Grace “Desert Moon”

1994-grace-desert-moonAgain Grace make a music video that is much more interesting than the song. That’s not to say the song is bad – it’s a poppy soul groove – but more that the music video is really interesting.

It’s set at an exotic nightclub, which Peter at Dub Dot Dash identifies as the Queen Street venue that became The Whitehouse. The club is full of sexy patrons in all manner of undress, including one fellow in studded leather undies, being led in on a leash.

The less pervy patrons are just enjoying themselves as Grace perform up on stage. And sometimes a young singer takes to the stage to add backing vocals – hey, it’s Bic Runga! She was, as Dub Dot Dash notes, part of Grace’s live band, but didn’t actually sing on the recorded version of this song.

With the previous two Grace videos having featured only the band, it’s nice to get a glimpse of their freaky friends. A lesser music video would have probably used a lady in a floaty dress dancing barefoot in the moonlight, which is far less interesting than a bar full of freaky friends.

Best bit: Mr Dog Leash, smoking a cigarette, too cool to pay attention to the band or the woman’s crotch in his face.

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… a cake to farewell Fiona.

5 thoughts on “Grace “Desert Moon””

  1. The venue was ‘The Club’ on Queen St. Was a bit of a hang out for a little while but never rivaled the likes of Squid or Cause Celeb. Was also the venue for events like the Pavement Christmas party.

    It is possible this video was shot by Kane Massey – I can’t recall. I think I was going to be in it but couldn’t make the shoot.

    At the time that this video was shot Grace played a few live shows around NZ and through a connection to myself they poached a couple of people I was playing with at the time – notably Bic Runga and Earl Robertson (drums). This was pre-“Drive” and Earl and I were Bic’s live band. Boh Runga also did BVs live with them. Many stories abound about this short tour, notably unpaid bar tabs. I did see the Auckland show which was interesting. Grace didn’t really perform live much after this – they had a new batch of songs they were trying to get done for a new album which never happened. I saw them play live at the Powerstation a year or two later (support for an act I can’t recall) as a three piece with a much rockier sound.

    The “Black Sand Shore” album had been out a while at this point – nothing much was happening with it due to lack of promotion from Festival Records and the usual Deepgrooves debacles. Pity really as it was a great album. They did managed to score four videos for it though and possibly more but who knows if Kane received and spent the money.

    The black acoustic Takamine guitar in the video was leant to Paul Ioassa by Greg Fleming.

    On one occasion Anthony tried to form a rock band (as lead vocalist) with myself on bass, Chris Van de Geer on guitar and a couple of other well known musicians. We had one jam session and a tape exists of that somewhere.

    Side note – The Club seemed to be a popular place to shoot a music video. I was in a video (playing guitar) film there for Fiona McDonald’s ‘Let Me Dream’ – an extended music video-menatary directed by Jonathan King. The video featured Shirely Charles as the drummer and Heather Mansfield from the Brunettes on keys. Good luck in finding that video Robyn – lol.

  2. PS: I don’t know where the ‘Making A Fool’ part of the title is from – it’s not correct as far as I know. ‘Making A Fool’ was the title of a Greg Fleming song (Grace label mate) which appeared on the Kiwi Hit Disc at the same time.

    1. Oh, interesting. That’s how it’s listed on the NZOA database, but I’ve since discovered that the song titles on the database are by no means accurate. I’ve now removed the bit in brackets!

      NZOA are in the process of formulating a master list of all funded music videos, so hopefully all the song titles will be accurate in future!

  3. As Leilani noted Craig Jackson A.K.A. Jax directed this.
    I uploaded this copy to YouTube after finding it on an old DV tape.
    As I recall Jax invited most of Max TV and other friends,
    with an open bar as incentive!
    No wonder I was staggering in the closing shot. 🙂

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