There’s something really adorable about the Holy Toledos. They look like music nerds, the sort of guys who study music theory and are quite serious about making quality guitar pop. “Love’s Not Fair” has a very Crowded House feel to it, especially with the close harmonies on the verses.
The video features the band in three locations: out and about in downtown Auckland, playing live, and enjoying an afternoon jam session in a sunny garden.
In the live footage, three of the band are wearing waistcoats. Is this an attempt at a cohesive visual image, or were waistcoats quite fashionable in the early ’90s? Or does this exist outside the realm of visual identity and fashion?
The band seems a little doomed. While they wrote brilliant songs, there was just something missing from them. No pin-up band member to set girls hearts on fire. No bad boy rock god to admire. They just seemed like a group of really nice guys who formed a band and wrote pleasant songs.
Best bit: the up and down ride in the glass lift.
Note: sadly, this video has since been made private so it’s no longer viewable.
Notes for visiting Holy Toledos fans:
- Hey, how’s it going?
- I am not a journalist. I’m just a person who writes stuff online. (I dropped out of journalism school in 1996.)
- This website is dedicated to reviewing all the videos that have received NZ On Air funding from 1991 to 2011. The About page has more info.
- So this page is a review of the Holy Toledos’ music video for “Love’s Not Fair”. I wrote it in 2012. And as it’s a review, it’s all based on my opinion.
- I thought what I’d written was quite positive, really.
- When I say things like, “They look like music nerds” or that the band had, “No bad boy rock god to admire”, I’m just talking about how the music video appears to me. And again, I don’t consider these negative attributes.
- I’ve never ever met the Holy Toledos, but they seem like nice guys. (But is that what you’re trying to tell me: that they’re actually not at all nice? Badass!)
- Don’t like my story? Tell your own. Why not set up a fan page on Facebook dedicated to the history of the Holy Toledos? Or expand the band’s Wikipedia page. There’s hardly anything about them online, but you have the power to fix that. (As of March 2016, this has not happened.)
- But most importantly: you guys actually know the Holy Toledos, right? Tell them to put all their music videos online. And keep pestering them until they do it. This is all I care about: getting more sweet New Zealand videos online, especially from the ’90s and the ’00s.
- Ok, thanks.
