“Sweet Division” is a reflection upon younger years from the perspective of someone who isn’t even all that old to begin with. Vocals are by Dallas Tamaira (aka Joe Dukie) of Fat Freddy’s Drop, and it’s the first New Zealand I’ve come across that mentions the Defender video game (though the Beastie Boys had a reference in “Body Movin'”).
The video begins with time-lapse footage of downtown Auckland, which didn’t seem like a particularly promising start, but soon the action moves to a train and it becomes obvious – we’re going into town.
From then on we’re hanging out on Queen Street one night. The song’s lyrics are lip-synced by a number of people hanging out along the road, particularly in the block between Wellesley and Victoria Streets.
With the lyrics reminiscing about youthful antics, the video manages to capture that great pastime of teens – going into town and hanging out. Too young to get into bars without trying, there’s nothing much else to do but go into the McDonald’s or Wendy’s, then wander around, sit on a planter box, have a smoke, hoping you’ll meet someone cool.
The video is also a nice time capsule of Queen Street in 2004. Some things are the same, but there are definitely a lot fewer one-hour photo places than there were a decade ago. The “Sweet Division” video captures one night in Auckland, where hanging out with your friends on Queen Street is the best place in the world.
Best bit: the inner city resident taking photos of the night light out her window.
It’s curtain up on a stage, revealing a grand piano, a string quartet and several kilometres of fairy lights strung around the place. All this provides the setting for Brooke Fraser to perform her very sweet ballad “Arithmetic”.
It’s a very pretty, very atmospheric video that perfectly works with the tone of the song. Brooke always looks serene in the golden glow of the fairy lights. Sitting on the piano is a frame photo (her inspiration for the song, perhaps) and a glass of water, which – OMG – the number one rule is no drinks on the piano, ok?
Interestingly the string quartet members are all senior citizens. It’s a bit of a cliche having attractive young orchestral players, all long hair and sensual poise, so it really stands out that the video used a group of grandparents for the video. It gives the song’s message – a declaration of long-term love – a more serious context. It’s not just a young girl declaring she’s sooo in love with her bf. No, it’s the message of someone who sees herself growing old with the love of her life, just like the oldies down the back.
NZ On Screen notes that the video was the “winner of the (satirical) award for “Most use of fairy lights in a video clip” at the 2004 Studio 2 Awards”. And a rightly deserved award.
Best bit: the playing face of the granny on cello – she’s seen it all.
There’s nine seconds of silence and stillness, as the camera moves through the corridor of an old warehouse, then suddenly – “Let’s burn the bridges!” and the anti-bling anthem kicks off. The Bleeders were a hardcore punk band, though they became more metal on their second album. “All that Glitters” was their explosive debut.
The band has a ton of energy as they deliver the impossibly catchy tune with its tight singalong chorus. This is captured well by Greg Page, who was like the go-to guy for videos that rocked as hard as they bands within.
The secret is that despite all the black hair and tattoos and attitude, “All that Glitters” is secretly a pop song, cleverly hiding under all the guitars and fringes. And really, no one’s going to notice when the lead singer has a Straight Edge “X” tattooed on his hand. (Remember Straight Edge? I tried being Straight Edge for a week before I inadvertently engaged in non-SXE behaviour and gave up.)
Lead singer Angelo brings energy and swagger to the video. When he sings, it’s like he’s using his whole body to get the words out. It’s the sort of video that makes the band seem like they’d be really amazing to see live – and it sounds like they were.
Welcome to New Zealand, 2004. Somehow Feelers videos always seem like they’re from the late ’90s and Mint Chicks videos always feel like it’s 2007, but this video is like a direct portal into 2004.
Five years after New Zealand had melded talented shows and reality TV together as the Popstars series, the format had bounced around the world and been improved, expanded and fine-tuned into the Idol franchise. Now it was our turn, again.
