5000 Ways to Love You – Page 95 – Exploring the world of NZ On Air music video funding

Maree Sheehan “What Have You Done To Me”

Maree is seated at a round booth at a nightclub. A man and woman sit down at the table across from her. Maree looks uncomfortable. She knows the woman. A waiter delivers a delicious fruit platter. And so the evening begins.

Other guests arrive. A woman who looks like a shave-headed Justin Bieber gives the camera a good stare, as if to preserve her Bieberesque likeness for future generations. Is Biebette there for the fruit platter? Maree simmers with the tension this situation is causing her.

A blonde-haired women appears at the table. Biebette gives Maree a goofy grin and lets Maree fondle her cigarette lighter. Suddenly a sleazy bro turns up, also smoking a cigarette. Another woman joins the table, bringing more seductive glances to drive Maree wild.

So many seductive glances! Such a tempting fruit platter!

Then finally it happens, following the rule of Chekhov’s Gun, the couple from the beginning feed each other delicious fresh fruit from the platter. For a video so packed full of bisexual desire, maybe Maree just wanted a good fresh melon.

Best bit: the highly symbolic fruit platter of desire.

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… Jon and the boys have a big day out.

Purest Form “It’s Christmas”

Purest Form know how to deliver, and this time they’re delivering a delicious cheese platter for Christmas.

The four are found in three different locations. They can be seen out on the ice at Paradise Ice Skating. This might seem like a romantic Christmassy thing to do, but the four seem to the only people at the rink, making it feel more like a bunch of 12-year-olds having a birthday party treat.

Their second location is a white studio, where they are dressed in almost identical white suits, distinguised only by colour ribbons. So they look like they’re wearing the flags of England (red), Finland (blue), the Maltan city Zejtun (green), and the People’s Democratic Republic of Purist Form, which I have just invented (purple).

The third location is somewhat disturbing. The group are standing next to the unassembled Farmers santa. The santa seems to be getting a fresh paint job, and I think this was the precise paint job that made him look really weird and creepy and started the “Eeew! He looks like a paedophile!” meme. The santa is then shown being trucked to his ’90s home – outside the mall at Manukau. (Kinda cool that South Auckland got the santa for a while.)

This may not be an amazing song, but I’m so glad the video exists. Years later, it brings a special kind of Christmas joy.

Best bit: the acting set-up, complete with a phone box.

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

And with this cheerful video – which remarkably happened to coincide with the festive season posts – I’m going to take a break for a couple of weeks and will be back on 9 January kicking off the new year with another new year – 1995.

5000 Ways To Love You has been going for almost six months now. I’ve reviewed over 150 music videos so far and have learned more about music videos in the ’90s than I ever though possible. But the best part of this project is getting all the information from people with tales to tell, and slowly see previously missing videos appear online. Thank you to everyone who’s contributed, but also cheers to those who just enjoy reading the site.

Here’s to more adventures in music videos in 2012!

– Robyn

Throw “Nowhere Near”

throAnother video uploaded by Failsafe Records, who comments, “I’m not really sure what this video is supposed to be about … but the colours are pretty.”

Well, I’ll try to explain it. There’s a couple who’ve recently split up. We see their previous relationship times in black and white footage. The man is trying to get back with the woman, but she’s not interested.

She goes to a bar and gets all a bit flirty with other dudes, finally leaving the bar (where a camera crew is filming outside). The man follows her, which is pretty creepy, but she jumps in a car with someone else and disappears into the night. He thought he had a chance with her. He just wanted to give their relationship the chance it deserved.

In the middle of this, there’s lots of footage of Auckland at night – the bright lights of the city. And we briefly get a shot of a clapper board. That and the film crew seen later suggest that maybe this whole video exists only in a filmic sense. In reality, there is no man stalking a woman in downtown Auckland.

Well, I think that’s it. It’s very much a video of its era. It doesn’t do much to sell the band – but as the Failsafe Records YouTube comments note – the band didn’t play live, so I’m sure they had even less interest in appearing in their videos.

