The Peter Stuyvesant Hitlist were known for their comedy loungey live styles, but they tone it right down for their second single, “Ode To K Road”. The video, made by Andrew Moore, Steve Sinkovich and Stuart Page, consists of sped-up footage of K Road, mostly with members of the band just standing around.
I lived on K Road around this time, so the video is a nice bit of nostalgia. When Karangahape Road appears in music videos, it’s normally at night, but “Ode to K Road” also happens at day time, with the very ordinary sunlit goings-on of the street.
It’s a reminder of K Road of the late ’90s, before Starbucks came, Rendalls closed and the adult shops disappeared. Back when it was all a bit shabby and the street was full of more weird shops than cool shops. (My favourite weird shop was the plastics shop that never every depreciated their prices, so there was a crappy old spice rack full of a long discontinued spice brand still selling for $39.95. As if.) Back when K Road has multiple second-hand record shops that wanted to eat all my money.
The song has a bittersweet tone and that feeling seeps through to the footage. It’s a reminder that K Road never really feels like it’s radically changed until the past is compared with the present. While there are plenty of familiar businesses (Rasoi, Leo O’Malley and, er, Dick Smith), the video is packed full of the ghosts of K Road past.
Best bit: the glistening metal facade of Al’s Diner.
Director: Andrew Moore
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision
Next… a scientific experiment gone wrong.
Hell, if it had been one year earlier there’d have been no Sky Tower in the final shot! Can’t say I miss the old K Road Bridge though, I used to cross it regularly in the late 00s and always felt a little freaked out about walking across it alone at night.
The whole album is pretty good. It had a secret reversed bonus track—a cover of “Ten Guitars”.
The Hitlist were a really fun live band.