2013 – Page 2 – 5000 Ways to Love You

Goldenhorse “Wake Up Brother”

Kirsten Morrell is the only member of Goldenhorse to appear in this video. At the time I remember the band saying it was due to the song being a personal ode to Kirsten’s brother. But it also means that Kirsten gets to be the glamorous star of the video (her hair and make-up is fabulous), leading to such YouTube comments as “Kirsten Morrell is absolutely gorgeous alright. She has a wonderfull voice though which matches her looks” from riddicus14. (Though this person also commented, “Just hope they don’t become too mainstream”, so it looks like they got their wish.)

“Wake Up Brother” is based around Kirsten riding in the back of a car, at night. The video seems to be shot with a still camera bolted to the side of the car, and the video has been filmed slower and sped-up in post-production.

There’s not a lot that can be done in the back of a car, but Kirsten removes a coat, nibbles on some red liquorice (and biffs it out the window), waves at some passersby, and applies some lipgloss. Also – I don’t think she’s wearing a seatbelt.

The only time the video doesn’t quite work is during the non-vocal bits of the song when Kirsten is nodding her head along with the music. In real-time, with the slowed-down song it probably looked gentle. But sped up she looks like a cross between a headbanger with a neck injury and someone who is really really really agreeing with you.

For a song that’s about the joy of having your overseas sibling come to visit, the video also captures another joyful activity – driving around at night with the window down.

Best bit: that the red liquorice might be a Wayne’s World reference.

Director: Rachel Davies
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… hitting the road.

Ejector “Disconnect”

The “Disconnect” video is an impressive animation, a joint project between Toby Morris and Peter Stenhouse. The tragic star of the “Disconnect” video is a Voltron-like robot, manned by the four members of Ejector.

The video opens with the team in the process of dismantling the robot as something has obviously gone horribly wrong. We then learn of the robot’s story in flashback.

It was once a bright, shiny new invention – “the people’s robot”, there to save the city from all the terrible creatures that were troubling it. And it seems things all ran smoothly, the robot slaying the creatures with its Voltron- and guitar-inspired sword. But then there was trouble.

A routine slaying goes wrong when the robot shoots lasers from its hands instead of using the axe. The enemy is destroyed, but so are ordinary people on the streets. Therefore the robot must be decommissioned.

Because the four human operators aren’t considered at fault, there’s the sense that the robot has become sentient, operating outside of its, er, prime directive. And that’s never a good thing.

While it’s not as thrilling as an episode of Voltro, the story has a surprisingly moving ending, with the four operators force to dismantled, unplug and disconnect the robot. It’s an emotional farewell.

Best bit: the end credit is written in BASIC computer code.

Director: Peter Stenhouse, Toby Morris
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… a night drive.

Dubious Bros “For The Ladies”

Ten years ago, when Labour was in government and Auntie Helen cared about the arts, I did a year-long course as part of WINZ’s PACE “artist’s dole” programme. It was brilliant and immensely helpful, but it seems almost unbelievable thinking about it now, especially as WINZ now have this weird unhistory that says that PACE never existed.

One of the other people taking the course was Rosie Morrison, a photographer originally from Hamilton, and she’d taken the still shots used in this video. And there’s a big difference between the stuff she photographed and the Super 8 footage used in the video.

The video sees the Tyna and Macro go for a harbour cruise. The captain of the boat is not a crusty old seadog, it’s a young woman wearing nautical hotpants. While she’s steering the boat, she gyrates a little. I’ve not seen that move in Pirates of the Caribbean.

All the Super 8 footage has a golden glow to it. It’s a real “I’m on a boat” fantasy, where hot chicks are happy to hang out with Hamilton rappers because – wahey! – they’re on a boat.

In contrast, the still shots seem more grounded in reality. Instead of the sexy boat fantasy, the still shots reveal a bunch of people out on a boat in Waitemata Harbour. And it even seems more focused on the male friends of the Dubious Brothers, rather than the models, who the boys are probably too shy to approach. So whatever hip hop video fantasy the Super 8 creates, Rosie’s still shots slyly come along and deflate that. And that is very cool.

Best bit: one of the ladies eats a hearty hors d’oeuvre.

Note: This video was previously available on the website of director Michael Reihana, but it’s currently unavailable.

Director: Michael Reihana
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… the people’s robot.

Dub Asylum “What the Funk”

Much of the “What the Funk” video was filmed at the Aotearoa Hip Hop Summit. This was an annual event that took place in the late ’90s and early ’00s, a festival/symposium/general fun time that brought together New Zealand’s hip hop community.

An feature of the event was the graffiti jam, where top graffiti artists from New Zealand and internationally did their best to walls of plywood. And that’s what director (and the man behind Dub Asylum) Peter McLennan has captured on Super 8.

