. I mean even our most recent album, there's a song called Stone Only Rolls Downhill, which is. Which we decided to put out as the first single. And it was written. Many parts of it were written. 20 years ago really. It was like. It was stuff that was. It was like a demo for our third album, I guess. I don't know, like a long time. Maybe it was even our second album, but it was a long time ago. Bits of it and it wasn't finished, but there was like. I was just going back through old, you know, folder of old stuff and was like, this is pretty great little groove. And. And.

16:18 And it was like tried to re record it and there was just something missing. Like. So we actually kept. I mean it's all. It's like a new. A new song built around a couple performances from 20 years ago, you know. Wow. And. And even then it felt like a throwaway. It was like, this is a cute one, you know, but like it didn't. But it wasn't till the record was done that a few, like a few friends who I played it for just had this like, very visceral reaction to it. It didn't. Because it's not like a commercially sounding song really, you know. Right, right. Or it's certainly not this. The thing you would be like. That. That would scream, okay, Goness. I guess I know what you're saying. Yeah, for sure. And. And honestly, like, I'm. That's a. That's a trap that thing. Like, I don't think it's like, some of my favorite songs that I've written are ballads. And they're certain. And are like, that's just not what OK Go is known for. Because that's not.

17:19 The stuff that we've decided to make videos for. And largely because the video ideas don't like the type of videos we like to make don't fit as well with ballads or haven't, you know, or because we can't find a sponsor who wants to pay for a video like that or sad. So sounds good, right? Like, and it's. And it's. I hate to think that that, like, our artistic career is. Or what we're known for has been. Has been that defined by, you know, like, financial opportunities. But then again, it is for everyone, right? Like, you know, like Michelangelo was, you know, was doing branded entertainment, man. Like that. Like, that was, you know, the Roman Catholic Church was paying him to put that up on the ceiling, and they weren't gonna. He didn't get to decide to put the devil up there, you know, like. Right. And.

18:11 I. I guess the. It all. I mean, I. You've caught me on a morning when I'm feeling rather like I. I like the mystery of all that. You know, it. Because I don't think, like, everybody who thinks they have control over what they're doing or know what they're doing feels to me like they've kind of lost it already, you know. Yeah. Well, as a fan of okay Go, my favorite song on the new album is this is How It Ends. I think that song is so awesome. And it's a balance. It really. I love that song. Thank you very much. And I mean, I don't know. I actually do have a video that I want to make for it, and hopefully we will. Oh, really? That's exciting.

18:56 But. And I mean, and it's funny that, like, how many of your interviews. Is that even a thing, right? Like, unfortunately. And the biggest blessing of our life at the same time. Like, an OK Go song almost doesn't exist unless it has a video. It is such a gift that we get to do this stuff, that we get to, like, explore these other types of art, and then we get to, like, chase our wildest ideas into the weirdest places. But it also. It means that, like. That to a vast swap, you know, of course we have, like, a core of mega fans who will listen to everything, and I love them so much for that. And we'll relate to the music, specifically for the music. But we know that, like, in the.

19:44 In the kind of media landscape we live in. It's kind of like Every. Everybody gets 15 seconds of your attention if the algorithm lets it. And that algorithm is only going to pick an OK Go song if it happens to have a video. Right? So. And, and it's a. You know, it. It sucks, but it's also like, how much are you going to rage against it? Like, I'm not. I can't. I'm too. I'm too old to like be raging about. About how art moves through the world. It does what it does. And I just, I want to spend my time making it rather than. Than. Than gaming it, you know? And you've been blessed to do that. I mean, you can do the videos that everyone loves and that are so creative. And I want to talk to you a little bit about just that in general. But. And then you can also. And then you can write the music that you love as well. And it all kind of can come together and people can find this is how it ends where I. Which I love, but I also love your video. So I think it kind of goes on both ways I look from, from. My perspective, maybe I'm just like speaking defensively. From my perspective, it's all like, it. It like.

