The coolest music video ever

[KiwiCoromandel]

Eight treadmills and a video camera are all you need to change the world.

Four nerdy-looking men stand on eight treadmills. Then a sparky power pop song kicks in and they launch into action.

Over the next three minutes, in a single shot with no edits, the members of the Los Angeles band OK Go shimmy, shake, vamp, vault, slide and sashay in a piece of choreography that would be complicated enough for a regular rock group if they were on solid ground.

Add the moving belts of gym equipment and it becomes. well, let's just say it: the cleverest music video of the year.

Savvy net users seem to agree. Within a week of it hitting the web this month, the video for Here It Goes Again had been viewed by more than a million people.

This isn't new for OK Go. They have a reputation for their moves. After forming in Chicago in the late 1990s, they released their debut album in 2002 and appeared on a local TV show where bands had to mime. Instead of taking it seriously, they studied boy band and cheerleading videos, then cobbled together some amateur choreography for the cameras.

It went well enough, so last year they decided to devise a special dance to perform during gigs for the song A Million Ways, from their second album, Oh No.

"The idea was just to work out a routine that would surprise and confuse the crowd," says singer-guitarist Damian Kulash, 30. "So I called my sister Trish."

Trish Sie, 34, was a professional ballroom dancer for 15 years and is one half of a children's entertainment duo called Snark-a-Snoops, which she describes as "trippy, crazy, science-based singing, dancing and lab experiments".

Over four days last year she drilled the quartet in dance moves. At the end of all this, the band set up a home video camera and filmed themselves in Kulash's backyard, so they could see if it was working. The footage found its way to the internet, and has reportedly become the most downloaded music video ever. It even inspired tribute videos, with fans performing their own versions. The budget for this viral sensation?

"Officially it was $5, which was the cost of the videotape," says Kulash. "But the truth is we also bought a lot of coffee that week to keep us going, so if you include the catering budget, it was probably about 30 bucks."

The first time was an accident, but when the time came to make a real video for Here It Goes Again, Kulash called his sister to see if she had any ideas on how they could top A Million Ways. She thought for a moment and said: "Well, there's always the treadmills."

At the time she was living in Orlando, Florida, and had a dance studio attached to her house. The band decamped there and bought eight used treadmills under an agreement where they could return them for a lesser cost. They lost about $US500 on each machine, so the total budget was under $US5000, still minuscule in the world of music video production. Over the next eight days, Sie and the band suffered for their art.

"We had a pretty adversarial relationship with the treadmills," she says from her home in Los Angeles. "Everyone was covered in bruises and scrapes shaped like rubber waffle tread. They're merciless, ruthless, fiendish machines."

They spent the final day filming about 20 takes, and apart from one temper tantrum from Kulash when he ruined a perfect performance five seconds from the end, they managed to get it right. The result is simple and brilliant. But do they worry that they'll be tagged as "that wacky dancing band"?

"Totally," says Kulash. "This has been incredible because overnight our record sales have skyrocketed and we're getting much better show offers, but I suspect it may be time to stop this kind of thing. If another idea came along that was just as fun and clever, then we'd do it, but I suspect the next good idea won't involve choreography."

Sie agrees. "Everyone's grateful and excited about what the video has done, but they're a great band, and they deserve to be recognised for their music."

With that said, she does have another crazy idea should her brother and his bandmates want to try to top the treadmills. She giggles and then utters just one word......."Waterskis."

source:smh.com.au

image:upload.wikimedia.org:OK Go...."shimmy, shake, vamp, vault, slide and sashay"

[DudeAsInCool]

"Annoying" might be a better way to desribe the self-proclaimed 'coolest' video.. as soon as I hear someone in the band hype their own music, I know the product is gonna be lame

[KiwiCoromandel]

the music is annoying too...... :)

[Lord_of_the_Dense]

It wasn't too bad. Nothing I'd download though.

[rainbowdemon]

It wasn't too bad. Nothing I'd download though.

Of course you wouldn't. It's probably copyrighted. And that would be wrong!!

[Mister Spong]

It doesn't do a great deal for me as a piece of music, but I think it's a ridiculously simple but clever video.

Edited August 26, 2006 by The Ox

[Tiremonkey2000]

pretty cool