It’s shot in an urgent style, with the camera rushing around the area, capturing the artists at work, adding final touches with cans or even brushes. It captures New Zealand’s graffiti art scene from the early ’90s, back when it was slowly becoming more mainstream.

The crowds are there too, busily checking out the works in progress. But the best spotting in the crowd is bFM’s ‘b’ mascot, who has been thoroughly tagged.

The song’s singer, Sandy Mill, is shown at a different location – performing in front of the old garage doors around the back of St Kevin’s Arcade. The building is covered with plenty of graffiti, so it fits right in with the rest of the video, though it’s less slick than the stuff on display down the hill at the summit.

Sandy is sometimes joined by a girl (her daughter, I assume) and the who have a happy hug-dance. And in a way that’s more compelling than all the top graffiti artists.

Best bit: the little kid who runs around a tarpaulin laid on on the ground, just because.

Director: Peter McLennan

Next… a harbour cruise.

D2S “All Day”

With D2S’s previous video “Ride With Me”, my complaint was that they came across as too ordinary to be pop stars. Well, “All Day” takes care of that, with the Ivan Slavov-directed video fully embracing the bling culture of the 2000s.

The video opens with one of the crew getting tattooed while chilling in a lush penthouse apartment. He gets a phone call on, er, an ’80s brick-style mobile phone covered with gold smiley-face Duraseal. Yeah, bling!

The group show up on lowrider bicycles and go for a green-screen ride around Auckland, ending up in front of a mural depicting an 1950s American diner. Then they go to a place where a group of young women who aren’t wearing any bras under their tops are washing some lowrider cars. If it were me – if I were going to wash a lot of cars – I would want to wear a good sports bra.

They learned how to bling out their phone from a Good Morning craft segment

On the YouTube comments, director Ivan Slavov reckons this was New Zealand’s first lowrider video. And there was a bit of trouble on the day of the video shoot: “There was only a handful of Low Riders in New Zealand, on the way to the shoot the COPS pulled them over and only two cars managed to get away and make it to the shoot! ( one I had to pay a TOW truck to bring”.

The song is pretty average, like an attempt to capture some of the magic of Ja Rule and the Murder Inc Records sound. But then it throws up mundane raps lyrics like, “Wait a minute cos I gots to know your name / Since you walked into my life things have never been the same”. The rain in Spain falls mainly on the rhyming dictionary.

One of the cars in the video has the licence plate PIMPIN. Of course it does. But just when the video is at the point of turning into self-parody, something delightfully weird happens. In a long-shot of the band, suddenly there’s a CGI bike breakdancing on the ground in front of them. No one in the video reacts to it. It’s just there.

But that’s not the weirdest thing. The video ends with a parody of the iconic moon silhouette shot from ET. Only instead of tandoming with an alien, the four D2S guys each have a lady-shaped passenger on their handlebars.

Best bit: the one car-washer who is boldly wearing rollerblades.

Director: Ivan Slavov

Next… fun at the summit.

Crumb “Pick up the Pieces”

Model railways are cool. The “Pick up the Pieces” video takes inspiration from a lyric mentioning a train and sets the whole video within a model railway.

Through clever use of green screen, we see the band playing in the middle of a model railway, while the object of the song’s affections boards a train that goes hooning around the track.

The video gets a bit too literal with the song title, showing the band performing while shards of glass raining down on them. But maybe it’s actually someone sprinkling glitter on the model railway.

Meanwhile in the train carriage, a sleazy guy tries to make a move on the girl, but she gives him shade and he quickly racks off. Looking down on the model railways is a humble train nerd, who seems to disapprove of the tiny sleazy guy in his model train.

The girl on the train is crying. Perhaps she’s sad by the break-up. Or perhaps she’s realised that the train track is on a loop, meaning she’s travelling in circles around her ex and his band and will never reach her destination. Ooh, metaphor.

The video ends ambiguously. The sun comes up, the camera zooms out and we see the model landscape sitting on a table in a room. The band are still playing on their hilltop stage, tiny figures bobbing in the background. The train nerd switches off the train and finally the train comes to a stop. What fate awaits its passengers?

Best bit: little figure waiting patiently at a train station.

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… car wash!

Ben Novak “Turn Your Car Around”

This is a good, weird music video, but it’s not the most interesting thing about the curious history of “Turn Your Car Around”.

There’s a company called Platinum Blue Music Intelligence that has software that analyses songs to determine what makes a hit song a hit. Ben Novak heard about it and submitted his song “Turn Your Car Around”. It came back with a high score (and rightly so – it is a really good song), the company put him in contact with some music industry people and the song ended up being covered by Lee Ryan (of boyband Blue), where it charted at #12 in the UK (and #2 in Austria and Italy). But, as the Guardian notes, with Sony BMG behind the song, it’s impossible to know whether it did well because it was inherently “hardwired to be a hit”, or because the record company put a lot of promo behind it.