20:48 Connects. It's like a single universe, right? Yeah, exactly. And where. From where I stand, this stuff all. It all relates. And it's all really obvious how it relates to me because it's sort of like. Like if you're the person eating the meal, you understand the relationship of the salt and pepper. Yes, they're different things, but like, but this, the flavor doesn't happen without the. Doesn't exist with both. Right? And. There'S some things that need more salt and some things need more pepper and you can love them both on their own. But the fact of the matter is it's like this is the meal, right? And. I am at the, like, I am dead center of that particular restaurant. Like, I'm the head chef of this particular restaurant.

21:31 So I get. I. The whole picture makes sense to me. I just am also aware of the fact that like, yeah, most bands don't like, don't have this whole weird video arm. They get to like, there's benefits to that in terms of, like, they put out albums twice as fast as we do. But like, I'm also never, like, I'm so happy that 30 years into this career, almost 30 years into this career, I guess we're 20 something, 26, 27 years into this. I, like, we've never been bored at all, you know, and like, and I, and I got like, right now I'm trying to say, like, how much more time to spend making videos for this most recent EP versus just like getting to writing the next one. And I love both options and for different reasons.

22:18 Like. There is this pressure where it's sort of like I don't want the songs we just put out for this to be it. Right? Like for the ones that have videos to have their moment and for the other ones to be. Hopefully somebody will find them one day. It's like, no, I wish you could make a video for every single one, but I also don't want to spend, you know, the next two and a half years making videos, scrounging up the resources to make a video for every, for every song. So like it's. And, and, and when I find myself stressed out about that, I, I just have to remind myself like this is the best possible problem to have. Like that, that, like that I have too many creative options that I want to chase rather than I don't know what to do with myself, you know? Sure. Yeah. Is that, I mean, you talk about doing a bunch of videos and like that obviously that's got to be so time consuming. Like the love video is so rad with all the mirrors and everything. Like, I just, I mean something like that had to take forever to plan and think of. So like you have a big gap in between, like 10 years in between the last two albums. Was it just. Were you guys focusing a lot on videos and. Well, there's like, I'd give. Maybe I think that, that the videos might add a year or two to each album cycle. Maybe like because we spend so long on, you know, on making them and they're a lot of times they're incredible. They're like films, they're these big art projects. They're not like the way you're supposed to like look backing out of it. If you're a,

23:50 if you're a label and you're trying to sell music and you know that it needs a video, you hire a director and that director puts in, you know, anywhere from a month to six weeks of work to get something really awesome. If they're a really high level director who can work much faster, have a really big team, maybe it's only a few days, but then you're paying for that, right? So it's like it's. And then your band shows up, they do the thing that's supposed to happen in the video and then you have an advertisement for a song and hopefully that goes well and good for you. Our videos are obviously like, it's a whole different thing where it's this art project that we ourselves build up. And usually we're starting from scratch in a domain we have very little experience with. Like, you know, luckily I now know people who know a little bit about robots, but it's not like I can just go to the back room and grab my robots. Like, I got it. You have to figure out a way to make this all happen. And that does take months of time. And then we get to make something that other people don't, you know, don't get to make. From. From. From the labels perspective, you would say other people don't waste their time or money on. Right.

25:00 But from an artist perspective, like, they don't get to make it. And I do, you know. Exactly. And. And so it is definitely taken up some time. But the main thing that happened between our last album, this one was Covid. Sure. Children. Yeah. Andy and I both had kids and. Thank you very much. And we were both. We were both just did. Really didn't want to tour or. Or be away from them very much. That like, we, you know, we were able to write some. But I don't know if you have kids, but. But it. Yeah, I do have two. I know all about it. Like, I. I thought that, yeah, I'd still get a couple hours of writing. I have twins. And it was just like there was a good. There was a. I didn't. There was like, I live in the same building as my studio and I.

