5000 Ways to Love You – Page 73 – Exploring the world of NZ On Air music video funding

Slim “Rise Up”

Post office boxes didn’t used to be bright red. They used to be a subdued grey, in keeping with the general greyness of the New Zealand Post Office. When NZ Post was born, post office boxes got a lick of red paint and a bold new backdrop was born.

The last NZOA video that took advantage of this setting was Love’s Ugly Children in their “Voodoo Girl” video. That explicitly used the space as a post office box lobby, but with Slim it’s more abstract. The camera hardly ever focuses on the boxes, so the walls become giant crimson slabs of colour, a perfect backdrop for some energetic punks.

In the YouTube description, director Marc Swadel notes the video was “a three way directorial race on this between myself, Slim singer Aaron Hogg, and Italian director Simona Lianza”. Whatever was going on behind the scenes, the finished product doesn’t show it.

The band perform the song in the narrow space, performing to each walls and with different combinations of band members. The camera is usually locked off in the same place, with a few shots near the end taken against a different wall, and a shot of a rotating skull in the middle. Adding a bit of variety, lyrics from the song and random graphics flash up on screen, making it look a lot slicker than a bunch of guys in a post office.

Best bit: “Open a bank account”, commands a random graphic.

Director: Marc Swadel, Aaron Hogg
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… Otago noir.

Shihad “The General Electric”

The video for “The General Electric” takes its inspiration from the cover of the album with the same name. The video even starts with a literal portrayal of the CD. A young woman walks into a record store and browses a rack of CDs, an activity that now feels oddly old fashioned.

She comes across the new Shihad CD, opens it and finds the disc itself in the case, which surely means some employee is going to get in trouble for not storing the disc behind the counter. It turns out to be a magic CD which transports the young woman into a stark white world filled with Shihad and an army of amps.

There’s a bit of Jon performing against evening scenes of downtown Sydney, but most of video is the band surrounded by giant, pulsating amps, probably inspired by the stockroom scene in “The Matrix”. My 1999 memory of the video was one of really slick CGI animation for the amps, but by today’s standards, it looks chunky and cheap.

But beyond the animation, the video serves as a good portrayal of Shihad’s energy. There’s no mad scientist plot, just a reasonably plain background for the group to do their thing.

Best bit: Jon looks down on the trapped visitor in four-sided Shihad box.

Note: This video was previously on Shihad’s Daily Motion account, but that’s gone. It can now only be found on MTV UK.

Director: Paul Butler
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Bonus: There’s an alternate video for “The General Electric”. It’s directed by Reuben Sutherland who also did the previous two videos for the group. The video goes for a mental asylum theme and rounds out his trilogy of the similar “Wait and See” and “My Mind’s Sedate”. And with spiky hair, glasses and a wide-collar shirt, Jon strangely resembles comedian Sue Perkins.

Next… a trip to the post office.

She’s Insane “Baby One”

Like “Daisy Mad Cow”, the previous song from She’s Insane, “Baby One” doesn’t quite feel like a fully formed song. The lyrics are simple and repetitive, like dummy lyrics made up in a jam sessions that were never quite fleshed out into a substantial song.

But the song is kind of a lullaby, so in that sense She’s Insane can get away with some simple repetitive lyrics. Though it doesn’t quite work when the repeated phrase is “Little baby, I’ll; little baby, I’ll; little baby, I’ll.” And it’s even more iffy when the line sounds like “little baby eye” and is accompanied by a giant baby eye.

The video uses lots of silhouettes, sometimes shot against a flapping sheet with a visible seam. The aforementioned giant baby fades in and out with green screen technology. (I think the last baby in a NZOA music video was the pyromaniac infant in Push Push’s “What My Baby Likes”.)

It’s a sweet, very girly song with an adequate low-budget video, but it just feels a bit dull. I wish She’s Insane would live up to their name and make a music video with some crazy in it.

Best bit: giant baby eye, giant baby eye.

Next… Thomas Edison’s legacy.

Deep Obsession “One & Only”

There’s something entertainingly mad about Deep Obsession videos. The formula seems to be create an eye-catching set, plonk Deep Obsession in it and have them seductively slide along the walls.

We meet the two Obsessettes in a futuristic corridor. It’s a cool blue-grey colour with tall strips of light at regular intervals making it feel a bit like the set of a sci-fi drama. The floor is covered with rocks, so, er, perhaps it’s a mining ship.

Like Deep Obsession’s earlier “Cold” video, little is done to distinguish between Vanessa and Zara. They’re not given much screen time together and there’s little interaction when they are together, which makes it seem like there’s an off-camera feud between them. Or perhaps they’re feuding over the “one and only” of the song.

