Peter Stuyvesant Hitlist “Freewheeling”

1999-hitlist-freewheeling“Freewheeling” is a pleasant piece of psychedelic pop, so the video takes that and goes with it. It’s rool trippy as, bro.

Our journey starts with an ice cream van manned by Chris Anderton (who looks very much like his dad). A kid buys an ice cream and returns to his slobby dad and nice mum, which sounds not unlike a sitcom premise. Asleep in bed the kid, er, goes down a psychedelic wormhole of dreamland.

We meet fez-wearing fellow riding on a magic carpet, another guy trapped in some dense bush, more desert, a beguiling belly dancer and a confused fellow who stumbles after the dancer.

We’re then treated to a ’90s computer-generated desert fortress, complete with totally smooth walls (as adding texture would probably have taken seven years to render). Inside the fortress is an important man being laughed at for eating peas instead of grapes. The wormhole arrived and, hey, everyone’s happy. Enjoy your peas, sir!

It erupts into a groovy harem freak-out, including a genie. Just when things threaten to get carried away, we’re back to reality and the kid is down at his local shops. Yeah, his life is a little troubled, but it seems his crazy dram friends are always at hand to take him away.

The Hitlist always seemed torn between being hilarious and being serious. This video has a lot of that. The bookend plot – that it’s all an escapist world for a troubled boy – takes a bit of the weird fun away from the experience.

Best bit: The rickety NZ On Air animation. Wot, did the official one fall off?

Next… something to reflect on.

2 thoughts on “Peter Stuyvesant Hitlist “Freewheeling””

  1. I was that beguiling dancer! Lots of fun filming out at Bethells Beach. Really was shades of the Sahara. Great vid, thanks.

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