When the debut single of NZ Idol winner Ben Lummis reached number one in May 2004, it kicked off a particularly good run for New Zealand music. In the 26 weeks to follow, a New Zealand single held the number one spot for 21 of those weeks. But this lucky streak soon ended and from late 2005 to early 2007, the few New Zealand songs to reach number one were – like “They Can’t Take That Away” – reality show winners’ singles.
The song is a really generic Idol winner’s single, with highly self-conscious lyrics using the fleeting nature of reality show fame as a metaphor for love. “Don’t know if I’ll get there cos it could change in 15 minutes.” Oh look, an Andy Warhol reference.
The “They Can’t Take That Away” video looks like it was hastily produced on a reasonably low budget, no doubt needing to get the video out as quickly as possible. We meet Ben as he drives into a bleak underground carpark. On screen, only sinister things happen in parking buildings. Is there going to be a “Bad” style show down? Nah, he’s just walking out of the car park. Ben goes on one of those music video strolls that don’t make any sense geographically but look great.
But where is this wander taking him? Why, to a gig. Soon he’s on stage, performing in front of a group of screaming fans. It’s a typical music video audience – we never see the crowd more than four people deep and they’re always waving their hands in the air. People don’t do that in real life because their arms get tired.
Ben isn’t an especially charismatic performer, and coupled with the melancholic tone of the song, there’s a risk that the whole video could be a giant downer. The video works hard to add some spark, but there’s only so many shots of screaming teens you can add before it starts to feel a bit staged.
“They Can’t Take That Away” was at number one for seven weeks. That’s pretty impressive, especially when you consider that with TrueBliss and The X Factor winner Jackie Thomas only managed two weeks each with their debut singles. Ben’s album also made it to number one, but he didn’t bother the charts after that. Basically, the Idol dream that New Zealanders had seen play out with Kelly Clarkson and Guy Sebastian wasn’t happening in New Zealand.
But was it all over for Lummis? The internets suggest that as well as being involved with churchy work, he’s still performing music. A few years ago I was passing through Sky City and saw him singing in one of the bars there. It was actually encouraging. The song lyrics may have been strangely accurate with the prediction of short-term fame, but when there aren’t many people in New Zealand who can make a living off music, if Ben Lummis is getting gigs, good on him.
Best bit: the teen girls trying to fake fangirling.
Augustino return to the Wintergarden at Auckland Domain, previously seen there for the video for their 2000 single “The Silent Film”. So, is “You’re Making Me Sober” a sequel? Well, it doesn’t appear to be, both videos have an eerie scifi flavour to them.
Lyrics about booze and other mind-altering substances feature a lot on Augustino’s lyrics. But rather than by going for a more literal interpretation of the lyrics, instead goes in an astral direction.
This time the band are strolling around the back of the buildings, passing a number of people who seem to be set up to watch some sort of eclipse. There are telescopes, goggles, reflecting ponds, and cardboard boxes with slits – very instructional! And just to make things even more unusual, the watchers are all very different groups – an Asian family, a group of Victorian-era nurses and 1940s schoolboys.
All are staring up at a new-moon shaped brightness in the sky. We never see it directly (it’s not safe, you know), but we see it reflected in various surfaces. Finally the eclipse ends and sunshine returns to the Domain.
There’s something reassuringly eerie about eclipses, and combined with ye olde scientific equipment, things get even spookier. It’s like all these people have time-travelled from various points in the past to view the that particular eclipse in Auckland Domain in 2004. But the question is – what are Augustino doing there and why aren’t they using any devices for safely observing the eclipse?
“What You Owe” was the third single by Rockquest winners The Have. The group were one of five New Zealand acts to perform at South by Southwest in 2004, with “What You Owe” being included in a best of SXSW CD included with UK music industry publication Music Week.
Director: Adam Jones
February 2004
Falter “Fear Of Heights”
Christchurch punk-pop band Falter, the 2003 Rockquest winners, have their second single “Fear of Heights”. The single was recorded at York Street Studios as part of their Rockquest prize package.