The Sunday programme did a profile on Ben Novak and “Turn Your Car Around” (part one, part two). He comes across as a quiet, geeky guy who is obsessed with music. There’s a great moment where he has a somewhat awkward phone conversation with pop doofus Lee Ryan. It shows the difference between this subdued New Zealand songwriter and the gobby British popstar and partly explains why the song was a hit for Lee Ryan in the UK but didn’t chart for Ben Novak in New Zealand.

But anyway. Let’s go back to Ben Novak’s original video for “Turn Your Car Around”, produced a year before Lee Ryan was hooning around with horses.

The video takes a different type of inspiration from the lyrics – it follows a day in the life of a crash-test dummy. It wakes up and gets ready for its day at work, which doesn’t consist of much, considering it has no need for food, clothes or toothbrushing, then heads off to work.

He works at a desk in an ordinary open-plan office, but soon heads off to the lab where he is joined by a lady dummy and a baby dummy. They get into the car, which then proceeds to crash into a sharp corner shape. We see it from four glorious angles, all smashed glass, warped metal and inflated airbags.

The male and female dummies emerge from the munted car a bit wobbly on their feed, before going their separate ways. The dummy returns home, and we leave him sitting along on the edge of his bed.

And it’s that same position that Ben Novak has been making his brief appearances in the video. Five brief shots of only a few seconds each. Maybe he’s just really shy.

The YouTube uploader describes the video as “weird and wonderful” and I think that’s it in a nutshell. It doesn’t have the epic landscape or wild stallion of Lee Ryan’s video. Instead it’s a subdued, unusual video with a car crash. And I hope that’s not a metaphor for Ben Novak’s music career.

Best bit: the crash-test dummy walks to work.

Director: Ben Fisher
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… model behaviour.

Amber Claire “Love Remains”

Amber Claire is now known for being one-third of the Mermaids party group. But for a while in the mid-’00s she took a break from the “Loveshack” and “Groove is in the Heart” covers and had a go at a pop career.

“Love Remains” combines Amber Claire’s husky vocals with a driving electronic beat and sweet lyrics. The video also goes in this direction, with a sepia-tone Amber Claire singing with the happiest face I think I’ve seen in a music video.

She’s surrounded by romantic symbols – a carousel horse, a moon, a rocket, a butterfly – while the song lyrics spiral around, along with larger words like “DREAM” and “LOVE”. It’s like the Facebook page of that divorced lady you used to work with.

There’s also a young couple who run around in a park together, in love. It also looks like something you’d see on Facebook, the remnants of a happy wedding.

The video feels like an attempt at making a really romantic music video, but in doing so it’s using modern visual cliches of romance. I think the video would genuinely appeal to the Facebook ladies and people like YouTube commenter tonym650 who admires Amber Claire’s “soothing voice”.

Best bit: Amber sits in a rowboat called “Amber”.

Next… old, new, borrowed, Blue.

48 May “Fight Back”

I had a look at 48 May Street on Google Street View, the Hamilton student flat where the band formed in 2002. There’s a bunch of old furniture dumped on the front lawn and a ute parked on the berm. Bloody students.

A NZ Musician magazine profile notes the support the band had from NZ On Air, with bass player Shannon saying “We’d still be at the fish and chip shop playing Street Fighter 1 if it wasn’t for NZ On Air.” That’s probably more to do with the two $50,000 recoupable album grants the band had, but their seven music video grants are just as important.

“Fight Back” was a bright, shiny debut single, with production by Welsh producer Greg Haver via the Resonate music conference. But the video isn’t quite as slick as the song.

The band are playing in what looks like a school gymnasium, sometimes wearing bits of American football protective gear. It turns out they need the protection because each band member beats himself up. It’s like a freakish neurological condition – the man who gave himself the bash. They’re joined by cheerleaders (to jump around in support) and medics (to look on in bewilderment).

The video concept doesn’t quite work. Why are the band beating themselves up? What have they done wrong? Unless you’re a 48 May hater, what pleasure is there to see the lead singer of a band with a (fake) injured face? And by the time the drummer repeatedly slams his head against the drumkit, it’s all just getting weird.

Best bit: bass player Shannon’s bondage trousers.

Note: the video was on YouTube, but it’s since been taken down and there’s no alternative.

Next… row row row your boat.

Missing videos from 2003

February 2003

Dead End Beat “Nervous Bag”

Dead End Beat were basically a slightly older and wiser Breathe with a new drummer. “Nervous Bag” was their debut single.

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Donald Reid “The Return”

Donald Reid is the brother of James from the Feelers. “The Return” was his debut single, though I can’t find any evidence of there having been a video made for it, though Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision has an entry for the album track “No Ordinary Day”, which isn’t on the NZOA funding list.

