Robyn – Page 55 – 5000 Ways to Love You

PanAm “Long Grass”

PanAm were an Auckland four-piece Flying Nun band, going for a noisy punk-pop sound. “Long Grass” was directed by Greg Page and uses puppets to depict the band. They’re a bit like three-dimensional versions of Terrance and Phillip from “South Park”, with big flappy mouths. The inside of their mouths even look a bit like half a 45, but upon closer examination, it’s just a black semi-circle with a red bit in the middle.

The band are playing in front of an aeroplane, with a glittery “PanAm” logo (which, I assume for legal reasons, is enough from the airline Pan Am). They’re wearing black turtleneck tops with the initials of their names on it, jeans and sneakers – all made with just enough detail to look as authentic as puppet clothes can.

We also see the trio dressed in cammo gear and military helmets, looking like they’d gone and formed a puppet junta. It gives the video a slightly dangerous edge, especially coming so soon after 9/11. Perhaps the puppet PanAm hijacked the aeroplane just so they could use it in their music video. Yeah, that’d be it.

But this time, most of Greg Page’s music video were live action, so it’s cool that he’s had the opportunity to go back to his non-human video roots. Only with a significantly bigger budget than his Hamilton student video days, “Long Grass” is a slicker production.

For PanAm’s debut, it’s a bold choice to not feature the band in the video. But the video turned out to be well liked, scoring nominations for the Juice TV Awards and the Squeeze People Choice Awards in 2002.

Update: Songlines Across New Zealand talked to Paul from the band about the music video. He revealed that the band themselves were operating the puppets. And the puppets and set were all designed by Greg Page.

Best bit: the little kazoo toot mouthed by puppet Paul.

Director: Greg Page

Next… post-apocalyptic dub.

Nurture “Did You Do It All For Love?”

Christopher Banks, the mastermind behind Deep Obsession, teamed up with singer-songwriter Phil Madsen to form Nurture. “Did You Do It All For Love?” was their second single. It has a bit of an ’80s electropop sound, but, damn, that bridge has a killer hook.

The video is another Joe Lonie work, and it’s an extreme form of the “torture the band” method. In this case, Nurture are shown making a music video. They start off wearing clean white suits (and eyeliner) and end up covered in a little bit of everything.

They endure: bubbles, smoke, strobelights, snow, paint (lots of paint), glitter, feathers, pyros, fire, and water, all in the name of pop. It’s like Joe Lonie has hired every possible special effects machine in New Zealand, and bought up Briscoes’ stock of feather pillows.

The first half of the video is really fun, but things change once the feathers come out. Suddenly the band are unrecognisible and look more like B-grade horror film monsters than popstars. The anonymous director character ends up being the focal point of the video. And I don’t care about him. It’s a funny video, but it feels like the video gives up on the song and just focuses on completing the chaotic format of the video.

Best bit: the serious-faced pillow-ripping feather-throwers.

Director: Joe Lonie
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… the golden age of air travel.

Mightyscoop “Sunny Daze”

Mightyscoop are a curious band. At their core were Dave and Sebastian, a Kiwi and an Aussie who met on their OE in England, formed a band and ended up back in New Zealand as Mightyscoop.

“Sunny Daze” is an infectious pop number, with some of that ’80s keyboard that Goodshirt were also having fun with. It didn’t chart, but I believe it had some luck with radio play. And who – apart from the KLF – could get away with a lyrics that go “I like driving my ice cream van! I like driving my ice cream van!”?

The video sees the group making a music video. Ah yes, it’s a bit meta. They’re in a studio performing in front of a rippling silver backdrop. Dave has Lance Bass-style frosted hair, while Sebastian is just wearing a scarf instead of a shirt. A short, angry director frequently yells at them.

When the chorus comes along, a couple of dancers show up, wearing the same combo of shiny bikini tops and hot pants that K’Lee’s dancers wore. Only in this video, the camera goes full-on male gaze, with many close-ups of gyrations and Sebastian’s leering face. Let’s just think back to 1991, to the lycra ladies of James Gaylyn’s “Body Fine” video. Oh, how far we’ve come in just 10 years.

The shoot is going well until Sebastian makes an inappropriate remark to one of the dancers. She storms off, which makes the director even angrier. He yells at Sebastian, who sasses back with the song lyrics, “It doesn’t really matter what you say!” Who wants to work with a dick like that? The director also storms off, leaving the band to play the rest of the song in the dark.

In real life, a new band who acted like this on a music video shoot wouldn’t get far in their career. Mightyscoop didn’t get very far either, but let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. As it happens, this video was nominated for Best Independent Video at the Juice TV Awards.

Next… giving it everything.

Lucid 3 “Smooth Machine”

Good equipment is everything, as Lucid 3 demonstrate in the “Smooth Machine” video. It’s all about Victoria’s epic journey to get a microphone.

Cooped up with the band in a rehearsal room in the wilderness, Victoria suddenly realises her microphone is inadequate. She grabs her Discman and runs through the bush. A magical tunnel transports her to downtown Auckland, where she keeps on running until she reaches the Rock Shop on K Road. She she grabs a microphone and resumes her epic jog.