The saga of the missing video for Crumb’s song “Got It All” has the best story. Basically, the band had agreed to work with a director who was planning an ambitious semi-animated video. It involved something like the lead singer performing at a gig, seeing a mysterious girl who zaps him and he’s sucked into a cartoon world. The production was all going well until the band saw the finished product. It was terrible. No one was happy. The label refused to pay and the video never saw the light of day. No known copy of it exists, just some raw footage and a few stills. One can only hope that some day “Got It All” will surface in all its glory.
Dimmer “Case”
“Case” is the final video from Dimmer’s second album “You’ve Got to Hear the Music”. It’s one of those great Dimmer tracks that sounds like the soundtrack to the best/worst weekend. The video used to be hosted at Amplifier and a lone screenshot is all that remains.
Gramsci get gruntier with the very röck “Recovery”. 2004 feels like the tail end of the early ’00s rock revival. It will be interesting to see how much rock there is in the years to come.
Lucid 3’s song “Pitch Jumping” is their most popular track on Spotify, so it’s sad the video isn’t available anywhere. It’s a typically laid-back Lucid 3 track, with some cool organ playing.
The Have’s song “Monday Through Friday” is another track that might not have actually had a video made, but the Rockquest winners were keeping busy and have more funding to come.
The Heavy Jones Trio song “Free” was their second funded video and the first single off their debut album. Director Ivan Slavov vaguely but intriguingly noted that the band “gave us freedom of expression which lets us do our job.”
Niki Ahu won a Mai FM talent quest and had her single “Nobody Knows” produced by UK producer Colin Emmanuel. The Kiwi Hit Disk quoted Niki describing the song as “deep, grunty and heartfelt.”
Strawpeople “Love My Way”
“Love My Way” was the Strawpeople’s penultimate NZ On Air funded video, another track fro their final studio album Count Backwards from 10. The song had vocals from Leza Corban.
“Homeland” was the follow-up single from No Artificial Flavours, but also their final NZ On Air funded video – though I’m not actually sure if a video was made. There was talk of an album, but that doesn’t seem to have happened. But I found a 2009 profile of frontman Taaz where there’s mention of new music.
Salisha Taylor “I Saw An Angel”
Young singer Salisha Taylor had her debut single “I Saw An Angel”. There’s little trace of her online, but I found a post on the soc.culture.new-zealand newsgroup where an enthusiastic member of her team described her as “a real diva but she still replies to all her fan mail.” This prompted someone to cruelly reply: “It’s good to see New Zealand music in the international spotlight. It’s a shame its shit New Zealand music.”
48May had funding for their song “Spinning Around”. There’s no sign of the video, but instead here’s “Into the Sun”. It seems to have been made around the same time and includes outtakes from “Home By 2”, as well as ever reliable live footage.
Red Drum “Resurrect Jim”
Red Drum was a rock band fronted by Garageland frontman Jeremy Eade and “Resurrect Jim” was their funded song. A 2003 blog from Arch Hill Recordings mentions the production of a Red Drum song called “No Cross in the Crossroads”, but there’s no sign of that either.
This month’s consolation video is Steriogram’s lively “Walkie Talkie Man”, directed by the perpetually creative French director Michel Gondry, far removed from the world of NZOA. By the mid 2000s Monsieur Gondry was well established as one of the cool-dude video directors, so he was the go-to guy for Capitol Records when they needed an impressive music video to attempt to launch Steriogram in America. The stop-motion-animated woolly world was created by production designer Lauri Faggioni and her team of knitters. (This is also a good enough place to link to Gondry’s enigmatic video for “Sugar Water” by Cibo Matto, one of my favourite videos ever.) Seeing a big budget video like this makes all the New Zealand videos set on beaches seem like roughly made home movies (and in some cases that’s just what they were). Sometimes it’s just nice to revel in the world of the fancy international music video in all its glory. (Director: Michel Gondry; Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision)
Hey, this is the halfway point!