25:46 I didn't see it for months at a time, you know, like. And it was wonderful. I. I would never want it any other way, but, but, but, yeah, that put some time in there. And then right when we were about to get back to music, my wife and I got the green light from Apple to direct a movie that we had been pitching. And I like, you know, as a director, the opportunity to make a feature was like, I can't. I'm obviously not gonna turn that down. Like, what an amazing thing. And I kind of naively was like, we'll still be writing at the same time as if, like, I'd have days off from the movie where I just like, did music. And there's no such thing as a day off from a movie, obviously. And it was awesome. The movie is called The Beanie Bubble. It was on Apple. And there's no such thing as a day off from a movie, obviously. And it was awesome. The movie is called the Beanie Bubble. It was on Apple.

26:30 Zach Al Thanakis in. It's a great film. He's incredible. I mean, Zach Alifanakis is one of the most. Profoundly wonderful humans I've ever met. And so, you know, so next thing you know, it had been like eight, nine years since our record had come out, our last album had come out and we never thought we were taking a break. It was just sort of like we're just, I'm just gonna do this thing, but then we'll get back to writing. You know, it's gonna happen that way. Yeah. So the videos have a little to do with it, but. But I can't blame them entirely. Okay. With. Do you. When it comes to a video like the robot one or I mean any of your videos are. So do you see like an idea or you have an idea and you're like, okay, how can I really build this? Or does the video idea come and then you find the song that will fit it?

27:18 Usually what happens, I mean, the songs happen totally independent of video. It's not. We've never written a song. We never had like a video idea. We were like, now let's write the song for it. Okay. But there it is the case that I will sometimes have a visual idea that sort of floats around waiting to attach to a song, you know. That like. Like that's a good one. In fact, I remember that we might have already been working on the demo for the Love song when I had that idea.

28:34 A world of mirror illusions. Like think of how many cool mirror illusions there are. And just put a note in my phone being like, remember to go down this rabbit hole and started going down that rabbit hole of different mirror illusions and realized like. If you want to do this so that it's not just sort of a sequence of. Cuts, you know, like if you want to do more than one of these tricks in a row, you're going to need precision that humans can't muster, you know, like, sure. And we're going to need robots. And that was. But like at that point. So like between the thought and the. And the note in my phone to, to. To like reaching out to a friend Was probably a year and a half, you know, sort of just like on a list of maybe I'll do it someday kind of things. And by that time, the song was more together, and it became clear that, like, oh, wait, that is a perfect. Like, that is actually a perfect metaphor for this thing I'm singing about in the song. But. But they weren't connected until then.

29:37 Right? Like, and sometimes it's even more. For lack of a better term, stupid than that. Like, when we went. When we made the treadmill video for Here It Goes Again. We knew we wanted to dance on treadmills. And we were like, well, let's pick this sort of, like the marchiest, stompiest, most driving song on the record. And we picked this song called Good Idea at the time because it was, like, really sort of like driving and pounding. Like, it leans forward the way you would want to. Like. You know, it just. Yeah, right. And we got on the treadmills and it. And nothing we did matched the music at all. It just was like, no move could work. Like, the tempo was just somehow wrong. So we literally just, like, played the whole album and jumped around on treadmills until, like, one of the songs made sense, you know, which is crazy because it's like that song.

30:36 It wasn't until years later that I was like, oh, right. The lyrics of that song are literally, here it goes again. Like, here it goes again and a treadmill. Or like, it seems like it's a. Like, how dumb am I that I didn't already make that connection, you know? Right. So whatever. They'll connect in different ways. But I've also. It's sort of back to the thing I was saying before about. Art being such a. Roundabout way of. Reflecting your own self, you know? Like. I'm always surprised that this visual idea in this song seemed to fit so well. And I'm like, oh, it's not that weird that, like, I'm the person who's into this type of sound and this type of visual, like, connected again. Connected again.

31:27 And the videos themselves. I'll give you. I think a better. You can erase the whole last answer because it's actually probably truer and answers it better. Well, I want to keep your ass. I know. I'm just. Like, the process. The reason that the love video with mirrors and robots looks the way it does is still because of the song, not the mirrors and the robots. Because as we're. Once you've got this set of ideas, we're choreographing them to the feelings of the song. And there's just no. Like, you could probably take that same idea of, you know, robots and mirrors.

