1995 – Page 2 – 5000 Ways to Love You

Greg Johnson “If I Swagger”

Remember the blizzard of ’96? A crapload of snow was dumped all over the eastern United States. Greg Johnson remembers it too, for it was during the snowfest that the video for “If I Swagger” was shot in New York City.

Directed by Strawpeople person Paul Casserly, the video is an elegant black and white work, filmed in the aforementioned blizzardville and grey old London. Using what looks like an old film camera, the video uses a collage of images, like memories from an old photo album.

There’s no doubt at all that the video was shot in New York and London. The two locations are boldly featured. Well, if you’re shooting a video on the other side of the world, you don’t want it to be mistaken for Wellington.

There are also glimpses of aeroplanes. This is the life of Greg Johnson, international musician of mystery. It wasn’t just for show – he’s currently based in Los Angeles, making a living from his music.

The NZOA logo gets some special treatment in this video. Rather than just sitting in the usual bottom-right corner, the logo is carefully positioned to fit with the composition of the video. That way, it doesn’t distract from the video, and nicely complements the visuals.

With so few of Greg Johnson’s many NZOA funded videos being available online, it’s nice to find a good quality version of a lovely video.

Best bit: a lone figure walks on railway tracks. It’s a music video, man.

Director: Paul Casserly
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Matty J Ruys “Cruisin'”

Some New Zealand music videos will cleverly make an ordinary bit of downtown Auckland look like Paris, London, New York or Apia. But sometimes clever camera angles aren’t just enough and a proper location shoot is needed. This time Matty J went to Miami.

Again directed by Mark Tierney, Matty J takes his cover of the smooth Smokey Robinson track to sunny Florida. Matty J hangs out in the back of a convertible, cruising with the top down. As he drives around the streets of Miami, we catch glimpses of the street life, lots of ordinary people going about their business, including girls in short shorts. This is, after all, a music video.

The video is high contast and has a strong orange filter, like a really bad Instagram filter. I assume this is meant to create a golden, sunny feeling, but it’s more like a strange post-apocalyptic sci-fi world. It would not be out of place for the tri-bosomed hooker from “Total Recall” to suddenly show up.

I remember at the time this video was released there were mutterings about the Miami location. But despite the exotic locale, it’s obvious that the video shoot itself was not expensive. It literally looks like they just drove around one afternoon and shot some stuff from the car. A video shoot in Miami? Why not.

Best bit: all the rollerbladers, cruising along.

Director: Mark Tierney
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Matty J Ruys “Mine”

Catch-up time: this was missing from one of the NZOA databases that I used, but fortunately I found it in another.

Matty J is a determined man. “The girl will be mine,” he asserts. But which girl? This video has a United Nations of hotties for him to pick.

Directed by Mark Tierney, the video is simple but cool and urban. Wearing a shirt with an extremely pointy collar, Matty J is caught in a spotlight as he stands in front of a wall made from non-step steel, just in case he wanted to try out his Spider-Man movies.

Also standing by the non-slip wall is a number of women, each dancing to the song’s cool grooves, each giving the camera seductive looks. It’s almost like they’re auditioning to be “the girl”, except all the women have a bit of a don’t-give-a-dam look.

Just in case things were getting a little claustrophobic, Matty J ventures outside, hanging out in front of the old Central Post Office, where only the pigeons understand his angst. He also celebrates being outdoors by doing a seduction rap.

I like that this video has taken a low budget and made something quite styley out of it, including magically tranforming Queen Street into a much cooler urban area.

Best bit: Matty J’s dramatic grabs at the camera.

Director: Mark Tierney
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Nothing at All! “Busted”

Nothing At All! were a legendary punky garagey band from the North Shore. They came out with a crazy guitar sound years before that sound became popular in the early 2000s. “Busted” is two minutes of fun and energy with a video that perfectly captures this.

Directed by Andrew Moore, we see the band dressed in opshop finery, playing on a small stage, in front of a golden curtain. This is mixed with footage of the band being badasses out on the streets of Auckland.

There’s much marauding around the railway station, the tank farm, the waterfront – if there’s a cool location, the boys will find a way to run, drive or pose through it.

There’s a dramatic scene where a stolen car smashes into a stack of egg trays, but hey, if you leave a stack of egg trays in a narrow alleyway, you have to expect it’ll get knocked about.