That leads her through another tunnel, over some sand dunes and back to the other two band members setting up in their rehearsal space. She puts her new microphone in place, straps on her guitar and suddenly she’s all glammed up and the cabin in the bush is aglow with rock lighting.

“Smooth Machine” has a bit more fun than previous Lucid 3 videos, even when it’s playing on the themes of performance anxiety in the lyrics (“I’m shy about opening my throat/A song might not fall out”). The rapid shifts between the idyllic coastal location and the busy city seem like a perfect match for Lucid 3 – a bit urban, a bit hippy. And all a result of that magic mic that makes everything ok.

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… the importance of being nice.

K’Lee “1+1+1 (It Ain’t Two)”

This is a magnificent track. First, the Matty J-penned lyrics. These are the top five lines from the song:

“These ain’t my panties and that ain’t my skanky bra!”
“While you’re getting your sex education, I’ll be smashing your new PlayStation!”
“Treating our love like some twisted menage a trois!”
“Playtime is over and your ass is history!”
“Clean out your locker!”

The video of this angry tirade against an unfaithful lover focuses on K’Lee and her posse of six backing dancers. They go through different looks in different settings – there’s edgy street K’Lee, fun K’Lee, blonde Britney-style K’Lee and a J-Lo-style DJ K’Lee.

The backing dancers do a lot of formation dancing behind K’Lee. They’re good, but seem to be in need of a few more rehearsals to get to world-class music-video-dancer quality. But then, K’Lee’s dance moves are retricted to the waist up, which makes me think she wasn’t skilled enough to join in with the formation dancing. Instead she gets a few arm movements and some clever editing and camera angles.

Directed by fancy Australian director Mark Hartley, it’s comes across like an attempt at a modern pop video, but it doesn’t quite get there. There’s not an obvious point of failure, it’s just a bit weak all over. But if you tone down your expectations, the video ends up being highly enjoyable camp fun. The wardrobe changes are entertaining, particularly the frequent bra-as-a-top aesthetic. And it’s strangely refreshing to see bra-wearing women in a music video that doesn’t also involve male performers asserting their desirabilty.

K’Lee ends up as a master of disguise, predating Britney’s wigtastic “Toxic” video. And even though K’Lee’s different looks are done more minimally than Britney, somehow K’Lee ends up looking quite different with each look. Her sassy DJ seems staunch and mature, while the blonde fedora character is too cool for any relationship drama.

This is the most unashamedly pop video I’ve come across so far. It has set its sights high, hasn’t quite got there, but is still a wonderfully entertaining video.

Best bit: K’Lee’s sneering turntablism.

Director: Mark Hartley

Next… an unexpected journey.

Elemeno P “Fast Times In Tahoe”

I don’t know if I can accurately describe how weird Elemeno P seemed when this video came out. Suddenly there’s this punk-pop group with a bit of a Weezer sound. The band was a couple of big hairy dudes, a really good looking frontman who did the Sprechgesang sing-speaking thing with a mix of American and New Zealand accents, and the other guy who was soon to be replaced by bassist Lani from Foamy Ed. And they had this song about having relation issues while on holiday at an American ski resort. They weren’t quite serious but they definitely weren’t a comedy band either. They were… Elemeno P. I think they invented their own genre.

“Fast Times at Tahoe” had the backing of Universal Records behind it, which means it looks a bit slicker than your average punk-pop video. The video opens with a Rolls Royce rolling through the guilded gates of the “Elemeno P Country Club”. We meet the band members dressed preppy style, strolling around the green grounds, each with an attractive young lady at their side.

The group have a round of golf, then retire to the country club lounge where the boys entertain the girls with a singsong, accompanied by an acoustic guitar and a tambourine. The girls are charmed by these talented young men, suggesting the fast times will keep going into the night.

It’s an interesting choice of style for a debut video. Listening to the music, this is clearly a band who are capable of rocking out (and that’s something that was featured in a lot of their subsequent videos), but for this one they’re doing preppie realness – about as opposite as you can get from the actual Elemeno P.

Best bit: Gibbo takes a phone call on a giant brick-style cellphone.

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… a maths lesson.

Eight “Whale”

Eight were a five-piece band that had a big rocky sound, with rather emo-style lyrics. Their first video “Whale” intrigues me.

On a remote rural road, a young man walks up to an intersection. YouTube uploader NZboi says it was filmed on location at Waitakaruru/Pipiroa – the flat, swampy farmland by the Firth of Thames.

The guy looks like a traveller, someone who’s out to walk the earth and find himself. But the intersection might as well be a roadblock as he seems completely unable to decide whether to turn left or right. Kids, this is what life was like before Google Maps.

A tractor passes from the left; a car containing the rock band Eight passes from the right. But that doesn’t simplify the choice to merely agriculture vs rock. The traveller seems even more confused. OMG, he could turn left OR he could turn right. This is worse than an old lady in Starbucks who just wants “a coffee”.

