From Hell To Breakfast: Musical Review With Recipe: OK Go With The World's Best Waffles
Wednesday, June 23, 2010 at 1:04AM | by Otter If you listen to a lot of alternative music, you know that it can be so alternative it's just weird.
But the bands that separate themselves pay close attention to detail. They know that the age of the extended drug-colored jam is over.
Spontaneity is still good, and as it's always been, music should feel free. But the order of the day is the brain in your head and its capabilities.
Leading the way musically is probably Dr. Dog.
But the Lancelot to Dog's Arthur is probably OK Go.
OK Go is justly famous for the creativity of its viral videos. They aren't nearly so musically interesting as many alternative bands, but they make up for it in being very comprehensive artists. The music is just the canvas. They paint on the music in other ways.
The first of the really good OK Go videos showed that they were interested in reality, not special effects and edits. How many takes it took them to get this musically so-so song, "Here It Goes Again," into a first rate video concept I don't know. But they did it in the end.
What was worth noting in that video is that they used technology to defeat technology. They danced with machines in that video, they didn't merely give the impression that they danced with machines.
They worked hard, I'm sure, to give the illusion that they were using illusions.
And this is where much of the magic of the band comes from.
They do things for real.
Then, of course, there's the pretty-good song "This Too Shall Pass."
There are three versions of this on the web.
The first is, like the treadmill video, one long unedited take, performing the song live, guest-starring members of the Notre Dame marching band, who sportingly agree to some pretty bizarre concealment-and-appearance.
The result is just fucking cool:
The song, while not especially complicated, is one that the band uses as a sturdy backboard against which they hurl their creativity. It's a message of simple optimism and minimalist philosophy. And it aims to build on that simplicity just as a well-lived life might build on the simple belief in itself.
Consider this version, done as preparation for an appearance on Conan's late show: in it the band takes that simple tune and simply builds a series of harmonies around it. It becomes here a gospel song, fitting for its credal nature:
Use what and whoever will jump in with you.
There's something kind of stirring in the last verse or so of this: it sort of stumbles for a bit and then finds a groove that's born of hard work and just a love for doing things without shortcuts. It's counter-modern, unadorned, unaccompanied. It's just... music.
But the piece de resistance was naturally the famous Rube Goldberg machine that the band built (financed by State Farm in one of the weirdest and coolest ad-moves ever).
Again, the band is interested in technology, in "dancing with machines," but again, there will be no illusions, and with the exception of one or maybe two edits, this video represents the real-time operation of a real machine built by the band and scores of volunteer geeks, nerds, and artists; it even plays a solo.
Like the Rube Goldberg machine itself, the video and its philosophy is complexity in the service of simplicity, which is a damned fine way to approach both life and art.
And it really is a relief: for these days, we tend to serve our complexity, the indifferent machines that know neither beauty nor love.
When the morning comes, and your heart is creative and full of the simple belief in yourself, you will want to have some nourishment with that.
And not just anything. You'll need something that is as deceptively simple and yet optimistic and childlike as OK Go.
First separate three eggs. Yolks in one bowl, whites in another.
Take 2 1/2 cups all purpose organic flour, 1/2 cup cornstarch, 1 teaspoon of salt, and 1 tablespoon baking powder and mix them in a large bowl. You might sprinkle a little nutmeg in there as well.
Mix in another bowl 2 1/2 cups of whole organic milk, 2 teaspoons of vanilla, the yolks of the eggs, and 3 tablespoons of oil (or clarified butter, preferrably). Beat all that together, add it to the flour mixture, and mix it by hand.
In yet another bowl, whip the egg whites and 2 tablespoons white sugar, until peaks form.
Fold it into the waffle batter.
Into a lightly-oiled waffle iron until golden brown: obey the waffle-iron light, for it is your salvation.
Serve immediately: it's best hot. Serve with coffee and orange juice.
Reader Comments (3)
Love. It.
Jason is going to buy an OK Go album on payday thanks to your blog. :) He didn't read all of it, but enjoyed what he did read. I'll have to get him to read your comments about Tom Waits, b/c he's a huge fan. And lookie! My cable is working well enough that I could reply. Whoohoo!
Jennifer, congratulations!
I hope the OK Go album justifies expectations. I think the music is fun, and at least two of the songs are major ear-worms.