But the video saves the best for last – there’s a helicopter, an actual real helicopter. Down by the waterfront, the lads board and take off into the skies over Auckland. For what is a low-budget music video, this is a brilliant touch, a bit of 1980s glam amid the ’90s garage.

Director Andrew Moore on the making of the video: “The band had seen some skating videos I’d made and contacted me about doing a video. We agreed to spend a day hanging out and filming some stuff as kind of a demo for the main shoot. It was the funniest day ever, we got bent and spent the video budget on beers, food and other incentives. I fucken laughed all day, these dudes were hilarious. Shot at their practise room at Frisbee studios in Symonds St”

Best bit: the sprint past a police car. Yeah, take that.

Director: Andrew Moore
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… Jan goes manic in Sydney.

Martin Phillipps and the Chills “Come Home”

Miami Sound Machine became Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine, by the mid ’90s the Chills had rebranded as Martin Phillipps and the Chills. The cheerful “Home Come” was the first single off new album “Sun Burnt”, and it served as a clarion call to young expat New Zealanders.

The video introduces us to two such expats. In New York, a glamorous young woman wearing a giant winter hat drops a handful of coins in the cup of an elderly beggarman. She furrows her brow, as if she has realised deep down that it is not right for an elderly man who be out begging in the middle of winter. Come home! New Zealand does not have many beggars and the winters are mild, anyway!

Meanwhile in London, a young man wearing surfer gear works behind bar. His short hair is roughly braided. While he goes about his job, he is momentarily distracted, as if he is remembering the golden summers he spent surfing in Gisborne. He doesn’t see much sun in this dingy bar. Come home! You can work in a bar by the beach, and you don’t even have to bother with mixing drinks as it is the ’90s and RTDs are new on the scene!

Back in New Zealand, a group of children play hide and seek in a park. Sure, it’s not as exciting as London or New York, but, like, it’s green and there are trees. And children.

Throughout all this the Chills play on an isolated beach, complete with highly symbolic megaphones. I’m sure this video would have persuaded a few homesick Kiwis to return back to Aotearoa, but it’s only really going to be successful if you hate cities and love isolated outdoor areas.

Best bit: where the camera appears to chase a boy, who turns and runs in fear.

Director: Mark Tierney
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… running, jumping, helicoptering.

Jan Hellriegel “Pure Pleasure”

In this Mark Tierney-directed video, Jan plays a catsuit-clad femme fatale, the star of a fake show called “Supervixens!”, which appears to have no relation to the legendary Russ Meyer film.

Jan and her supervixen posse – Buffy and St Marie (oh, I did what they did there) – receive a call to action: a secret formula has been stolen! The girls very stylishly hit the road, and meanwhile evil people do evil things with the secret formula.

The evil mastermind is played by Zane Lowe. At the time he was one of Urban Disturbance, whereas now he is all properly famous. Jan and los vixens make it to the criminal HQ and procede to fight the evil criminals, with Jan giving Zane a pash of death.

It’s a fun, playful video. It’s very much a work of the mid-’90s, packed full of strong ’70s pop culture references. It’s another video that was obviously inspired by the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage”, and there’s also a bit of Tarantino cool lurking around.

Best bit: the surprise cat ending.

Director: Mark Tierney
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… Martin’s public service announcement.

Dead Flowers “You Drink The Water, I’ll Drink The Wine”

Dead Flowers get all “November Rain” with this epic-ish metal ballad. Shot in high-contrast black and white, the video takes place in rural New Zealand, where a tragedy has occurred.

Someone has died, which causes mothers and children to cry in close up. The young male suspect stands trial and appears to be found guilty, sentenced to hang. Yes, this is the part of New Zealand where hanging still happens. Probably somewhere in Southland.

But then the narrative gets a bit fuzzy. Suddenly we see Bryan Dead Flowers in the police cell. What’s he doing there? He is actually the murderer? He has switched places?

The previously strong narrative dissolves into a series of dramatic shots, as if someone gave up trying to give the video a conclusion and instead just strung together some prior footage.

Despite all that, this is a pretty decent looking video. But it’s let down by one really big thing: the cops have really bad fake moustaches. I don’t quite understand it. There’s obviously been a lot of effort put into the video, making it look really good, but yet the policemen have really bad $2 shop Moustache Party stick-on mo’s. And even worse – one of these cops is shown in close-up. Even the Beastie Boys had better looking fake moustaches in the deliberately cheesy “Sabotage” video.