32:13 And. If you were to try to make a video for an upbeat dance song with it, it would be so wildly different than that one. Or to a, you know, really slow ballad, it would be so wild. Like, because as you're doing it, the, the discovery process, what, like which tricks, which effects, which, you know, visual elements work or resonate has everything to do with how they, how they relate to the song. So like when, like the way that that idea comes together is I text my friend who knows robot people, I'm like, I got an idea for robots and mirrors. Do you want to direct this with me? And he's like, that sounds awesome. We get together for a week with, with, you know, 20 mirrors in an office, no robots, just like, just to play with reflections and see what tricks we like. And hopefully by the end of three or four or five sessions of playing for three or four hours, we've got a big kind of like vocabulary of tricks we want to play with. And at that point you can start setting them against the music and figuring out what this really feels like. But you're not. Like, we didn't start with. I mean, there's no idea or plan at the get go.

33:37 There's just a sort of sandbox to play in. And then you get it. It's like if the sandbox reveals all this cool stuff, it reveals it along with the song that you're already, you already have in mind. So it conforms itself to the song. Like, I don't know what that, what those visual ideas would be. Like if we've been working with a different song the entire time. You know what I mean? Sure, yeah. Could it look totally different? 100%. Yeah. Or just fail. Like, there's certainly times we've gotten into the sandbox and then like. I just don't think we have, like, I don't think we have a three and a half minutes worth of awesome here. Like we have 30 seconds worth of awesome, but we're not going to do that over and over again. So like that was cool. Let's try something else, you know? Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I do. I do remember when I talked to.

34:18 Tim before too, he was talking about when you guys started in Chicago, you were kind of known for your posters too, right? Like you were poster up the whole city and then the cops were after you. So I just think it's over. It's like you have, you've always kind of had that, you know, visual art element along that kind of connected to the band in this weird way. I. I know that I should. What I should relate that to is my time in Providence. Like, I went to Brown and I was. You know, the Brown and RISD scenes are very interconnected. So everything like every rock show came with hand silk screen posters because like all the cool punk kids were on were like, you know, art students at RISD. Sure, yeah.

35:03 But in my. And so I'm sure that's like a lot of the. The basis of it. But in my head it really relates to DC. Like. So I DC circa 1989. I am, you know, 13, 14 year old kid and listening to mostly like Prince, Run dmc, Depeche Mode and Led Zeppelin. It's all over the map. But it's very like mainstream pop stuff. Yeah, it's mainstream, sure. But DC had that scene going on, I'm sure. Right. And then. Exactly. Then comes 1990 and I'm a freshman in high school and someone gives me, you know, my first fugazi. Fugazi on one side and shudder to think on the other side. Tape and man.

35:52 Like it. It. The. Not just because the music was awesome, but because the music was played was like so evidently played by humans. You know, like it's very. Like maybe take Led Zeppelin out of that mix because it's. That's very human music. But. But Prince, like it's the most virtuosic shit ever. But it's like, I don't remember. Like you have to be an extraordinarily good musician to even realize that the reason the drums feel so good is that they are played by a human. They sound so electronic and perfect. Like you don't even realize that it's not a sequencer. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Right? And like Run DMC, like it's. It is wildly human on some level, but it was like sampler music from a time like all of this stuff, like it just came from the. From the. From the gods as far as I concerned. Like, it. I. And then you hear Fugazi and you're like, it's just angry dudes, you know. Right? And like Run dmc, like it's. It is wildly human on some level, but it was like sampler music from a time like all of this stuff, like it just came from the. From the. From the gods as far as I concerned.

