1994 – Page 4 – 5000 Ways to Love You

Dave Dobbyn “Naked Flame”

The first thing we must do is note what Mr Dobbyn is wearing. This time he’s from the future, wearing a black leather trench coat with a black skivvie underneath, and with dark round glasses. His facial hair has been reduced to a goatee, the sort of which is now mostly seen on IT workers.

The song is about the fire of desire, and the video illustrates this with a dancer and flames. The power combo of flames and a naked dancing woman give the video a Bond feel, therefore making Dave Dobbyn the Bond villain (well, he’s already dressed for the part).

Taking a cue from the title, there’s a bit of actual nudity from the dancer. Her nipples can be seen a few times and possibly even some more frontal nudity, though I’m not totally sure about this, due to not wanting to be the sort of person who keeps pausing a Dave Dobbyn video looking for pubes.

But what’s most interesting – Dave and the dancer seem to inhabit totally difference realms. They never appear together.

Best bit: Dave’s intense facial acting skills.

Director: Fane Flaws
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… honouring New Zealand’s longjump greats.

Chris Knox “One Fell Swoop”

The first time I heard “One Fell Swoop”, it sounded like a sequel to or a reworking of “Not Given Lightly”, both musically and lyrically. It manages to both be an intense declaration of love, but it also sounds like an apology for perhaps earlier forgetting to express such feelings.

The semi-animated video is a classic Chris Knox work and is as homemade as his music. During the verses a left hand (bare but for a ring on the middle finger) opens and closes with the beat, unfurling to reveal a piece of paper with the last word of each line.

But it’s not all a hand job – at almost the halfway mark, Chris’ head and shoulders turn up for the power chorus. Set against a green screen of rapidly changing images (lots of abstract art pics, as well as album covers from The Stooges’s first album and The Clean’s recently released “Modern Rock”). I like to think that Chris rounded up his favourite LPs, making the song as much about love for music as love for another person. Priorities, yeah.

Best bit: the lyrical hand actions – so much easier than Daft Hands.

Directors: Barbara Ward, Chris Knox
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… Dave gets naked.

Throw “Falling Inside Me”

“I’m not really sure what this video is supposed to be about,” Failsafe Records note on this YouTube clip, adding that “it varies greatly from the agreed script.”

Well, it didn’t seem that confusing to me. The Jonathan King-directed video sees a depressed young woman wandering around the streets of Auckland. She fantasises about suicide, specifically jumping off a building.

She stands on a rooftop, looking all windswept and depressed. No, don’t do it! You are young and beautiful!

The fantasies intensify, with a floating likeness of her superimposed over the buildings. But does she go through with it? The video is ambiguous, but it seems to end with a slight smile on her.

I wonder, though, what the original script for this video was.

Best bit: the old buildings of Britomart.

Director: Jonathan King
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… some desktop scribblings.

Supergroove “You Freak Me”

994 was Supergroove’s golden year. Average age 19 (still), they had a run of top ten hits and toured New Zealand in their stain-disguising black dress code.

“You Freak Me”, the sixth release from their debut album, is a tense eruption of young male energy. See, there’s a girl and, well, she freaks them. It’s four minutes of pent up sexual tension, with the band playing the song in a starkly lit, smoke filled environment.

The smoke seems to be fulfilling a symbolic purpose – it’s the only thing that gets any release around these parts, billowing quite clouds in quantities that seem excessive in a normal rock situation.

The band also smoke cigarettes, which again seems totally outrageous to see in a music video. Nearly the apex of a musical climax, Che Fu lights a cigarette which – if we’re going to get Freudian on it – manages to both represent a penis and a nipple.

Karl’s refined his image with a black suit jacket, showing signs of the John Waters look that he would grow in to. Supergroove feel like they’re slowly figuring out their own personal identities, the individuality beneath the dress code.

Best bit: the bad-ass Che Fu attitude explosion.

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… a depressive contemplation of an urban landscape.

Strawpeople “Sweet Disorder”

The vocal collaborator on this track was Leza Corban, who gives the group a rootier, jazzier feeling. I know this song inside out due to a flatmate who played it all the time. Yeah, not quite two minutes into it, a trumpet solo kicks in.

The video is clever. It’s a way of shooting in an exotic location on a low budget. The video starts by establishing that Leza’s in a busy, noisy Asian city – Hong Kong, as it happens. She puts earbuds in her ears and peace settles. This is how they get away with shooting a music video in a busy city without having to play the song out loud for miming.

The result is a holiday video transformed into an ultra cool video for an equally cool song.

Best bit: the low-passing aeroplane, coming in to land.

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

Next… suits, cigarettes, badassness.

Maree Sheehan “Past To The Present”

Maree gathers her friends and family to an inner city park (Emily Place, I think) to have a singalong (over and over to the same song, with the requirement to look lively and happy all the time).