Best bit: a reminder of the olden times, before cellphones were in common use, when people made urgent phone calls from phone boxes in the city.

Director: David Reid
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… before they were famous.

Springloader “One More Thing”

I’m conflicted by this. The song is ok. The video concept is ok. But put together they just don’t work.

It’s an average ’90s indie guitar pop song with slightly miserabilistic undertones, but most oddly, the video uses standard rock visuals of red, gold and blue lighting and lots of smoke. So the song makes the video seem like overkill, while the video makes the song seem dull.

The camera seems really reluctant to get close to the band, instead whizzing past in an attempt to create urgency and excitement in a song that lacks it. And then the smoke effects seem to get out of control, obscuring the band like a thick Hamilton fog. If it were me, I’d go for something moody and black and white, put a mysterious dark-haired girl in it, and get the lead singer to give the camera some sex face.

After all the missing videos from earlier funding rounds, now things are starting to pick up. But it means that as well as videos from the amazing popular bands, all these little bands are coming through too and their work is of mixed quality.

Well, good on Springloader for getting a song recorded and a video made. It’s a pity they faded away.

Best bit: the old station wagon inexplicably parked on stage behind the band.

Director: David Reid
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… how (not) to win back your girl.

Shihad “You Again”

This video reminds me of how much of a skinny-arse Jon Toogood used to be. The Fix street press had a cartoon about Jon disappearing when he took behind his microphone. But he had big hair which more than compensated.

“You Again” is a really fat, grunty metal pie. The video is shot in black and white, but with subtle washes of colour. That’s notable – it’s not the sepia rainbow that was in vogue only months earlier.

It’s such a strong, masculine video that’s it’s almost possible to forget this is still part of the world of showbiz. It’s a world where whiteboy dreads look really cool, especially when they’re tossed about in slow motion.

Shihad videos seem better when they’re focusing on the band playing the song, and less on video tricks. Here the four are just playing the song, showing how they work together – even when it’s kind of pretend for the music video.

Best bit: drummer Tom’s staunch-as sunglasses.

Director: Darryl Ward
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next: the forecast is for fog.

Malchicks “Milestone”

cksFailsafe Records are a YouTube goldmine. In their comments for this video, they note that as the band’s bass player (and vocalist on this song) had moved to Japan, the video was partly made up of videos of her hanging out around Japan.

It’s sweet tourist videos – long train rides with Japanese suburbs passing by, visiting temples, train stations, busy city streets at night. All new and different. Meanwhile back in New Zealand, there’s local footage of the Aotearoan countryside rushing past from a car, sheep blocking a country road, a golden sunset.

It’s showing the two countries at their best. The New Zealand traveller in Japan holds on to her memories of the peaceful Aotearoa rural scenes; when she returns to New Zealand, she remembers the lovely old shrines. The boring stuff, that doesn’t get remembered.

Best bit: the “REDUCE SPEED NOW” sign seen in the New Zealand countryside.

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… skinny-arse hair rock.

Hello Sailor “Never Fade Away”

More nostalgia from Hello Sailor. The lyrics examine the sacrifices and the achievements made.

The video is centred on Hello Sailor playing on the street down the road from their old stomping ground of the Gluepot bar in Ponsonby. This is cut together with archival footage of memorable moments in New Zealand history – Olympic athletics wins, the Howard Morrison Quartet, World War II newsreel footage, the Beatles tour and Hillary on Everest.

The video seems like quite a strong effort to create something that is a very emotional experience for New Zealanders, but it’s hard to equate dying on a battlefield with winning a medal for the long jump.

The song is about remembering past glories and not letting them fade from our collective memory. But as I’ve discovered already with this project, it’s very easy for things to fade from memory.

Best bit: the sinking realisation that I can’t recognise all the notable Kiwis.

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… holiday videos from Japan.

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.