36:48 Like, it. I. And then you hear fugazi and you're like, it's just angry dudes, you know. Just a few guys and some instruments. Right? And around the same time I, you know, I. Pixies were given to. Tim gave me my first Pixies record and. Oh, wow. And like it just that understanding that you can get just as much emotion or more out of two notes, you know, like, like just. And. And that being that, that having it be broken was kind of the point. Right? Like that's what it, that, that's what it, that's actually why it felt so great. And because I was in D.C. that Fugazi tape that I got and I could also just go and see them play an all ages show for five bucks in a, in a, in a local park. Because like, you know, for people who, who aren't students of punk and like the DC scene was very centered around Discord Records, which was very centered around Fugazi and before that Minor Threat. Ian Makai was a singer of both bands and one of the two heads of that label. And they had a very firm set of rules, like almost oppressively punk. Right. All shows had to be five bucks. All shows had to be all ages.

38:08 When in, like when possible. It was better to do it in a, you know, a high school cafeteria or a church. Like a community center. Yeah, yeah, right. Like, like I don't think I ever saw Fugazi play in a rock club in D.C. I saw him play in rock clubs in Philly and in Boston. It was like I traveled to go see him and play those places. But like in D.C. it was always, it was at Fort Reno, which is this park. Park outside or it was at St. Stephen's Church downtown. Like, like and, and records, I think CDs were allowed to be ten bucks and records had to be eight. But it was like once, once that's established, it's like you can't if, if you know, like when the Chili Peppers came to town, they still had to play all ages shows because you can't play D.C. and, and, and do an 18 and up show. It's, it's like. It'S, you know, it's like going to London and saying, you know, I hate football. Like it, you know, like you're, it's just against the cult rules of the scene. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so I love that though. I think that's so awesome that that was able to be kind of built that way. It was unbelievable. And it's, it, it's. There are vestiges of it still that like some of the only promoters in the, in the country who didn't get bought out by.

39:33 Enormous corporations were in D.C. because the bands themselves. Almost every year you'll see. What's your favorite club to play in America? It always gets voted 9:30 club in D.C. and that's because 9:30 club is run by these independent promoters who, I mean the original 9:30, the one that I grew up going to in their early 90s was the most disgusting little shithole you've ever. Like, it's not the beautiful place that it is now. It was. The shows were absolutely magical. But, like, it was fam. It was famous for, like, if they gave you a pizza, you had to eat it before your show because if you put it down in the dressing room, the rats would have eaten the whole thing by the time you get off stage. Like, oh, man. And there were. There were like columns throughout the whole thing. So there was like one place with. With no sight line problems in the whole club, you know. But like.

40:25 But I can't tell you how like, you know, some of the best shows I've ever seen in my life were in that tiny room. And like. And their relationship to the. To the way they treated, you know, the like, scream that Dave Grohl was playing drums for meant that, like, that other bands Dave Grohl might have been in had to then, like, had to then play 9:30. Yeah, yeah. You see what I'm saying? Like, yeah, we don't care that you're the Foo Fighters. You're gonna play here. Exactly. And still, like. And D.C. is still largely run by those people because that scene and it was a. But back to what it meant to a 15 year old kid. What it meant to me was that, like, I could sudden, like, music was suddenly a social activity and music was suddenly a collaborative activity and a communal activity and a political activity. And I think like, that music went from being something I listened to on my headphones while I was playing with Legos or drawing to something I did with my friends.

41:33 And we participated in. And by the time I was like, let's see, by the time, I guess I must have been a sophomore in high school. I was 15 years old when I started a record label putting out friends, fans. I mean, a record label is. That's big air quotes around that. But what happens. Another awesome indie label called Simple Machines, this is so awesome that they did this. They put out one of the things you could buy mail order from them was for like a dollar. I think it was maybe $1.50 was a pamphlet that was how to put out your own seven inch. And it had. It was literally like, this is what your budget, like your minimum budget is this. Don't think you can do it for less. You can do it for more if you want. But this is how it works. Here are the three pressing plants in the United States. Here are the two mastering plants. Here's their number here's the person you want to call it. Them, blah, blah, you know, just like, like, why is that? You know? Now you could probably get chatgpt to tell you some of the same stuff, but in 1990, that was like.

