5000 Ways to Love You – Page 92 – Exploring the world of NZ On Air music video funding

Headless Chickens “Super Trouper”

I once knew a goth guy who loved this song. He wasn’t a Headless Chickens fan or an Abba aficionado, but the power combo of the Chickens covering Abba was what did it for him. That and the “Su-pa-pa trou-pa-pa” chorus.

It’s a song about the loneliness of being a touring pop star, but it’s a situation that could apply just as much to a New Zealand indie industrial rock band. This was the first post-Fiona Chickens recording, so it makes sense that of all the songs the Headless Chickens could have chosen for Flying Nun’s “Abbasalutely” tribute album, they picked the one about the difficulties of being in a band.

The video is shot in black and white, with the band performing on an airport tarmac, including plenty of shots on top of and around planes. It’s a clever setting, a hint at the reality of life on tour: lots of aeroplanes, lots of airports.

The band are all wearing sunglasses. I’m willing to accept that it may have been a very overcast, glary day, but it also makes the Chickens look reluctant. They don’t quite want to connect with their audience, again fitting with the lyrics.

There’s something just not quite right with this. While the video looks great, it all feels a bit like a lazy effort.

Best bit: when the lively backing singer jostles her way into shot.

Director: Jonathan Ogilvie
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… a killer catsuit.

Dam Native “Behold My Kool Style”

This video could be described as a bunch of guys sitting around a table, playing poker, smoking and drinking. And it would sound like a typical mid-’90s Tarantino-inspired music video. But no. “Behold My Kool Style” is far beyond that. It is confident, stylish and kool.

It’s not just any old guys sitting around that table; it’s Dam Native in Edwardian suits. The poker table scene alternates with shots of the group posing like early 20th century well dressed Maori gents having their portrait taken at the town photographer. Teremoana Rapley isn’t dressed from the same era, instead she’s wearing a slinky gown. It’s this little touch that firmly keeps the video routed at the other end of the 20th century.

The Jonathan King-directed and NZ Music Award-winning video is shot with sepia tone and scratchy old film ~~effects~~. This makes it feel suggestive of lost footage from an alternate history, a different route the 20th century could have taken.

It takes skill to not only make a video that perfectly works with a song all about cool style, but for that video to still hold up over 15 years later. Behold its cool style.

Best bit: the group portrait. So cool.

Director: Jonathan King
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… a day at the airport.

The Bats “Afternoon In Bed”

For the first time since reading the phrase “creamy legato slides” in Rolling Stone magazine in the mid ’90s, I have a situation in which I can use it. Because indeed creamy legato slides are at the heart of this most chilled out song.

I’m really happy that the video does not at any stage involve a person in bed. The video does, however, open with a mysterious fellow wearing pyjamas. But rather than being in be, he’s atop an oceanside cliff, digging a hole.

We also see the band playing the song in an old warehouse. Even when the song revs up a little they remain seated, as if they’re too chilled out to bother with any rock antics.

I like this video because it just works really nicely with the song. It’s not bold or ambitious. It just nicely does the job of illustrating the song.

Best bit: the brief shot of a cat.

Director: John Chrisstoffels
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… a cool style.

The Exponents “La La Lulu”

The influence of Quentin Tarantino slowly works its way into the mid-’90s. The last time we saw Jordan and the lads they were relaxing on a beach. This time around, they’re all Reservoir Dogged up in fancy suits.

The action initially takes place in a small steel room. The walls are made of non-slip steel plates but the floor is smooth. It’s a health and safety disaster just waiting to happen.

Occasionally the image freezes in black and white, and a tabloid-style headline flashes up – “criminal sex appeal”, “online erotic” and the titular Lulu. Is this an attempt to brainwash an entire generation who will forever associate “online erotic” with an image of Jordan Luck, and thereby ruining internet porn forever?

Next the action moves to an old quarry with the lads going for a hoon in an old car. They then get out and graffiti the car, but it’s very awkward graffiti. Here’s the thing – the idea of graffiti in a music video seems quite cool, but in the hands of a non-artist, it just ends up looking like the stuff Telecom workers do on the footpath before digging it up.

The car is then smashed up, but it’s good to see the Exponents are wearing protective eyewear as they do it. But because the health and safety compliant graffiting and smashing is a bit lacklustre, the car is finally blown up. Mr Tarantino would have done it better.

Best bit: “Online erotic”, a niche activity in the mid-’90s.

Director: Mark Tierney
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… getting out of bed.

Bailter Space “Splat”

New York, just like I pictured it: backwards. Bailter Space are in the Big Apple again, this time in a reversed, slowed-down, one-take video. So this means they would have learnt to play the song backwards and sped-up. Spike Jonez’s video for The Pharcyde’s song “Drop” packs in more amazing stuff, but “Splat” is a visual extravaganza.

Like most backwards videos, it is a bit gimmicky, but the laidback, meandering style of the video suits the song, complete with the grungy slacker kids hanging out.

Other highlights include a man un-eating an apple, and a laughing couple who appear to throw a bucket of paint at a wall, but the camera doesn’t manage to capture the splat itself.

Best bit: John Halvorsen actually backwards-playing his bass notes in perfect time with the music. Whoa.

