NZ On Screen – Page 19 – 5000 Ways to Love You

Superette “Killer Clown”

clonDave Mulcahy left the JPS Experience and formed Superette. “Killer Clown” was their first single and the video invites us to a party – a very sticky party.

An ordinary suburban house is hosting a grown-up version of a children’s party. There are coloured lights, balloon, streamers, glitter, jelly, cake, sweeties fancy make-up and a general sense of unease.

At the centre is a table laden with all sorts of delicious treats, most of which are smeared in and around the mouths of the eager party guests. While all this are going on, the band play the song, with Dave’s light vocals on the heavy subject of serial killer John Wayne Gacy.

Inspired by Gacy’s multitasking as a children’s clown and a serial killer, the song and this video contrast the bright, cheerful world of clown entertainment with a darker side. But instead of murder, it’s adults acting like children, smearing themselves with jelly, pashing on the floor.

This video looks like it would have been so much fun to make, but the more practical side of me wonders if by the end of the shoot, everyone would have been hot, tired and covered in sticky. Much like a real children’s party.

Best bit: the party guest cutting jelly with scissors.

Director: Stuart Page
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… rumble in the jungle.

Jan Hellriegel “Geraldine”

Jan’s back with the first single off her second album. The title character undergoes a metamorphosis, and this guides the central theme of the video.

Filmed on and around the back steps of St Kevin’s Arcade in Auckland, the video starts with a waiflike Jan singing the song surrounded by instruments, her band absent. In the background, a few random K Road freaky people wander past.

A greasy looking businessman strolls by and enters one of the flats in St Kevin’s, where the Wine Bar now lives. The businessman is played by Mika, which should be a hint of things to come. In his apartment, he shaves and emerges as an extravagant Maori warrior. It’s all on.

The monochrome world has changed into a Geraldine’s lush reality. Jan vamps it up, with her hair transformed into lush Alanis Morrisette curls. The back steps of St Kev’s are alive with feathers, smoke, wigs, fire and sinister extravagance.

It perfectly matches the not-quite-right tone of the lyrics, creating a extravagant messed-up world that might not have literally existed in Auckland in 1995, but it’s nice to think it might have.

Best bit: the extravagant moment of transformation.

Director: Kerry Brown
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… a strategically placed smudge of axle grease.

Chris Knox “Half Man Half Mole”

The video is – as its end credits note – made by Barbara Ward and her boyfriend Chris Knox. So as it’s a Chris Knox joint, there must be animation involved. This time the medium is claymation and we follow a little orange fellow, like a rougher, pointy-nosed Morph.

This indie Morph is a troubled character, tormented by not fitting in, getting hassles from other plasticine characters, and with thoughts of death running through his squishy head.

With making an animation, it can be tempting to cut down on the laborious process by repeating footage. There is a big repeated scene in this, but it cleverly follows a reprise in the music and adds something new the second time around.

“Half Man Half Mole” is clever, cute and a little edgy. He made good videos, that Mr Knox did.

Best bit: the spooky Halloween wall.

Director: Chris Knox, Barbara Ward
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Shihad “Bitter”

The Big Day Out is a gift to bands. It lets them record a live video showing the band performing in front of a packed stadium. Shihad are always a massive crowd-pleaser at the Big Day Out, so it makes sense that they’d capture their 1995 performance in a music video.

The video looks like it’s been shot in such a way to avoid showing any Big Day Out branding. We never see a wide shot of the stage, and footage around the stadium is giving a choppy, black and white treatment to help draw attention away from the teens in jester hats (and indeed there’s no chance of me spotting myself aged 20).

At times there’s little sense that the performance in taking place in a stadium. They might as well be playing at the Powerstation (and, actually, that would have probably been a better location to shoot a music video).

But there is still heaps of live action. The video uses rapid cuts to disguise the live performance not matching exactly with the recorded version, but that pace matches the energy of the song.

We also see moshpit action – crowd surfing, stage diving, and a guy being pulled from the front by security. It’s like a perfect checklist of a mid-’90s music festival. Dudes, how’s the pit?

