Cassette (including Tom Watson of HLAH on guitar) were a Wellington band who described themselves as playing “country / folk / soft / hard / moderate / spritural mantra ROCK!” “Nothing to Do” was their first single, and it’s an laidback indie track.
The online version of the video seems to have been taken from an episode of “Squeeze” via a ’90s web upload. It’s very pixelly and the sound is washy. But it’s enough to give a good impression of the video.
It starts with the drone of a suburban lawn mower cut with the crack of urban static, kicking off what looks like a homemade video with footage shot around Auckland. There’s footage of the band performing at both dark clubs and outdoors at festivals, the band hanging out, urban Auckland streets and coastal landscapes.
The video takes the “nothing to do” lyric and removes it from its bitter context of “one of them has nothing to do with you”. Instead it’s the slacker kind of “nothing to do”, making the video a lazy journey around Auckland. It’s almost like the video equivalent of a contemporary Instagram account – “here are some photos of some cool things I saw around Auckland”.
Best bit: the Vegas Girl on K Road, looking out on everything.
Note: This video is no longer available online.
Next… poor cable handling skills.
Haha! Why is it playing SO SLOWLY? ?