42:31 Crazy. Yeah, it's like pretty much the exactly what to do. Here's how exactly. And it was like. And the thing is that like the smallest run you could do, I think was about 500, 500 records. And you could get the price of that down to about 750 bucks. I was like, I bet I could muster up 750 bucks. And so I started putting out my friends, bands. And like, the records are not great, but like, but the, the key thing was that like, I just want to be part. I just wanted to. You're a part of the scene, right? Like, I wanted to, like, I wanted to. Like all of a sudden I saw that, like, that the things I was doing, like playing with Legos, drawing with my headphones on, like, all of that could be one thing. You could go, you could make a 7 inch and like, you got to design the 7 inch and you got to pick the songs and your. And then that thing would sit in a record store where other punks in D.C. would come pick it up and like they'd suddenly know your best friend's band, you know, and like.

43:28 And that was so magical to me and so exciting and that like I. By the time you fast forward, I don't know, six or 10 years and I'm living in Chicago with the earliest version of OK Go. The idea that we could put on a show was like, when you're putting on a show, if that means you get to sneak into the Art Institute and print up your own four color silk screens and put them all over town, that's not a thing you have to do to get people to come to your show. That's the thing you get to do because like, because it's because somebody has opened the door to like an art experience for you.

44:10 And to me those things are. I don't. Maybe the line between them isn't as obvious once it's outside my head as it is inside my head. But like that kind of participatory culture and relationship to art, like, it goes straight back to Fugazi for me. And I'm very, very, very thankful for it. It. Yeah. And it's. And with it's. I remember as a kid just going around San Diego and seeing Post, you know, people tagging up stuff. And when I was younger, it was. Obey was the big thing. Shepherd Fairy hadn't gotten to where he was. He was. He was a thing. But you'd walk around town, you just start seeing that Andre the Giant everywhere and all over the high school.

44:51 People would, like, put it up and. And then it just became this thing that people knew of. Yeah. I mean, I assume you must be younger than I, but, like. Yeah, no, Andre the Giant has a posse. Stickers were floating around my high school in. In. In. In again, 1990. Like. And I don't think Obey the company existed for another 10 years after that or something. Yeah, I was. It was when I was in high school. It was the late 90s, early 2000s. Yes. Yeah. That started popping up. And then if I'm not mistaken, there's a RISD connection there too, isn't there? I'm not. I don't. There might be. I don't really know his backstory. I know he was in San Diego from. For a minute or for a little bit. He might have been from dc. Who knows? I mean. Yeah, yeah. I know some kids in D.C. who, you know, who had some relationship to it, but I have no idea if they actually were. But that kind of, like, underground culture that was all connected via the, you know, the federal mail system, you know, like, I mean, I was ordering 7 inches from small towns in middle America where, like, there was a tiny punk scene happening in Toledo or whatever, you know, it's like. And it was just awesome. And. That.

45:59 It's weird because I think that, like, that's happening both more and less now. You know, that one. The dream of having every piece of music ever available at your fingertips so that you can just bathe in it all. It's a beautiful, amazing thing to just. To be able to discover Billie Holiday as fast as you could discover Billie Eilish's. Incredible, right? Like, the streaming services are amazing for. For that type of access, but it also, like, there's no bar to get over for you to. To like. For there to be a relationship between you and that thing, you know, and like the 7 inches that. That I listened to in the early 90s.

46:45 No. No song will ever have that same feel, that same, like, personal mindness, you know, that same personal, like. Magic. Because it's. Because I. Because I didn't have to do it. I don't do anything for it now. Like, back then I had to, like, I had to find. You had to work for it. Yeah, yeah. And you discover it and like. And I. And I do miss that. And. And I'M sure it is. I'm sure it's. You know, we all know it's changed the world a lot. I guess. On the other hand, now it's like. It used to be that those cult. Those. Those communities were entirely geographic, and now they can. Like, man, if you're. If you're into that one weird thing, it doesn't matter where the other people in the world are, like, as long as there's 10 more of them. You guys got a scene, you know. There'S a subreddit for you somewhere, I'm sure. Exactly.