In almost three years, I’ve reviewed 777 videos, which is quite a lot, really. There are also 350 videos that aren’t currently available online (like the ones above), though there are definitely more videos available from the mid 2000s than there were from the early ’90s. And 57 previously awol videos have since turned up online, which is splendid. I just need to get around to catching up with those ones.
When I started 5000 Ways, I didn’t have a specific end date in mind, but I realised that I don’t want to do it forever (oh God). So I’ve decided that a good enough end goal is June 2011, the final funding round of $5000 grants before that was replaced with the current Making Tracks scheme. I’ve roughly calculated how long it’s going to take to complete it and I will reveal this: it’s going to take a bit longer than three years. It’s ok. It’s not like I have anything better to do.
The one thing this project has done is completely kill the joy of nostalgia for me. When I look at a video from the olden times, it’s like I’m seeing it how I saw it back then. And when I’m not watching old music videos, I only listen to contemporary music. Anything older than five years just makes me feel depressed. Yay.
Anyway. This is still loads of fun. Most videos are a pleasure to watch and there’s a lot of good stuff out there. The only ones I have trouble with are ones that are just really boring – because no one deliberately sets out to make a boring video. But at least now when I come across a difficult video, I can at least console myself that I’m over the hump.
Ok, on we go. Here’s a video right from the beginning, “The Beautiful Things” by the Front Lawn one of the first three to be funded.
The WBC return for their second and final video “Sick of It”, a kiss off to a person who is a “waste of energy”. Like the WBC’s previous video, “Sick of It” also doesn’t capture the live energy of the band. In fact, if I saw them play this live, it would be my toilet-break song.
The video begins in a bar. We follow a dude (played by the group’s sound guy) as he staggers around, looking rather unwell, as frenetic drum n bass music plays. He stumbles into the toilets to have a spew, but is distracted by a small white cube on the floor. As it happens, this cube contains a seven-piece ska-punk-pop group.
Into the cube we go, and much of the video is just the WBC playing the song in the cube. If the idea of a band playing in a square white room with really flat lighting sounds a bit boring, it is. The band take turns at facing all four walls, but the video struggles to get much entertainment out of the situation.
Things get slightly more interesting when a dark green light brings some moody gothic styles to the box, but that’s also limited. Suddenly the band kick down one wall and wahey – there’s an enthusiastic audience outside!
But this makes me wonder – if the cube still on the toilet floor? Is the drunk guy now looking at a tiny ska-punk-pop group rocking out to a tiny audience? Is he thinking maybe it’s time he seriously cut back on his drinking? Or is he wondering if he could make one of the little ladies be his mini wife?
Annoyingly, the video does not answer these questions. We’re left with the ska septet in the mysterious white cube. Hey, maybe that’s it – maybe they’re just sick of living inside a cube.
Best bit: the crumpled Red Bull can, for that authentic club bitch detail.
It’s night time. In an anonymous office building, bass player Matt strides out of a lift, disturbing the all-Asian office staff. They direct him to a bland corner office and he struts over to the window.
We discover that the other two Feelers are also standing at the window of neighbouring buildings, playing their take on the old “love is a battlefield” theme. This high-rise trio doesn’t seem to bother the other people in the offices (all Asian). Perhaps it’s a standing arrangement the band have – an alternative to renting proper rehearsal space.
It’s been filmed by the Vero building on Shortland Street in Auckland, and sometimes we see the band playing outside, evidence that the three-building technique isn’t the result of a feud.
Office buildings are pretty bleak places, bleaker still when they’re empty. The presence of a rock band could either make the building seem more rockin’, or it could make the band members seem more dull. I think the latter happens in this instance. The scenes filmed outside with the band together are far more dynamic than the band in an empty open-plan office space. Even when the song’s tension is building, the dull setting just seems to bring everything down. Maybe they should have got David Brent to do some dancing.
Best bit: the guy happily working while Hamish plays the drums at the other desk.
The Black Seeds get motivational with “Sort It Out”, only the chorus’ euphemistic “get up off your backside” sounds more like the nagging of a mum to her lazy 15-year-old. Come on, the lawn’s not going to mow itself.
