“Yeah yeah! Just another rock star,” sing Rubicon. Are they singing about themselves? About their place in the fickle world of popular music? Despite having 10 funded videos, it was pretty much downhill after video number three, Bruce. But our three heroes still rock on with the colourfully explosive “Rock Star” video.
It’s a very similar concept to Nurture’s “Did You Do It All For Love” video – the band, dressed in white, perform in front of a white background where they become covered with paint. But while Nurture were the victims of the sadistic music video character, Rubicon are masters of their own splattering.
The video starts with a young woman giving the pristine white set a final check before giving the camera a pout of approval. Then the band turn up and start playing in what looks like a living room where everything – including their musical instruments – is white.
But all is not what it seems. The bass player takes a white pear out of the fridge but he doesn’t like it (probably because it’s been stored in the fridge and couldn’t ripen) so he hurls it at a wall where – whoa! – it explodes in a burst of blue paint.
Ah, so it seems everything in this white world is secretly full of red, blue or yellow paint (the band’s album was called Primary). The lads engage in stereotypical rock star behaviour, which involves throwing things around because, raaaargh, that’s what rock starz do.
While things get pretty messy by the end of the video, there is a lot of restraint so for most of the video there’s more white than colour, with large splats of paint, rather than lots of messy dribbles. I really appreciate that a lot of thought has gone into the execution of the paintstravaganza. It’s not just a random freak-out and the video looks good for that.
Best bit: the appearance of green after some extreme blue-and-yellowing.
Director: Gareth Edwards
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision
Next… lessons in slack.
The “Clav Dub” video plays tribute to the legendary New Zealand film “Goodbye Pork Pie”. With the group filing out of a local WINZ office, they spy a familiar yellow Mini that the original Blondini (Kelly Johnson) has left while he pops in to a dairy. Enticed by a big-arse speaker in the back, the trio take off in it. Blondini seems a but miffed, but, well, he’s experienced worse.
So here’s the concept of the “Beaten Again” video: Stephen from Pine gets soaked with a torrent of water. Just to flesh it out, he’s standing in front of a nondescript block of flats and is wearing a blue raincoat. But that raincoat doesn’t provide much protection. The water just keeps on coming, but he is occasionally allowed a little reprieve when another band member kindly towels off his hair.
“Japanese Girls” uses the same trick as Garageland did for their 
Oh, remember those days? When life was a bit easier? P-Money and Scribe do. The video has a bit of set-up to do before the song can start (a whole minute of set-up). First we see Scribe doing some freestyle rhyming with his circle of mates, as director Chris Graham’s camera circles the group. I get the feeling this was a spontaneous thing that happened on the day of the shoot.
There’s a thing with Nesian Mystik that their all songs sound like they’ve been written to showcase the specific talents of the individual band members, but yet at the 2002 Silver Scroll awards, 
The “Fluid” video is based around a fluid – specifically, a tureen of piping hot soup, served for a family lunch on a grey rainy day. The meal is attended by lead singer Victoria Girling-Butcher’s actual family, gathering for lunch at the family home in New Plymouth. It comes as a surprise how alike the Girling-Butcher whanau look – there’s even a resemblance in photos of ancestors. But given that most families we see on the screen are played by unrelated actors, perhaps it shouldn’t be all that surprising that there’s a family resemblance.
In a way, K’Lee was the Lorde of the 2000s. A young female singer going by a single name, mentored by an older male songwriter/producer, singing songs about typical teenage experiences. Only Lorde is a lot more serious and is enjoying international successes, whereas K’Lee ended up marrying Coolio’s DJ and – 
I like a good low-budget video. Here’s Elemeno P slowly establishing themselves as a party punk group, with their ode to Nirvana and favourite their love of music.. Original bassist Jules was making his final appearance in the band, ready to be replaced by Lani from Foamy Ed.
Having done a Geri and escaped from her girl group, Carly Binding was ready to launch herself as a serious pop singer-songwriter. This video provides a stark contrast to the garish world of TrueBliss. The bright orange power bob is gone, replaced with soft natural curls, and the scfi Lycra has been switched for natural fibres (the surprisingly enough don’t look especially out of date a decade down the line). Carly’s sitting on the back of a truck, strumming her acoustic guitar and singing the song she wrote. She’s got a one-way ticket out of Reality Popville, headed straight for Credibility Street.