Garageland “Come Back”

1995-garageland-come-backEarly Garageland always felt like a bunch of kids from the suburbs who’d emerged from their bedrooms, formed a band and knew that they’d never be the cool kids, so they just wrote great pop songs instead.

Garageland are also responsible for the greatest NZ On Air-funded music video ever, but we will come to that later.

Now it’s time for “Come Back” the first track on the “Comeback Special” EP. The gang load themselves into a van, accompanied by fake flowers, a mannequin, a hairdryer and playing cards. It’s like a holiday version of the Headless Chickens “Cruise Control” car.

There’s also studio footage of the band playing the song, complete with Debbie’s red shiny Rickenbacher. By the way, Debbie had the best hair. Once I tried to make my hair look like hers, with disastrous results.

Doing a Mutton Birds, there’s a UK version of the video. It also features a van, but has had almost all the colour and fun removed.

And that’s what I like about this video – it has fun and colour. Garageland are just mucking around with crazy props, not trying to be cool guys. And because it’s done more in a camp style than comedy style, there’s no risk of musicians trying to be funny. It’s just a fun introduction to a band that was to enjoy much success in the ’90s.

Best bit: the casual discarding of a guitar out the van window.

Directors: Carla Rotondo, Peter Bell
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… a cool world.

3 thoughts on “Garageland “Come Back””

    1. This is actually going to happen. I’ve been making lots of notes! See also: “wandering around the Otara markets”.

  1. communicado studios – Dir. Peter bell and Shot by Bret Nichol. I jumped in and did ‘maori job time code slate’ EG: we could not afford a timecode slate – so what do you do? you play the cd off a CD player – and put a handycam filming the counter LCD – then run that to a small tv.. then run that on a long cable to where the camera is – and the DOP will then at the end of the shot – film the screen of the mini tv with the filmed CD player countdown on it – and then when you take the clip into the avid you pretty much know where the bit of footage goes 🙂

    AWESOME!! I wonder if people in other countries did that…. real NZ type thing.

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