I really like the video’s setting. They haven’t taken the easy route and gone for a beachside park. They’ve plonked the action right in the middle of Auckland, surrounded on all sides by tall buildings. And it’s not out of the question that a group of family and friends would actually have a picnic here. Though Albert Park would perhaps be a more logical choice.

Everyone looks like they’re actually having a good time, and it suggests that even after the music video taping had concluded, they probably would have kept on dancing. I wish I’d been invited.

Best bit: the little girls who turn the “under the bramble bushes” claping game into “under the Bambi bushes”.

Director: Jonathan Brough
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… an exotic holiday.

Hello Sailor “New Tattoo”

tattHello Sailor made a comeback in the ’90s, with an album called “The Album” and a new single. “New Tattoo” sounded a bit like “Gutter Black” and a bit like “Blue Lady”, so they weren’t going off in a radical new direction.

“I’m as blue as a new tattoo,” Graham sings, and the video takes us into the world into the “state house back in Blockhouse Bay”, and the sign of a West Auckland youth.

This is not what popular music sounded like in the ’90s. There’s no attempt at picking up a younger audience. Hello Sailor are acting their age, and this is a song for other dudes like them.

Cruising around the suburban streets in a classic car, the video illustrates a man who is both revelling in the good times of his youth but also mourning what he’s lost. He’s never going to be 19 again.

Best bit: the glamorous woman in a studded leather bustier who doesn’t look like she’s just been thrown in for some sex appeal.

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… Maree’s family fun day.

Headless Chickens “George”

When Fiona McDonald was announced as one of the judges on NZ Idol and hoardes of teens commented online that they’d never heard of her, this is what I pointed them to. The Headless Chicken’s only number one single, and indeed the first number one for a Flying Nun artist.

It’s a dark song, a reminder of how awful and self-destructive relationships can get. And when compared to the band’s more lively earlier videos, it’s a sign of how far the Fiona-era Chickens came in such a short period, and how the group didn’t have much further to go.

The video is equally dark. Fiona, never afraid to not be pretty in a video, is filmed with harsh uplighting, giving her a similar shawdow moustache to Che Fu in Supergroove’s “Can’t Get Enough” video.

A tattoed man creeps towards the camera, an old man offers a birthday cake iced with “George”, other band members stare at the camera, making it clear that they too know of the terrible thing that has happened.

I love that a song like this can make it to number one in New Zealand. Everything is OK.

Best bit: Old George holding his cake, standing by an open fridge door.

Directors: Marcus Ringrose, Gideon Keith
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… the sailor boys return to their old neighbourhood.

Grace “Desert Moon”

Again Grace make a music video that is much more interesting than the song. That’s not to say the song is bad – it’s a poppy soul groove – but more that the music video is really interesting.

It’s set at an exotic nightclub, which Peter at Dub Dot Dash identifies as the Queen Street venue that became The Whitehouse. The club is full of sexy patrons in all manner of undress, including one fellow in studded leather undies, being led in on a leash.

The less pervy patrons are just enjoying themselves as Grace perform up on stage. And sometimes a young singer takes to the stage to add backing vocals – hey, it’s Bic Runga! She was, as Dub Dot Dash notes, part of Grace’s live band, but didn’t actually sing on the recorded version of this song.

With the previous two Grace videos having featured only the band, it’s nice to get a glimpse of their freaky friends. A lesser music video would have probably used a lady in a floaty dress dancing barefoot in the moonlight, which is far less interesting than a bar full of freaky friends.

Best bit: Mr Dog Leash, smoking a cigarette, too cool to pay attention to the band or the woman’s crotch in his face.

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… a cake to farewell Fiona.

The Clean “Too Much Violence”

The Clean take Manhattan, performing in a grungy New York loft with a couple of dwarves. Hamish Kilgour appears to be wearing the blue and white polka shirt from his earlier “No No No” video. Either that or he’s really into polka dot shirts, which I actually think might be the case.

As the band play, some footage of the Kilgour brothers frollicking on a New Zealand hill is projected on a screen behind them. And they’re playing with “Tally Ho” brand playing cards, a nice Easter egg for fanboys.

There’s also some street footage with the bros looking dapper in 1940s-style suits, roaming the streets on bicycles. Hey, they’re 2010s hipsters and they don’t even know it.

It’s one of the better looking videos I’ve seen lately, and I think that’s due to the quality of both the filming and the YouTube clip. YouTube notes it was filmed on 8mm and 16mm and directed by Jeff Feuerzeig, who went to to make the superb documentary “The Devil and Daniel Johnston”.

Best bit: the miniature Beatles figurines in a shop window.

Director: Jeff Feuerzeig
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… another night out with some freaky friends.