Best bit: the serious judge with his serious pointing finger.

Director: Chris Mauger
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… revenge of the Supervixens.

Throw “All Different Things”

I know a bit about this video because in early 1996 – just as obsessed with music videos as I am now – I did a summer school course at Waikato Polytech on the art of music videos, run by the director of his video, Greg Page.

He’d made “All Different Things” a few months before. It was a hearty Hamilton effort, film in Metropolis Caffe on Victoria Street (Hamilton’s cool ’90s cafe)
and starred Inchworm frontman Justin Harris.

Throw don’t appear in the video because by this stage they’d become a studio-only band. So rather than use claymation, Greg turned the band into monsters, making an alterno retelling of the Frankenstein story.

The monsters were also the creation of Greg, and some of his paintings in a similar style can be seen around the lab/cafe. The video gets the emotion right, with a perfect combination of sweet and sinister.

This video also gets to be historically significant because it’s the very first video to have a customised NZ On Air logo. Rather than superimposing the graphic, it was instead incorporated into the video, drawn on cardboard in a jar full of a mysterious liquid.

Best bit: the reassurance that cool stuff happens in Hamilton.

Director: Greg Page
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… one sweet lover.

Shaft “Downhill Racer”

“Downhill Racer” was a minor indie hit, all over the bFM top 10. It’s a superbly written song, with a great ’60s feeling. The video goes for a kitschy retro style, turning a nerdy bedroom fantasy into a full-on glam-rock extravaganza.

Halfway through the video we meet a gothy fellow alone in his bedroom, looking up bomb recipes on the internet. This comes complete with a brilliant screen shot of the ye olde web browser Netscape displaying a webpage called “BOMBS for FUN”. Back in the mid-’90s, the media were always going on about “bomb recipes” on the newfangled internet thing. Such innocent times.

By the way, the website in this video looks real, so I googled to see if it was still around. I couldn’t find anything, but now I’m paranoid that some authority will have been alerted to a New Zealander searching for bomb recipes.

Anyway. Back in the video, there is much excitement because it appears that a large truck is going to smash into a wendy house. And indeed it does, which we see from five different angles. I figure, if you’ve gone to the trouble of constructing a little house for a truck to smash in one take, you’re going to set up as many cameras as possible to make sure you don’t miss the vital shot. Like Demi Moore shaving her hair off in “GI Jane”.

The uploader of this video comments that the song “evokes the enigma of life as we know it”. And I think the video does that too.

Best bit: the mouse on a leash.

Director: Stuart Page
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… Frankenstein comes to Hamilton.

Purest Form “If I Fell”

I previously said that “U Can Do It” was Purest Form’s last single, but I was wrong. They actually had one more single up their sleeves, and with it came the most ridiculous and therefore the greatest New Zealand music video ever made.

The song is a slowed-down cover of the Beatles’ classic. As expected, it is a perfect song to show off the boys’ vocal harmonies. Their previous music video, “U Can Do It”, had a bold Polynesian flavour, but “If I Fell” goes in the complete opposite direction, thoroughly colonising the boys.

They start sitting on the steps at Alberton, before jumping into a vintage car and hooning off to a waterfall, including a couple of the Form sitting on jump seats at the back. Watch out, guys!

Once they reach the waterfall, they stand around looking moody, dressed in what appears to be cricket uniforms. A young lady in a white dress moves about, also looking moody and romantic. Sometimes she plays a cello.

It’s all very good so far, but then at the two-minute mark, something amazing happens: the lead vocalist gets wet. Probably inspired by Peter Andre’s 1995 waterfall romp in “Mysterious Girl”, one of the Form (the fit one) casts off his colonial attire, dons a lavalava and stands under the waterfall looking really hot.

This sort of stuff doesn’t usually happen in New Zealand music videos. We get all shy and embarrassed and wonder what our parents would think and how this might affect our future employment opportunities. So I am super impressed that Purest Form were brave enough to do this, but that makes it a even more sad that this is their final music video.

Best bit: Of course it’s the bloody waterfall bit.

Next… a slow download via Netscape Navigator.