Pumpkinhead “Water”

1994-pumpkinhead-waterFailsafe Records has a crazy account of Pumpkinhead’s rise and fall, from being “Christchurch’s premier grunge outfit” to being ruined by a junkie spending the band’s funds on smack. Failsafe also describes the “Water” video as having “cliché genre-styled efforts”, that is indeed a fair comment.

The video starts with a foetus morphing into an eye, and then we’re introduced to an old man dowsing on the Canterbury Plains. A bit of live footage follows, then the band plays its “November Rain” card with a wedding. A bride and groom look adoring at each other, but, you know, with sinister undertones.

There’s a shot of the band dressed as some sort of preachy Christians hanging out in Cathedral Square, in the light of golden afternoon sun. But looking at it now, in 2011, it takes on a sad undertone that strangely fits into the video’s theme.

Chorus time sees the band hanging out in a room kitted out in surrealistic overdrive – dead fish, an old dentist’s chair and a green screen background of falling rain. The video then turns into a mish-mash of the (un)happy married couple, the old man, the band and the flaming flames of fire and desire.

It is indeed packed full of genre cliches, but there’s nothing wrong with making a genre video.

Best bit: the Nevermind money-on-a-fishing-line tribute.

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… hanging around the old bus terminal.

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