47:40 Yeah. That is interesting because I remember that's how I, you know, discover bands. I read the liner notes, read the. Who they thank, like, who produced this. And then you start finding all these other bands and other bands they worked with. And now, like you said, you can just go on Spotify and you can play any song ever that you'd ever want to, you know, listen. Yeah. And I just don't. Like. Is it. There's a sort of. Mythology to it all that gets lost because you don't like. Because you're not connecting the dots between. It's like you look up at the stars and you got it. You. You need to find shapes up there, you know, you need to, like, find constellations. And so you're like, wait a second. Adam Lisicky was the drummer in Shutterthink and he was the drummer in Java. I mean, we know. I can't remember, like, like, but there was like. You'd pick out, like, there, like Dave. Armstrong was in op, Ivy and Rancid and like, it's like. Exactly. Totally. Exactly.

48:36 That's his little bro. Like, wait, Green Day is Big Brothers were all in better band. I'm sorry. Yeah. Other bands. No, that just shows my age. I. I love Green Day. I take that back. I. But I do remember when Green Day happened. I remember Dookie coming out and being like, that song's undeniably catchy. But I mean, these are just the dude's little brothers. Like, that's how old I. You know, like. Or cousins or whatever it is. But like, that. That thing that you're finding those shapes in the stars. And now I. And now it's. The algorithm is like, has decided that you like this type of thing, and that type of thing is going to feed you another thing kind of like it. And I don't know. I.

49:21 I hope we. I hope we can still find the magic in all of it, you know, I think. I think it's there. I love what you guys are doing. Speaking of just the algorithm, my Instagram and everything with your guys, this page. I love the. Behind the. Like we did today. You kind of just describe what's going in the video or, like, what it took to make those videos. I think that's so cool. Just like that behind the scene. Look at, like, this was one take or this took this many people or this many hours or this long to do. It's funny because those. Those little posts is sort of like. We'Re realizing that, like, people don't watch. Social media doesn't do the same thing that.

50:05 That shared media does. Right. When our things would go viral because of humans, because humans would be passing the link around before YouTube. But even with YouTube. For most of our time with YouTube, it was never algorithmically shared. Right. It was only. It was. Humans would share that link. And so you're passing around a piece of art and what you want your, like. The sort of key thing there is that you. In your day, you experience a piece of wonder, and then you go like, oh, my God, I really want my girlfriend to. I want my girlfriend to have this moment of wonder also. But also I want this moment of wonder to come from me. Yeah. Like, I think that's why I found this. I could show it to you. Yeah. What worked so well was because, like, there was.

51:02 It was like, my mom's gonna love this, you know, oh, my God, my friend at work loves this nerdy kind of shit. I'm gonna send this to, like, it was sort of like these little love notes from people to each other to share that art. Right. And that doesn't happen with the algorithmic stuff because the algorithm just cares about whether or not it hooks your attention. Right. Yeah. And doesn't care that you love it or hate it or if it, like, gives you. It's. There's no valence to it. Right. Like, you're never. Unless you are. You're trying to whip up a frenzy for your particular political point of view. You're never going to share something with.

51:45 With your, you know, bandmate or your boyfriend or whatever, where you're like, this is going to really piss him off. But the algorithm is perfectly happ to piss you off. It wants to piss you off. As long as you're going to keep watching. Right. Stick around. Exactly. And so that's like the. When it used to be that we would. That our videos would go viral is because people were like, I love this feeling and I want someone else to love. I want to share this love. But, like, the algorithm doesn't care about you loving the feeling. It just cares about you addicted to the feeling. And that's totally a separate thing. So like, but what it will. But what happens with those little behind the scenes videos is like people that's a moment of you want to keep reading. Right. And hopefully like you can still experience the art a little bit. But like it takes, but art takes you. You the viewer have to like go like I want an art experience.

