Robyn – Page 50 – 5000 Ways to Love You

Strawpeople “Crying”

The Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision describes this video as “Elaborate split screens video monitors”, which isn’t quite accurate. It’s a collection of eight boxes that play footage. To me it looks more like a digital composite rather than eight actual video monitors (and flat screen technology wasn’t that advance back then).

The video is directed by Mark Tierney and Paul Casserly, and it was a style that both would later use in videos they directed for other artists – Casserly for Greg Johnson’s “If I Swagger” and Tierney for Jan Hellriegel’s “Pure Pleasure”. And Matt Palmer used a similar style in his 1994 video for Maree Sheehan’s “Kia Tu Mahua”.

But the “Crying” video throws in an extra element. One of the boxes features Fiona McDonald singing the song straight to the camera and it’s almost totally unedited. Just a few flash cuts along the way.

The other boxes show scenes of urban Auckland. The tank farm features, back in the days when the tanks had utilitarian numbers painted on them, rather than poetic murals. Numbers feature a lot, with mysterious dates flickering across the screen and appearing on a television set in an empty room. There’s also a young women who walks around taking photos, and generally looks cool with her matt lipstick.

I like this video. I like that it’s a bit mysterious and doesn’t try to explain everything. A bit like that song.

Best bit: the giant camera the woman uses.

Directors: Mark Tierney, Paul Casserly
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… a loving walk.

The Brainchilds “Tomorrow Never Knows”

The Brainchilds was a pop outlet for musicians Steve Roche, David Donaldson and Janet Roddick (now working as mutli-purpose composers Plan 9). Their cover of the Beatles’ pop masterpiece strips away the more psychedelic elements of the fab four’s production. As a result, Janet’s lovely clear voice makes the song sound more like a hypnotherapy take. Turn off your phone, relax, and float downstream. You crave not ciggies. You crave not ciggies.

The video has relaxing, slightly trippy look, and it’s not a typical rock video. The only member of the band we see performing is Janet’s lip-synch of the song. The rest of the band are left to artfully wander around a forest of empty picture frames. But this all fits with the Brainchilds’ performance art background.

There are a lot of picture frames in the video. The action starts with a number of gilded frames in a dark space, floating around with footage of various outdoor scenes and Janet’s ghostly white face playing in them. The second half of the video puts the frames in a white space and sees the suited members of the group wander artfully amongst them.

There’s something quite pleasing about this. It’s using the latest innovations in digital video effects with some classic arty video tricks. And it doubles as a relaxation tape.

Best bit: man in a frame in a frame!

Director: Nigel Streeter
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… lots of boxes.

David Parker “Love By Satellite”

David Parker had a lot of videos funded in the early years of NZOA funding, but they’re almost impossible to find online. So it’s very exciting to discover the space adventure of “Love By Satellite” is now available.

Directed by Jonathan King, the video takes its inspiration from 1950s sci-fi serial adventures, with David Parker playing a space hero, looking like a Thunderbird team member with snipped wires. Most of the video is shot in black and white, with period authentic papier mache planets and wobbly rocket ships. The few colours shot are David Parker outside of the space context, rocking with his guitar.

Our hero is marooned on a planet and is trying to broadcast a message to his space sweetie. The signal goes out over a good old-school style satellite (like Sputnik’s disco cousin), bounces of transmission towers and is picked up by the television at his girlfriend’s space house. Only she’s too wrapped up in reading a science fiction magazine and doesn’t notice his celestial greeting.

So what will happen? Will Astro Dave get the message through to his lady? Will she look up from her magazine? Well, as this is a serial, the video ends with the promise that the story will be “continued next week”. But that’s probably space weeks, much longer than earth weeks.

“Love By Satellite” is a sweet, country-tinged song and I like that the video has gone with a slightly unexpected treatment. But it seems to work really well, probably because both the song and the video have themes of Americana, and tales of love always have a place in science fiction.

Best bit: the quality range of model spacecraft.

Director: Jonathan King
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… a frame-up.

