Damian Kulash
Damian Kulash
Damian Joseph Kulash Jr.is the lead singer and guitarist for Los Angeles-based rock band OK Go. He is also a music video director...
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth7 October 1975
dance dance-and-dancing rock songs
We have a lot of fun. We play a lot of rock songs and yes, we're going to dance for you.
album bull cow farmer milk rock roll sad shadow smashing smiling sounds studio tells
We wanted to make an album that sounds like our band, and not a heady, self-conscious studio project. Everyone tells us rock and roll is a shadow of itself--a sad old milk cow smiling at the farmer every morning. We still see a bucking bull smashing around the stable.
almost both cheated fold happy hear months next people proud record responding second six sort three
You have 20 years to write your first record and only six months to do the next one. So people often just completely fold under the pressure. I'm much more proud of our second record than our first, so I'm happy to hear that people are responding to it well. We sort of cheated in that there were almost three years in between both records.
band base best build community corporate dollars fan listens meet people requires running tour trying
We don't want to be the kind of band that requires a lot of massive, corporate dollars to keep us running and promoted. We're trying to build a fan base and community that listens to us and the best way to do that is to tour - we go out and we play and we play and we play and we meet the people that like us and we try to keep the whole thing organic.
car challenge devil drove effort figure five job needed playing quit realized remembered riff seemed six sleazy songs sort tim time together took trying week
It's not like a challenge to the Stones, but more of a revision, ... Tim was playing this riff and he needed it to feel sleazy and dark, and I was trying to figure out what it was about. I remembered the time Tim and I first made a concerted effort to write songs together five or six years ago when we took a week off and drove to New Hampshire. I remember on this 18-hour car ride, being way over-caffeinated and buzzing, I realized that I was trying to figure out if you would know if you were the devil. I got Tim to quit his job for a week and go to this cabin, which seemed like the sort of thing the devil would do.
ideas shooting weight
I like shooting things in single takes. You have to rely on the idea itself to carry the full weight; you're always watching the idea, not the filmmaking.
powerful democracy buckets
It's the good old paradox of democracy. We are individually pretty small drops in the bucket, but collectively we are all powerful.
ideas use internet
Everyone loves the idea of internet fast enough that HD movies download in seconds, but if only the telecoms or their partners get to use the high speeds, it's not the internet: It's glorified cable.
air eight people
What we did is we went on those parabolic flights, which people like to call the vomit comet. Basically, the plane throws you up into the air and catches you. And for about 30 seconds, you feel like there's no gravity. So what we did was we did a series of eight of those in a row. And every time we landed, we stayed perfectly still for the five minutes in between while the plane is setting up so that we could just continue the routine where we had left off. So the final video you see is all one take. And we seem to be weightless the entire time.
team mean moscow
I will say that the lead cosmonaut trainer - I mean, we were working with professional cosmonaut trainers outside of Moscow. And the lead one, at the end of the project, announced to the entire group that he wanted Trish [Sie] to be on his team forevermore.
thinking ideas done
A lot of things get made this way: someone imagines what they want to make, then very carefully plans every step of the process, then sets about making it. That's usually the efficient, reasonable way to get something done, but it limits you to ideas you can think of in advance.
play ideas trying
For me, it works best to plan just enough to come up with a good direction to head out in. Then I start down the path as soon as I can, without a very clear idea of what exactly I'm going to end up with. I try to leave a lot of time for flexibility and play and changing direction.
ideas unexpected stumbling
My best ideas almost always come from winding up in unexpected places and stumbling across things I never could have imagined in advance.
writing thinking years
David Foster Wallace is a big idol of mine. His writing is so clear that for years I'd read him and think, My God, he is actually writing the way I think. He's describing the thoughts in my head. And then I realized, No, wait. He's just such a good writer, so transparent and articulate, that when he describes his thoughts, I think they're my own.