Hanging Around … OK Go

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After the OK Go show at Rams Head Live! in Baltimore Sunday night, one of the employees could be overhead saying, “That’s the most confetti I’ve ever seen.”

He was referring to the confetti that had been shot out of two massive cannons, which post-show covered almost every inch of the floor. And, as far as legacies go, “the most confetti I’ve ever seen” seems like a particularly apt one for OK Go.

Having made a name for themselves with charming, overly-elaborate music videos, the band knows how to put on a show. In addition to the confetti cannon, they had bubble makers that shot out black-light-responsive bubbles, a giant screen that dropped down in front of the stage to show various video clips and a device that sampled the audience’s claps, stomps and other assorted noises to use as the drum track for “There’s A Fire.”

But while the high tech theatrics were fun and got the crowd pumped, some of the best moments were when they scaled things down, like when lead singer Damian Kulash went out into the crowd with an acoustic guitar to play “Last Leaf” or when they just bathed the stage in red light as they expertly covered Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog.” Also fun and low tech was when bass guitarist Tim Nordwind served as a DJ to warm up the crowd in place of opener White Arrows, who left the tour.

It was also incredibly fun when the band brought the house lights up and had cheeky Q&A sessions with the audience. In various question and answer sessions, Kulash asked the crowd not to spoil Game of Thrones (which debuted that night) because he binge watches it, said meeting Kermit the Frog was emotional and admitted that the 34-minute bonus track “9027 km” on their album Oh No, which is nothing but audio of Kulash’s girlfriend sleeping, was added to prevent their record label from having room to add DRM software that would have prevented fans from burning copies of the CD.

The show was part of their North American tour to promote their new album Hungry Ghosts. The tour began March 21 in San Francisco and will end May 2 in Los Angeles.

Photos and article by Joel Murphy. You can find future OK Go tour dates and purchase tickets here.

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