Dave Dobbyn & The Stone People “Don’t Hold Your Breath”

So here’s the concept: Dave Dobbyn, with bleached blonde hair and wearing red and white striped pyjamas, wanders around the army training area at Waiouru with a tank in the background. Pretty awesome, right? And it’s Dave Dobbyn’s first NZ On Air-funded video.

“Don’t Hold Your Breath” is a stark song, mostly just Dave’s voice and guitar, with the occasional burst of drum thrown in. The lyrics are political, imagining an end to many of the world’s troubles, then adding “don’t hold your breath”. It’s not an obvious choice for a single, but it seems like no attempt was made to sweeten things up. The video is as stark as the song.

As well as Dobbyn’s military manoeuvres, the video quickly cuts in clips of important world events (the same sort of stuff Billy Joel sang about in “We Didn’t Start the Fire”). But all that is less interesting than Dave in the desert. He even has a knife that he occasionally stabs into the ground just because that’s the kind of thing he does.

I’m most intrigued by the utility belt that Dave’s wearing with his pyjamas. It’s like something woke him up in the middle of the night, leaving him to flee the house in his PJs with his prized possessions – guitar, stabby knife and utility belt. Well, that’s all you need for the apocalypse.

The video also has pretty quick editing, giving it a feeling of urgency. This isn’t just a lone man wandering around a barren landscape – he has a message for everyone.

Best bit: Dave’s funky strut along the top of a ridge.

Director: Kerry Brown
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… a satellite transmission.

The Feelers “Fishing for Lisa”

Tell me what (oh!) ever happened to Lisa. It’s a summer of heartbreak and the Feelers have a theme song for it, a lament for the long-lost Lisa. The video sees the band enjoying a summer holiday. They have a Kombi van and have been joined by three model-like women, one of whom we can assume is Lisa. The six of them drive around, enjoying a stereotypical outdoorsy summer, partying like it’s 1969.

The footage varies between video and old film, giving it a grainy home movie look. There doesn’t seem to be any relation between the type of film and the scenes. Just whatever. We even see one of the models holding a camera on the beach. But that camera is filmed by another old camera. Things were so complicated before Instagram came along.

Much of the vintage camera footage involves the six mucking around at the beach. And there’s Lisa walking around with a surfboard, sitting with a surfboard but not actually surfing. We see a dude surfing, though. Perhaps Lisa was just minding his board.

The sextet also end up having a picnic by the beach, complete with a singalong. They also all end up crammed inside the Kombi, where the singalong continues (with Lisa tooting along on recorder). James Feelers doesn’t take his sunglasses off while he’s in the van, which makes him look more like a dad with Transitions lenses, rather than a cool rock dude.

Despite all these fun times, the video ends with Lisa cheerfully being dropped off on a deserted, bush-clad road. It seems like a dick move for the lads in the van. I mean, couldn’t they have at least driven her to the nearest town? But if she’s happy and the Feelers are happy, why is there such lament?

Best bit: James Feelers’ singalong lei, for that authentic tropical vibe.

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… a scratchy drive.

The Black Seeds “Coming Back Home”

For a band that had such a strong live reputation, it’s curious that the Black Seeds started off by making music videos that didn’t show the band playing. The video for the chilled-out “Coming Back Home” starts with time-lapse footage of the band setting upon stage, but that’s the last we see of them. The rest of the video is animated. Perhaps they were too busy gigging to appear in a video.

The animation is based on simple line drawing, mainly white lines on a black background, with the occasional bit of colour for emphasis. Going with the theme of the song, the video shows different situations involving a journey home. There’s a prisoner counting off the days till his release, a homeless man and his dog and an ant on an epic adventure, among others. And trains, planes, boats, cars and shopping trolleys all feature as modes of transport.

Wellington features in the video, with a skydiver falling down onto the familiar outline of the inner city coast, and a scene of cars streaming along the motorway, towards the city of hills, the spiritual home of barbecue reggae.

The animation has a nice rhythm to it, but the video itself is really low-key. It feels like neither the song nor the video really want to stand out. It seems like a video that’s content to play in the background while other things are happening. But for a listener who’s feeling a bit homesick, maybe that’s the best way to portray a New Zealand homecoming – a chilled-out place with a freshly grilled veggie sausage just waiting for you.