Evermore “Pick Yourself Up”

“Pick Yourself Up” was another track from Evermore’s “Oil & Water” EP. I’m not sure if there was actually a video made, but it’s on the list.

Hendrix Warren “Empty”

I wasn’t sure if the video for Hendrix Warren’s song “Empty” existed, but I found the online CV of a camera operator, who lists the video production amongst his work history. Well, that’s good.

Director: Ivan Slavov

Pluto “On Your Own”

Pluto have “On Your Own”, another track from their album “Pipeline Under The Ocean”.

Director: Wade Shotter
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Soda “Falling Faster Now”

According to the band’s description on Amplifier, Soda’s “Falling Faster Now” video “explores the depths of Karaoke booth kitsch”. More than Rufus Wainwright’s “California” video?

The Brunettes “Boy Racer”

A few months ago The Brunettes’ “Boy Racer” video was on YouTube, but it’s since been taken down. I watched it once back then and I remember it involved the band performing at an empty theatre, as well as their backstage preparations. I mourn the loss.

Director: Daniel Monaghan
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

April 2003

50Hz “Smooth Rhodes”

More relaxing beats from 50Hz. “Smooth Rhodes” has guest vocals from Miss La.

P-Money “Go With The Flow”

There’s a P-Money track listed called “Go with the Flow”, but I can’t find any other mention of a song by that name. As far as I can tell, there were no more videos made for tracks from P-Money’s debut album Big Things.

June 2003

Brett Sawyer “Save Me Now”

“Save Me Now” was the sixth funded video that Brett Sawyer had and – surprise, surprise – it’s also the sixth of his videos to not be online. I’m very intrigued by him now. I’d love to see just one of his videos.

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Carly Binding “This Is It”

Carly Binding’s single “This Is It” reached No.12 in the charts. It’s not online, but you can see her performing the song live with Donald Reid in 2006.

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Dead End Beat “Tonite We Ride”

Dead End Beat have “Tonight We Ride” – not to be confused with “We Ride Tonight” by D-Super. It’s a fairly ordinary early 2000s rock ‘n’ roll number.

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Emcee Lucia “All This Time”

Emcee Lucia was the first New Zealand female MC to release a solo album. “All This Time” was the first track. She’s one of those artists who had a lot of buzz at the time, but I haven’t been able to figure out if she’s done anything lately.

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

August 2003

The Bads “Don’t Go Losing”

In one database this track was listed as being by Diane Swann, one half of the Bads. “Don’t Go Losing” was the duo’s first single. I’m not actually sure if a video was made for this track. In 2003, Radio New Zealand broadcast a retrospective of Diane Swann’s music career to date. At that stage, “Don’t Go Losing” was due to be the first single released by The Bads. A profile at NZ Musician mentions that The Bads parted ways with their record company “after several videos had been shot and were poised for release”, so that might explain it.

Evermore “Hold On”

“Hold On” was a track from Evermore’s EP “My Own Way”, their last release before their debut album “Dreams” kicked off their success in Australia.

Taisha “I’ll Go”

After appearing in OMC’s video for”Land of Plenty”, R&B songstress Taisha had the country-tinged “I’ll Go”. She’s now part of the all-star cover band the Lady Killers.

Director: Ivan Slavov

October 2003

Brooke Fraser “Lifeline”

The original version of Brooke Fraser’s “Lifeline” video is not online. From memory, it involved Brooke and her band, dressed in overalls, playing a board game called Lifeline that administered electric shocks for losing moves – like a low-budget version of the Domination game from “Never Say Never Again”. And I have this idea that it ended up Brooke winning the game and her opponents being reduced to a smouldering pile of overalls.

The video was a bit darker and yet goofier than the song required, so director Joe Lonie filmed a new video, this time with Brooke walking through scenic landscapes (with a typical Lonie twist).

Director: Joe Lonie
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision – New Zealand version
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision – international version

Paselode “C’Mon Hallelujah”

Paselode were a rock band from Wellington. I saw them live few times in 2003 and they were always entertaining. Their songs were always about a minute too long and had one person too many playing on the track (they were a five-piece band but felt like an unwieldy ska band). “C’Mon Hallelujah” was their lone NZ On Air funded single. The band broke up shortly after, but not before the Simmonds Brothers told the band’s tumultuous story in the animated short film “The Paselode Story”.

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

December 2003

There are no missing videos from December 2003!

Instead…

This month’s consolation video is the super chill “Dawnskate-88” by The Video Kid, a side project by Black Seeds and Flight of the Conchords dude Bret McKenzie. This non-NZOA-funded video shows Bret and pals having a skate down the streets of Mt Victoria, then along a deserted Lambton Quay. It’s so Wellington.