Best bit: the grungy brown filter making the sweaty teen audience at Mt Smart Stadium looking edgy and cool.

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… a more low key day out.

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.

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.

Supergroove “You Freak Me”

994 was Supergroove’s golden year. Average age 19 (still), they had a run of top ten hits and toured New Zealand in their stain-disguising black dress code.

“You Freak Me”, the sixth release from their debut album, is a tense eruption of young male energy. See, there’s a girl and, well, she freaks them. It’s four minutes of pent up sexual tension, with the band playing the song in a starkly lit, smoke filled environment.

The smoke seems to be fulfilling a symbolic purpose – it’s the only thing that gets any release around these parts, billowing quite clouds in quantities that seem excessive in a normal rock situation.

The band also smoke cigarettes, which again seems totally outrageous to see in a music video. Nearly the apex of a musical climax, Che Fu lights a cigarette which – if we’re going to get Freudian on it – manages to both represent a penis and a nipple.

Karl’s refined his image with a black suit jacket, showing signs of the John Waters look that he would grow in to. Supergroove feel like they’re slowly figuring out their own personal identities, the individuality beneath the dress code.

Best bit: the bad-ass Che Fu attitude explosion.

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… a depressive contemplation of an urban landscape.

Strawpeople “Sweet Disorder”

The vocal collaborator on this track was Leza Corban, who gives the group a rootier, jazzier feeling. I know this song inside out due to a flatmate who played it all the time. Yeah, not quite two minutes into it, a trumpet solo kicks in.

The video is clever. It’s a way of shooting in an exotic location on a low budget. The video starts by establishing that Leza’s in a busy, noisy Asian city – Hong Kong, as it happens. She puts earbuds in her ears and peace settles. This is how they get away with shooting a music video in a busy city without having to play the song out loud for miming.

The result is a holiday video transformed into an ultra cool video for an equally cool song.

Best bit: the low-passing aeroplane, coming in to land.

Directors: Mark Tierney, Paul Casserly
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… suits, cigarettes, badassness.

Hello Sailor “New Tattoo”

tattHello Sailor made a comeback in the ’90s, with an album called “The Album” and a new single. “New Tattoo” sounded a bit like “Gutter Black” and a bit like “Blue Lady”, so they weren’t going off in a radical new direction.

“I’m as blue as a new tattoo,” Graham sings, and the video takes us into the world into the “state house back in Blockhouse Bay”, and the sign of a West Auckland youth.

This is not what popular music sounded like in the ’90s. There’s no attempt at picking up a younger audience. Hello Sailor are acting their age, and this is a song for other dudes like them.

Cruising around the suburban streets in a classic car, the video illustrates a man who is both revelling in the good times of his youth but also mourning what he’s lost. He’s never going to be 19 again.

Best bit: the glamorous woman in a studded leather bustier who doesn’t look like she’s just been thrown in for some sex appeal.

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… Maree’s family fun day.

Headless Chickens “George”

When Fiona McDonald was announced as one of the judges on NZ Idol and hoardes of teens commented online that they’d never heard of her, this is what I pointed them to. The Headless Chicken’s only number one single, and indeed the first number one for a Flying Nun artist.

It’s a dark song, a reminder of how awful and self-destructive relationships can get. And when compared to the band’s more lively earlier videos, it’s a sign of how far the Fiona-era Chickens came in such a short period, and how the group didn’t have much further to go.

The video is equally dark. Fiona, never afraid to not be pretty in a video, is filmed with harsh uplighting, giving her a similar shawdow moustache to Che Fu in Supergroove’s “Can’t Get Enough” video.

A tattoed man creeps towards the camera, an old man offers a birthday cake iced with “George”, other band members stare at the camera, making it clear that they too know of the terrible thing that has happened.

I love that a song like this can make it to number one in New Zealand. Everything is OK.

Best bit: Old George holding his cake, standing by an open fridge door.

Directors: Marcus Ringrose, Gideon Keith
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… the sailor boys return to their old neighbourhood.