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The Suffolk Journal

Your School. Your Paper. Since 1936.

The Suffolk Journal

Your School. Your Paper. Since 1936.

The Suffolk Journal

Alternative pop group colors a full crowd at the House of Blues

OK Go’s House of Blues Concert Thursday night was everything you could imagine it to be, with confetti cannons and more.

The set-up of the concert was pretty standard, with two large, square monitors that centered the band into a corner, and played many different visuals during the concert. One of the more interesting parts was that each band member had a GoPro on the end of their microphone, which they would put up onto the screen adding a new perspective of being so close than being far away from a nearby camera.

Before the band even came on stage, a transparent screen in front of the stage between the audience and the band opened the show with clips from classic films including “Scarface,” “The Princess Bride,” “Pretty in Pink,” and “The Nutty Professor,” all prefaced by a Kermit the Frog clip that brought the band on-stage.

OK Go’s latest album, “Hungry Ghosts,” was released in October 2014. (Courtesy of Ok Go Facebook page)

During the show they chad an interactive “Q & A” sessions with the audience. For the most part the questions were unique but “practical” to quote the band’s front man and guitarist, Damian Kulash. Questions varied from “What is your credit card number?” to more localized questions like “What do you think of the Red Sox?” which the answer was “We love them,” from band member Andy Ross, a native of Worcester.

The one benefit of OK Go not being as popular as other bands is that they are more willing to take risks with the audience during their performances. Kulash decided to play their song “Last Leaf,” acoustically on guitar in the middle of the crowd.

The entire band is very talented and their live performance was equally impressive to their record tracks. Which is typically not the case for most artists these days. Not to mention that nearing the end of their concert, the band performed their own rendition of Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog,” which displayed their flexibility.

During a majority of the songs OK Go had cannons blast constantly to the beat of a song, leaving the crowd covered in confetti as well as inches of multi-colored confetti accumulating all over the venue throughout the concert. The first cannons went off for their hit, “The Writings on the Wall,” another song from “Hungry Ghosts.”

The microphone stands became colorful streams of light during “Obsession.” Each song had its own personalized color scheme. It gave each song a personalized touch and identifier through color.  “This Too Shall Pass” brought on more confetti, as did “Turn Up the Radio.”

Another cool thing they did ,and admitted was a little nerdy, was that they sampled sounds from the audience such as foot stomping; asking the audience to replicate sounds that of a hi-hat cymbal, “ey” and other various sounds. This created a little tune specific to the audience and location of the show. They dabbled around with it briefly, but it was still a very interesting thing to witness and be a part of as an audience member.

For the encore, the band came out in matching white jumpsuits, and performed elaborate choreography to, “A Million Ways.” Following this, the lights went down, and the black lights came up and revealed that their jumpsuits were neon that lit up that stage. In the same way the band kicked the night off, the cleverly played their hit song “Here It Goes Again,” ending the night on a high note. What was most impressive was the band’s approachability, humility and invitation to many of the audience members on-stage that reminded people of the real merit of good music and togetherness.

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Alternative pop group colors a full crowd at the House of Blues