Director: Julie Hermelin
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Throw “Honeyblonde”

As Failsafe Records explains on their YouTube channel, this video was made by Greg Page at The Waikato Polytech’s film school. This is very exciting to me because I was doing the exact same Media Arts degree as Greg Page at the time, just a couple of years before him. (And like him, I didn’t graduate either…)

The video is a claymation animation, which was the main style of animation taught in Greg’s year. So he was putting his education to good use.

Failsafe also notes that the band was absent due to having disbanded. Their plasticine doppelgangers are much more interesting to watch than the band’s previous performance video. When the rockier chorus kicks in, the band get wild, acquiring claymation eyeliner, a shirtless drummer, and an impaled drumstick.

It’s still not quite as cool as having a good video made with the real band, but for a low-budget weekend effort, it’s a not bad at all.

Best bit: the bucket of water being kicked over, leading to a claymation electrocution.

Director: Greg Page
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Thorazine Shuffle “An Affair”

I’m getting a very strong Urge Overkill vibe – probably the suits, the hair and the theatrics.

The scene is set in a ballroom on a boat. But it’s a shipwrecked boat at the bottom of the sea, so therefore Aucklandic cool dudes Thorazine Shuffle are all ghosts, singing of the one thing that is haunting them in the afterlife, right?

In their finest suits, the band play up on stage, while in front of them the dancefloor is filled with guests in their finest eveningwear. Joel Tobeck plays the featured guest, jauntily dancing with a blonde-wigged woman.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah! We can have an affair!” sings the flame-haired eyeliner-wearing Josh Thorazine. He is doing his very best to tempt the object his desire into having an affair.

But who is this mystery person? It the blonde woman dancing with Mr Tobeck? Is it the goth chick who stares out from under a face full of hair? Or is it the dreadlocked barman who exchanges a few meaningful glances with the energetic lead singer?

Well, if they’re all ghosts, they’ll be trapped in this neverending nightmare forever, with the affair never happening until Ghost Joel learns that affairs are wrong.

Best bit: Joel Tobeck’s manic performance on the dance floor. He can dance, for inspiration.

Director: Steve Morrison
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Shihad “Deb’s Night Out”

And what a night out it is. Jon Shihad starts out sitting in the back of a car with a middle-aged couple. Those two are having a jolly old time, laughing and getting pissed on wine, while Jon sulks like a teen who’s being forced to attend his dumb uncle’s dumb 50th birthday. He doesn’t want to go; there’ll only be old people there.

The car drives around the streets of what I think is Wellington. It’s dark and I can’t quite pick any familiar landmarks, but it feels like Wellington. And if it is the capital, there was a lot more neon and less street lighting back in the ’90s.

Finally the car arrives at a hall in the suburbs where a party is in progress. “And I pray for a rain to wash you far away,” Jon sings. Steady on, Jon! It’s just some oldies having a knees-up.

At the hall, everyone is having a good time. The oldies are enjoying tasty wedges, and young ‘uns are rock-and-roll dancing. Finally old misery guts gets up on the dance floor and has a good old kanikani, with the rest of Shihad enjoying themselves.

This is the first Shihad video that features Shihad not playing as a band. It suits the mellower, more atmospheric song. I’m sure the suburban shindig setting was used to be edgy and ironic, but 16 years on, it’s a lot easier to believe Shihad enjoying themselves at such an event.

Best bit: the platecam capturing the look of glee as the oldies grab the wedges.

Director: Chris Mauger
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Rikki Morris “World Stand Still”

Almost 10 years after storming the charts with “Nobody Else”, Rikki Morris finally released his solo album. “Word Stand Still” is a brilliant pop song, without a dull moment.

The video is another work by Mark Tierney, and has his signature urban style. The band perform on a building rooftop in Victoria Street West, but not in a “Where the Streets Have No Name” kind of way. Playing on the rooftop takes them up to be amongst the highrise buildings. The street is only glimpsed from a distance.

The video is stylish and urban and cool and really rock, but it can’t be a Mark Tierney video without a slightly dark twist. At near the end of the video, Rikki is suddenly gets his hair shaved off. A person stands behind him and shears his already short hair with an electric shaver. Rikki then runs his hands over his head, examining his new do. It’s strangely… sexual. I don’t know why the shaving happens, but it’s enough to tip the video from quite good pop-rock vid into WTFWTFWTF.

Best bit: The quick cameo of the half-built Sky Tower.

Director: Mark Tierney
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Purest Form “U Can Do It”

It’s sad that this is Purest Form’s last song, because it really feels like they’ve hit their stride and would have been ready to slot right into the late ’90s boy band scene. All four band members are back. “U Can Do It” is a positive, upbeat pop song, and the video illustrates this perfectly.

There are two sides to the video. It starts with Purest Form in a bleak setting – the kind of place where “people give us on their hopes and their dreams”: a suburban cul-de-sac. The old Auckland CPO, pre-Britomart renovation, also stands in for urban desolation, with its boarded up doors and smattering of tagging.

But don’t worry – a better life is just around the corner: the choruses explode with an amazing Polynesian beach party.

Fires burn, palm trees sway and masses of Pacific performers dance in a mix of traditional and modern styles. And the four lads have a twist on their trademark matching suits: instead of trousers, they wear white lavalava with their baggy red and white jackets.

It feels like Purest Form were on the verge of greatness, but then they went their own ways, never to see the charts again.

Best bit: The a capella breakdown outside the old post office.

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision