WASHINGTON — For more than 20 years, the online magazine TMOTTGoGo has served as the go-to source for all things go-go in the nation’s capital.
Now the publication, short for “take me out to go-go,” is the subject of its own feature-length documentary.
“A lot of people thought go-go had kind of disappeared — TMOTT helped awareness that it was still continuing on, and it helped it to continue,” Kevin “Kato” Hammond told WTOP.
Hammond launched TMOTTGoGo.com in March 1996. He called the magazine “social media before there was social media.”
Originally a database operator during the late ’90s, Hammond has the nascent internet to thank for his decision to take on the mantle of go-go’s historian. After plenty of searching through the early web, Hammond — a longtime go-go devotee and musician — concluded that the genre needed a better voice.
Boosted in the mid-70s in small no part by local icon Chuck Brown, go-go struggled to gain traction outside of the Washington area.
The new documentary seeks to dispel the notion that the genre has disappeared entirely.
It follows how TMOTT grew hand-in-hand with the Washingtonian hip-hop and funk fusion it set out to preserve.
“Not that the go-go culture didn’t already have a voice, but it allowed that voice to be heard outside of go-go culture,” Hammond said. “We always used to refer to TMOTTGoGo as ‘the window.'”
“TMOTTGoGo Inside the Pocket: The Story of Go-Go Music’s Magazine” is available to watch on Amazon.
WTOP’s Kyle Cooper contributed to this report.
