At the heart of the “She’s Jive” video is a cautionary take about drugs. But the Pluto lads dress it up with a kind of Monty Python style humour. A lesson is a lot more palatable when there are lolz involved.
The tale begins with the Pluto lads wracked with grief, as they engage in some extreme mourning in a churchyard. What could be behind this dramatic loss?
We then flash back the point of view of a young woman who’s bribed a chemist with a Rutherford to ditch her prescription Prozac in favour of a mysterious drug that comes in a big black bottle with a pink “X” on the lid.
The woman get all fancied up and head off to a party with the X bottle crammed into her little clutch purse. Arriving at party (where Pluto are playing), she sneaks into a toolshed, gets out the bottle and takes an X pill. But – oh no! – there’s a cop standing behind her and she’s nicked. Cut to a courtroom scene where a bewigged barrister furrows his brow.
At this point the lyrics tell us “she died” but the video doesn’t make it clear how this happens. Nonetheless, it’s tragic enough to send Pluto into Mark Lundy-style grief dramatics.
“She’s Jive” is a short song – little over two minutes – but the video manages to pack a lot into it. And the band are clearly enjoying the chance to play multiple characters. Everyone loves a comedy moustache.
As for the cautionary tale, well, it’s obvious: don’t bring a whole bottle of drugs to a party, and when you take something, lock yourself in the toilet.
Best bit: the brief appearance of the neon ice cream cone sign on the Tip Top factory.
Next… dem bones.
Before he was revealed to be the Ferndale Strangler on “Shortland Street”, Johnny Barker was the lead singer of Jester who had the sweet song “Fries with That”.
The “Saboteur” vid is a Tarantino-inspired outing, set in central Wellington. The action starts at the Marksman Motor Inn (just across the road from the Basin Reserve), with DJ Raw collecting King Kapisi for a gig. They cruise around Wellington in a vintage car where Kapisi takes a call on a chunky old Ericsson cellphone (but not old enough to be vintage). On the other end is Dave Fane, playing the “Samoan bar manager”, who rants at the “Samoan emcee” and “Samoan turntablist” (everyone in this video gets labelled). The duo arrive at Bar Bodega in its old location, before it was shuffled along Willis Street to make way for the bypass.
Of the four videos Joe Lonie made with Goodshirt, I’d consider “Blowing Dirt” to be the strongest. There’s a simple concept behind it, it looks good and it fits with the song. Being a Lonie video, it’s not surprisingly based around a gimmick. In this case, the video was filmed in reverse and in one take. So there’s Rodney doing a reverse lip-sync with the rest of the band un-smashing up an old car.
There was a period in late 2001, early 2002 where I spent about five months watching a lot of Juice TV. Many of the videos from that period are seared in my memory, and “Love Come Down” is one of those.
DLT teams up with Canadian hip hop group Rascalz. I’m guessing that the trans-Pacific collaboration might be why neither DLT nor the Rascalz properly appear in the video.
It’s morning and the Betchadupa boys are in bed. But not all in the same bed with each other (which has happened in other videos) – no, we see a four-way split screen with each band member in a different corner. And the video continues like this, with each corner focusing on the domestic goings-on of its allocated band member.