From The Desk Of OK Go’s Damian Kulash: “Rockers”

This past winter was an eventful time for OK Go, between the release of third album Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky, disputes with EMI over its YouTube videos and an eventual split with the label and the creation of Paradacute Records. But even after all the dust settled, the music is still stuck in our heads—because OK Go definitely still has it. Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky brings us little nuggets of unbridled optimism set to catchy pop beats with Damian Kulash’s funky falsetto soaring overhead—and, in typical OK Go fashion, some of the most awesome videos ever made. OK Go is taking time between dates on its worldwide tour supporting the LP in order to guest edit magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our Q&A with Kulash.

Kulash: Rockers is a 1978 film set in the slums of Kingston starring the legendary drummer Leroy “Horsemouth” Wallace, supported by a huge cast of the era’s stars, including Gregory Issacs, Burning Spear, Dillinger, Big Youth and Inner Circle. The music and the live performances (there are seven full songs, plus a ton of bits and bobs) are spectacular, as is the window into the ’70s Rasta world. Take note, fashion mavens, of the bright track suits with sweater vests on the outside and ties over top. Apparently, the film was begun as a documentary and “blossomed” (Wikipedia) into an interpretation of 1948 Italian classic The Bicycle Thief. I’m not really sure how a documentary “blossoms” into a referential narrative epic, but I like to imagine they were following Horsemouth around with a camera and he wasn’t content to be a passive participant and just whipped up a feature-length project for them to film. He’s cool and swaggering, but buoyant and sparkle-eyed, and he’s such a pleasure to watch that you don’t really need much story, though what’s there is fun. Our hero spends everything he has on a superlatively gorgeous Lion-of-Judah-emblazoned motorcycle so he can distribute his peeps’ records all over the island, but the bike gets stolen, and he must rectify the situation. Or rather: Them thief him skate, and Horsey he vex. From what I understand, differentiating their language from English was a clearly articulated goal of the early Rasta movement, and if so, they can check that one right off the list. The film is mostly subtitled (in English) because what they’re speaking might as well be Korean. Even with the words written out, it’s hard to match up the spoken syllables with the text you’re reading. It’s truly a different language, and for those of us with an appetite for absurdist slang, the vocabulary is a treasure trove: “Corn” means money, “teeth” means bullets, “upful” means encouraging, and “bum-clot” is a curse word.

Video after the jump.