Finally the dithering backpacker pulls out a coin – one of the giant old 50c pieces – and flips it. After a dramatic slowmo spin, the coin ends up wedged on its side in the tarseal, neither left nor right.

Still unable to choose a side, the dude follows the direction the coin is pointing in. He sprints forward and dives in a muddy ditch across the road. Up to this point, I was getting pretty fed up with the indecisiveness, seeing the traveller suddenly sprint off into the dirty water was a brilliant twist and I was cheering him on. But what happens when he clambers out of the water?

Best bit: the guy’s t-shirt, advertising “Peter and Vicki Plummer’s Union Hotel, Barcaldine, Queensland”

Next… a nice afternoon at the country club.

Betchadupa “Sleepy News”

“Sleepy News” was the first single off Betchadupa’s second album “The Alphabetchadupa”. It’s also notable as being the first appearance of Liam Finn’s beard, Che Guevara-style wisps that gave little hint of the bushy Department-of-Conversation-worker-style facial hair he was to sport in later years.

Director Greg Page has fun with the old “torture the band” format. Shot in bold black and white, the video begins with Liam alone in a grimy room, playing his guitar while standing on tiptoes. It turns out Liam is attached to a wire harness which is slightly pulling him off the ground. And it surely means we’re going to get some Peter Pan antics later.

We also see Liam and the rest of the band in the same room, only this time they’re being drenched in water. And interestingly enough, all the guitars are shown as being plugged in. When Liam sings, “I’m dead and you killed me,” perhaps he’s refering to a mass electricution. Everyone knows that electricty and water don’t mix.

Solo Liam also gets to go for a bit of a twirl on his harness. The room is dimly lit and other members of the band wander over in ghostly layers and muck around while Liam spins.

“Sleepy News” is a fierce song – tense and grungy. The video adds to that and captures their performance energy. And who doesn’t love a good wet hair flick?

Best bit: Liam’s hat, boringly obeying the laws of gravity.

There’s no embeddable version of the video, but you can watch a good quality version over at Greg Page’s director portfolio at Fish ‘n’ Clips.

Director: Greg Page
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… left or right?

Tim Finn “What You’ve Done”

I’m thinking about Tim Finn’s earlier video for his song “Twinkle”. Tim seems uneasy in front of the camera, like he’s not used to the whole pop star/music video business – when clearly by that stage he was a pro.

But maybe it was just the setting. Maybe what Tim Finn needs to come alive in a music video is to just do what he’s been doing for decades – performing.

“What You’ve Done” puts Tim on stage. He’s wearing a nice suit, is surrounded by his band’s instruments, but there’s no sign of the band – or an audience for that matter. He’s alone, just a man and his mic.

Right from the first shot, Tim is full of energy. He bursts into the shadowy performance area and kicks up a storm (as well as the sawdust covering the stage). It’s a manic journey through the song, a bitter kiss-off to an ex (with lyrical gems such as “The pretty dress I bought you? I wear myself.”)

For a video that is essentially a man in a suit singing a song in a black room, Tim Finn makes it all work. His energy levels never relent, keeping the tension and mania flowing right until he storms off at the end. Tim Finn was almost 50 when this video was shot, shaming out the boring music videos of bands half his age. Nice one.

Best bit: during the line “I saw you with your boyfriend – he’s bigger than me”, Tim lifts up his mic stand to show the height.

Directors: Michael and Alex
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… a good ol’ scream-along.

The D4 “Heartbreaker”

I found this video uploaded to YouTube by a Japanese fan. “It is a band of best for me,” part of the description reads, as awkwardly translated by Google. And indeed the D4 were a band of best for many Japanese, enjoying some success there.

But the video for “Heartbreaker” is an Auckland production, directed by previous D4 video-maker Greg Page. The video begin by introducing us to a couple of saucy leather-clad rockabilly vixens, hanging out in an old yard, as such video characters do. They’re shot in grainy black and white, which slightly mythologises this intriguing pair.

We also meet the D4 indoors, playing in a grimy room with walls streaked in (artfully applied) grey paint. It’s hot in colour but with a very minimal palette, as if the bad girls have sucked all the energy from their lives. The song is tense and serious and the video focuses on those aspects. The band is relatively restrained, and even the massive rock-out at the end is more conservative than what they’ve previously done.

There’s a bit of fun with camera movement. As well as the camera doing typically pervy pans over the women, it jumps and skips over the band, as if it’s not quite sure what to make of these guys. They’re hurtin’ – don’t want to get too close.

The video ends with the two bad girls strolling over the Haslett Street-Waima Street motorway overbridge (also seen in Pluto’s “Bananas in the Mist” video from the same funding round).

There’s something very pleasing about this video. It’s relatively low budget, a simple concept but it looks really good. It’s just about making a music video that promotes the single, so that fans in Japan can enjoy a bit of the D4 as much as fans in New Zealand.

Best bit: the attention given to Jimmy’s isolated, one-word backing vocal performance of “cheatin'”.

Director: Greg Page
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… a one-man show.