We see the band performing in a white studio space, with the upside-down stripes of the German flag and/or the mixed-up stripes of the Waikato flag running horizontally along the walls. We also meet a lazy-arse dude who’s slobbing around his house, watching the Black Seeds on his telly.
There’s some sort of magical connection between the two as whatever Mr Lazy does affects the band. If he has a cig, the band are engulfed in smoke. When he scrapes his leftovers into the rubbish, the band are covered in food scraps. He’s inspired by the message of the lyrics, but at a very messy cost to the band.
It’s a classic “torture” the band” video. The problem with the genre is that it can be a rather gross experience watching a whole lot of crap flying around. When the band end up performing up to their knees in filthy water, it’s difficult to feel inspired by the lyrics.
I feel like there was a really good idea at the core of this video – a Dorian Gray-like transformation – but the opportunity to have some clever fun with the idea was missed at the expense of cheap gross-out lolz.
Best bit: the full wineglass on the coffee table, the sign of a man who’s given up.
“When I Return” is a very loving and very cool song, but Shapeshifter seem to have really missed the opportunity to make a great video. Instead we see Ladi6 blobbing out in her tracky dacks, looking through a scrapbook filled with mementos of life on the road with Shapeshifter.
Along with the ticket for the gig at Phat Club in Nelson, various photos in the scrapbook turn into video, revealing clips of Shapeshifter on tour. And it’s all very generic. Loads of bands have fun when they’re on tour and do crazy things for the camera, but there’s nothing about it that stands out as particularly remarkable. Oh, there’s one of the band trying to stand up in the back of a moving van. That’s nice.
But maybe Shapeshifter can get away with making a really lacklustre video because they are – and this song especially is – so beloved. YouTube commenter Davidbigsexy says “good to see the clips from the early days were the boys are in the back of the van on the floor just having epic times”. So maybe the video is just a treat for Shapeshifter fans – they don’t need to be sold on the song (they already love it) so instead here’s the band mucking around on tour.
“Sweet Division” is a reflection upon younger years from the perspective of someone who isn’t even all that old to begin with. Vocals are by Dallas Tamaira (aka Joe Dukie) of Fat Freddy’s Drop, and it’s the first New Zealand I’ve come across that mentions the Defender video game (though the Beastie Boys had a reference in “Body Movin'”).
It’s curtain up on a stage, revealing a grand piano, a string quartet and several kilometres of fairy lights strung around the place. All this provides the setting for Brooke Fraser to perform her very sweet ballad “Arithmetic”.
There’s nine seconds of silence and stillness, as the camera moves through the corridor of an old warehouse, then suddenly – “Let’s burn the bridges!” and the anti-bling anthem kicks off. The Bleeders were a hardcore punk band, though they became more metal on their second album. “All that Glitters” was their explosive debut.
Welcome to New Zealand, 2004. Somehow Feelers videos always seem like they’re from the late ’90s and Mint Chicks videos always feel like it’s 2007, but this video is like a direct portal into 2004.
Augustino return to the Wintergarden at Auckland Domain, previously seen there for the video for their 2000 single 
The WBC return for their second and final video “Sick of It”, a kiss off to a person who is a “waste of energy”. Like the WBC’s previous video, “Sick of It” also doesn’t capture the live energy of the band. In fact, if I saw them play this live, it would be my toilet-break song.
It’s night time. In an anonymous office building, bass player Matt strides out of a lift, disturbing the all-Asian office staff. They direct him to a bland corner office and he struts over to the window.
The Black Seeds get motivational with “Sort It Out”, only the chorus’ euphemistic “get up off your backside” sounds more like the nagging of a mum to her lazy 15-year-old. Come on, the lawn’s not going to mow itself.
“When I Return” is a very loving and very cool song, but Shapeshifter seem to have really missed the opportunity to make a great video. Instead we see Ladi6 blobbing out in her tracky dacks, looking through a scrapbook filled with mementos of life on the road with Shapeshifter.