We meet the object of their affection/s, a young man who is lost in the futuristic corridors. The video uses techniques last seen in 1980s-era Doctor Who to make the one corridor set seem like a never-ending labyrinth. Actually, this video would be vastly improved by a few Daleks.

Wait. Maybe the video can manage some next-level crazy on its own. What it needs is Zara and Vanessa sitting in a room full of goldfish bowls, each bowl with a mysterious cable going in and a light dangling above it. Oh, there it is. Being the late ’90s, I wouldn’t be surprised if this had been done as a super feng shui technique, bringing great wealth and abundant harmony.

The lost guy never finds the girls and nothing happens with the fish. In the end, we leave Deep Obsession wandering the futuristic corridors. And it is said that on a very quiet night, you can still hear them wandering to this very day.

Best bit: the room of fish.

Director: Ian McLean
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… honey, I blew up the baby.

Breathe “Landslide”

dslAfter labouring in the world of indie, Breathe attracted the attention of Sony and emerged with the ambitiously titled second album, “Don’t Stop the Revolution”.

“Landslide” was the first single from the album and it has an epic sound, with both hints of the Beatles and Oasis (it is the late ’90s, after all). The video is just as epic as the song, shot in artistic black and white with the band playing inside a photogenic old warehouse.

The video is a perfect introduction to the band, making it all about the band and the performance. This is a serious rock band writing serious songs. Lead singer Andrew Tilby is given plenty of screen time, but never in an over-the-top rock star way.

Occasionally we see a long shot of the room with a man sitting at a reel-to-reel tape recorder, no doubt recording the band because they are so epic that their performance needs to be captured for future generations.

But here’s the thing – Breathe didn’t set the charts on fire. This song only made it to #28. And when I look at this video, it seems lacking in charisma. They come across as a very serious band who take themselves and their music very seriously, but I don’t think that’s entirely who they were.

Best bit: the mystery tape-recorder man.

Director: David Stubbs
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… the corridor of obsession.

The Mutton Birds “As Close As This”

Dog poo. Rounding out the Mutton Birds’ dozen NZ On Air-funded videos, “As Close As This” opens with dog poo. It makes a bit more sense when it’s revealed that the video is partly shot from a dog’s perspective, so there’s the dog running around a park, weeing up against a tree, sniffing another dog’s poo. But still. Dog poo in a music video. This never happened in the early days with the glorious Fane Flaws-directed vids.

Having been based in the UK, it’s the first Mutton Birds video in about five years to be shot in New Zealand. It’s also a solo Don video, which is probably the result of the other three-quarters of the band still living in the UK.

The video imagery is rather disparate, including Don cruising along in a motorcycle with the dog in a side carriage, the dog inspecting some road kill, and black and white animated footage of Don with Warhol-style colour that gives him a drag queen look. The dog also has a wander in a K Road sex shop and it makes sure to have a good look at a display of fake boobs, as dogs do.

By the time the dog is drinking water out of a filthy toilet, I started to wonder if everyone had just given up. There is too much poo in this video. It doesn’t seem like a music video for a band who wants to be successful. It’s like a deliberate attempt to undersell the song, ensuring the band wouldn’t be burdened with popularity and the demands of touring.

Perhaps they got their wish. The song didn’t chart and the Mutton Birds didn’t release any more studio albums, eventually calling it a day in 2002.

Best bit: faux FM radio DJs Greg and Phil, who are happy to play the track on their station.

Director: Greg Wood
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Bonus: Here’s a piece from a 1999 episode of “Holmes”, where the Mutton Birds are profiled on their return to New Zealand, full of cautious hope for the future.

Next… doing it to everyone.

Te Kupu “Vision”

Dean Hapeta, the frontman of Upper Hutt Posse went solo as Te Kupu – the word. “Vision” is a smooth tune reaffirming his social and political stance. Te Kupu’s vocal style goes from a raspy growl to a spoken word drawl to cool chanting.

The video, directed by Chris Graham, focuses on Te Kupu in various locations around Wellington. Wearing a trenchcoat, sunglasses and beret (Cold War chic), he hangs around an alleyway where a small girl joins him, nicely diffusing his menace. But just in case you thought he was too soft, he sets fire to a table. And it’s a hearty blaze, making me wonder if there was any nervousness at the time on the video set.

We also see Dean in casual streetwear, sitting outside the old National Museum building. It now houses Massey University, but back in 1999 it was empty, with the museum having moved down the hill to its new home at Te Papa. It’s all highly symbolic – an angry young Maori man holding ground outside an empty symbol of a colonial institution. There are also scenes of protest, breakdancing in downtown Wellington and an urgent run along under the motorway.