Best bit: the Cook Strait ferry’s feet.

Next… vacation, meant to be spent alone.

Savant “Underground”

“Underground” is a serious rock song, but Savant go for a lighter treatment, with the video showing the fake making of a music video for the song. The group wake up and are shown in a four-way split, just like Betchadupa’s “Awake” video. But the early morning lie-in is interrupted by a phone call from the music video director, played by comedian Brendhan Lovegrove.

The boys quickly get up and, after initial car trouble, they get a ride from a slightly creepy guy with a van. (When you’re in a band and someone has a van, you don’t ask too many questions.) The van stops at an intersection where it is suddenly surrounded by a hoard of Asian fangirls. This is the third video with the “crazy Asian fans” trope. Was it not believable that a group of, say, Pakaha or Maori teen girls would go crazy over Savant?

At this point, the van driver (male, Pakeha) reveals himself to be the craziest Savant fan of them all, and encourages the band to ditch the video shoot. Instead they load up the van with boxes of beers and take off to a party at a flat. There they party hard, surrounded by lots of young women in short skirts in a slightly strange, Lynchian setting.

Rightly annoyed at this slack-arse band, director Brendhan ropes in actress Sara Wiseman and three guys to play the band. Later Savant sit down and are shocked to see their new music video, with an woman lip-syching the yarled man-lyrics. They have no one to blame but themselves.

There are some valuable showbiz lessons to be learned here:
1. No one likes boozers.
2. No one likes time-wasters.
3. No one likes divas.
4. No one is irreplaceable.

Best bit: the lame non sequitur running gag of the neighbourhood power-walker.

Next… a homecoming.

Rubicon “Yeah Yeah (Rockstar)”

“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.

Rhombus “Clav Dub”

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.

Rhombus are rather excited with their new wheels, and go for a good hoon around downtown Wellington. (And they even go past my old Wellington flat, which is the fifth video to feature a former abode of mine.) As they drive around, they drop off flyers to an event. Blondini finds one of these. He’s on their trail.

It’s a very Wellington video. As well having as cameos from Fat Freddys Drop and Trinity Roots, the video takes in scenes from central Wellington, including Courtenay Place, Cambridge and Kent Terraces and a bit of Wakefield Street. There’s no attempt to dress it up as New York or a random cool city. This is Wellington.

The group end up at the Centennial lookout atop Mt Victoria, ready to have their big party. Everyone shows up, even a few comedy policemen (and this is exactly the sort of adventure that has dancing cops). Blondini also shows up and take back what is rightfully his – the Mini; laughing in to the night.

This was Rhombus’ debut and the song made it to number 16 in the charts, with the video winning Best Music Video at the 2003 bNet awards. The video takes the cheeky humour of the original and plays off it, creating their own original adventure in Wellington. It’s a bold introduction to a group that would become a popular live band around New Zealand.

Best bit: the legendary Embassy cinema advertises a screening of Star Wars.

Director: Chris Graham
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… primary colours all over the place.

Pine “Beaten Again”

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.

“Torture the band” music videos seemed to be a thing in the early 2000s, but the video for this cute indie pop number does it a bit differently. For a start, the lyrics talk about overcoming adversity. He’ll never be beaten again, even though he’s getting sprayed with water. And indeed he seems to be enjoying it, often looking like a little boy laughing his way through the fun experience.

But there’s a slightly darker side to the video. When it starts, he’s already wet – so the soaking has obviously been in progress for some time. And when the video finishes, after being towelled off by his two laughing bandmates, he is sprayed again. This suggests a never-ending cycle of wetness, like he’s ended up in an inner ring of indie-pop hell. Lulled into a false sense of security by his towel-wielding diabolical bandmates, he is never allowed to dry off.

And yet there Stephen is, usually smiling. The occasional dark look flashes across his face, but mostly he seems to enjoy this water torture, rather then be annoyed by it. Yeah, he won’t be beaten again, etc.

Best bit: Stephen’s look of relief at being towelled, like a puppy.

http://vimeo.com/41897180

Next… we’re taking this bloody car to Te Aro.