52:47 Whereas information like this is how we made the art is much. Will grab you much faster. Like it's like. And, and so I love those things. Like I love that they, that they like they work and they connect. But it's almost sad to me that it's like I wish we could put our videos just alone on social media and have them work the way they used to on YouTube. But sure it's. But it's not how people do it. Right? It's like the same way that a song just doesn't. You can you imagine just putting a song on social media and being expecting people to just like listen, here it is, here it is. We have a song. Now just, just close your eyes, you know. Sure. But it's when I, when I see your posts and stuff, it's like I've experienced the art years ago when I saw the video and then it's like re seeing it again and then kind of re falling in love with it and really seeing how it was like the airplane video when you guys are doing the flips. Like I love that behind the scenes one because I was like this is so wild that you were able to figure this out. They're fun projects, really fun. And you know, I'll take a totally different left turn here. Like, you know what's also awesome about the videos is they are from. From the perspective of a grown ass man. It is so it's really nice a left foot, right foot in terms of like art and career and life to be able to work in these big groups of insane nerds for a few months at a time and then also work in this really small

54:17 group of, of intense friends. Right. Like not. And the insane nerds are every bit as close of friends. I don't mean it but like the. Super smart people that are coming up with the robotics behind like jumping that. While we're in Budapest in a train station working on, on, on. On the robot and, and mirror video, we are in a big, big group of people who are, who like have. There was people from seven different countries there. There were like a whole Different. I think we heard five different languages being spoken. There's, like, so many different expertises and people and interesting backgrounds, and you just, like, feel your life and your horizons getting bigger and wider. And, like, that's a very good antidote to the thing that often happens in.

55:13 Pop music, which is that, like, you're stuck in a room with four people who are just like you, and you're sick of playing the same songs every night, worse, you're stuck in a van or a bus with those people. These giant projects where it's like, when we're done, we're very happy to get back in the studio and just be like. Like, let's just us. Us four just, like, dick around with keyboards until we get a hook we, like, you know? Yeah. But after a while of that, it's, like, really nice to be, like, you know, it'll be awesome. Like, we're gonna take over this public library and do an insane big art project in it, you know, whatever the thing is, you know? Yeah. I love that. Well, I appreciate your time, Damian. Thank you, man, so much for. For doing this. I've never seen your band live. I'm really excited. I'm gonna go see you at the Brooklyn bowl here in Nashville. Oh, awesome. Great. Yeah, I'm really excited about that. And, yeah, and the EP's amazing. And I just have one more question for you. I want to know if you have any advice for aspiring artists.

56:28 Do the thing that. Only you can do. That is an incredibly difficult piece of advice to follow because it's very hard to know what the only is thing you can do it. But doing what you think other people want you to do is the surest road to mediocrity and failure. You know, like, now you don't get to decide if your stuff is successful. Like, and making a career out of it is an incredibly, incredibly long shot for anyone. But the only people who ever get to be in that category are people who are true to the thing that they do. Right? And you can look back later and realize that only they could have done that in the moment. You may not always know because you can't tell what's coming from the outside.

57:26 You get excited about a thousand things. Are you excited about them because you just heard someone else do them really well and you wish you had done that, or because it's, like, popping right out of you. But. That, like, it's back to that. Like, incredibly small. And vital moment when you as a human are. Relating magically to a set of sounds or a set of. Colors or a set of whatever it is, right? Like somehow one plus one just turned into 500 in your soul. And that only happened for you when you played those chords on the piano and, like, it sounded perfectly magical and something was different somehow that was better than just a chord progression. Only that only happened in you. And if you can like, be. Like 100% honest with yourself about that relationship and only making things that move you inside, eventually you will be doing the thing that only you can do. But if you try, like, but if you try along the way to do the things you think you're supposed to do, you will inevitably fail.

58:53 Bringin it Backwards, bringin it Backward, bringin it Backward, bring it backward, bring it back.