We find Cold War spy Dean also hanging around an abandoned industrial site, all overgrown and exposed. Again, it’s a good symbolic location, a sign of something from a previous New Zealand that doesn’t have a place any more. Well, either that or it’s just a cool place to shoot a music video.

Best bit: the giant fiery flames of the table.

Director: Chris Graham
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… poo.

Strawpeople “Scared Of Flying”

Something funny is going on here. This video features people in animal masks with subtitles revealing their inner thoughts. That also describes Garageland’s video for “Kiss It All Goodbye”. I don’t know who directed either video, but I wonder which came first and if there was any crossover intended.

The subtitles surely take their inspiration from Jake Scott’s video for REM’s “Everybody Hurts” video, which popularised useing subtitles to show the inner monologue of characters. I like how groundbreaking video techniques slowly trickle down to New Zealand videos, twisting and mutating and taking on their own life.

Anyway, this video shows a black and white world where everyone wears animal masks. As well as scenes of inner city hipsters doing cool things, we also see children in animal masks. In particular there’s a young boy with a toy aeroplane. He hurls his plane off into the air and a his bog-standard fox mask somehow has an expression of joy on it.

We also get glimpses of a distant figure running across a lush green field towards a group of wind turbines, later echoed by a girl twirling a flower with all but three petals removed, resembling a wind turbine. This video was only shot about three years after the first group of windfarms opened in New Zealand. It was exciting and new.

The mask-clad urbanites are bothered by their thoughts, things like, “I’ll show them! They’ll see!” “Was she looking at me funny?” and – lol – “Animals!” So it’s a troublesome, bleak place. But will anyone have the guts to pull off their animal mask and escape? Why yes, the child will.

The lone figure on the field is revealed to be a boy – I assume the model plane boy from earlier. He’s running towards the wind turbines and the video takes on a weird feeling, a cross between a profound statement about man’s place in the world and a Meridian corporate promo video.

Best bit: extravagant animal mask bartender sloshing out a line of cocktails.

Next… super secret agent.

The Stereo Bus “Birthday”

This is a quality song. It’s the sort of song that is sometimes described as “perfect pop” but it never managed to bother the charts the way that the similarly perfect pop of Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys or Westlife did at the same time.

Maybe “Birthday” was a little too depressing to get higher than #26. But it’s a good kind of depressing. “Today is your birthday and not mine,” sings Dave Yetton, looking miserable.

The video is a simple affair. It focuses on brightly lit close-ups of band members. Dave is shot against a white background, the rest of the band against a black background. And while it’s Dave’s voice we can hear, the lip-sync is shared amongst the band.

Cut between that are shots of brightly coloured sweeties. There’s Tim Tams, Cadbury DMCs (Dairy Milk Centres aka off-brand M&Ms), Pink Smokers, Jet Planes, eerily corpse-like Eskimos, licorice allsorts, Shrewsburys… Oh, I’m starting to feel a little ill now.

“No, you can’t have your cake and eat it too,” admonishes Dave. And the video conveys that well – the dark side of celebrations. Whether it’s a child stuffing their face until they turn green or an adult dealing with the end of a relationship, life has a funny tendency to get in the way of the best laid plans.

Best bit: the old-style H2GO bottle.

Director: Marc Swadel
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… renewable energy.

She’s Insane “Daisy Mad Cow”

Why was I not previously aware of She’s Insane? If Stellar were a New Zealand version of Garbage, then She’s Insane are Aotearoa’s answer to Veruca Salt. Two girls with tight vocal harmonies, two random guys bulking out the band and a grunge-pop sound – that’s so Veruca!

The lyrics are repetitive and sound like they’d been knocked up minutes before the song was due to be recorded. Example: “Come along, sing a song, you’re a mad cow.” But lead singer Maria knows how to do a good “yeaaah”.

The video even feels like Veruca Salt. Everyone’s wearing white (sometimes straitjackets, other times just white clothing) and they’re looking slightly gothic. There are attempts to give the other two band members some screen time, but they’re pretty unremarkable. What’s better is the double power of Maria and drummer Tasha. Lying down and looking up, like a hairy yin-yang symbol, they look very cool.

But the video seems to dwell to much on less successful shots. Like, someone has gone to the effort of shooting the ginger bassist, so they’re going to put it in the video, dammit.

I like She’s Insane – they seem nice – but in the end the video starts to feel like those really dead-on music video parodies that French and Saunders do. This feels like a parody of Veruca Salt rather than a band confidently doing their own thing.

Best bit: the random shot of one of the guitarists bouncing.

Next… worst birthday ever.