Crash return with “Day at the Fair”, and it is to the credit of the director Greg Page that the video is not shot at a fair. Instead it follows a night in the life of a mannequin, going with the song’s metaphor of love being a roller coaster.
Our plastic heroine is sweet for a curly-haired bass player in Crash, and puts on some lipstick, a nice dress and her prettiest wig, and heads off to the nightclub. There she finds her fave band playing, looking quite the rock unit in silver suits.
The spunky boy bassist gives Miss Mannequin a seductive gaze, but later she finds him enjoying the company of two other mannequin ladies. Heartbroken, she runs off to the loos, where the nice singer from Crash offers her some lippie. But it isn’t enough. Ms Mannequin has seen the light and drivers herself home, tearing down the photo of the boy who broke her cold plastic heart.
I came to the end of this video feeling sad for the mannequin and angry that Crash have such a douchebag in their band. And why didn’t anyone else at the club comfort her? Poor Ms Mannequin.
Best bit: the dapper mannequin guy wearing a pirate hat.
The video is – as its end credits note – made by Barbara Ward and her boyfriend Chris Knox. So as it’s a Chris Knox joint, there must be animation involved. This time the medium is claymation and we follow a little orange fellow, like a rougher, pointy-nosed Morph.
This indie Morph is a troubled character, tormented by not fitting in, getting hassles from other plasticine characters, and with thoughts of death running through his squishy head.
With making an animation, it can be tempting to cut down on the laborious process by repeating footage. There is a big repeated scene in this, but it cleverly follows a reprise in the music and adds something new the second time around.
“Half Man Half Mole” is clever, cute and a little edgy. He made good videos, that Mr Knox did.
The band formerly known as Bush Beat return with a second song, “Let Me Know”. The track featured on Tangata Records’ compilation album Tribal Stomp II.
From what I can remember of it, the “You Stay out of Your Life” video involved Greg Johnson and Boh Runga zipping around on scooters (probably shot using green screen).
More business from Christchurch grunge unit Pumpkinhead. With a song called “Third Eye”, I would be extremely disappointed if the video didn’t include low-tech animated third eyes. Nga Taonga describes the video as “Pumpkinhead perform “Third Eye” in a yellow lunar setting and in a pub.”
Spurred on by popularity from the “Once Were Warriors” soundtrack, Southside of Bombay make a house record, with the highly danceable “Umbadada”. But Southside haven’t lost track of their reggae roots – the song has a message of unity and living forever.
In 1995 the Feelers won the prestigious South Island Battle of the Bands competition. Part of the prize included a single and music video released through Wildside. That song in question was “The Leaving”, with the music video directed by James and Matthew of the Feelers and camera by future Feelers music video director David Reid. The song obviously didn’t have the impact of later single “Pressure Man”, but it was included as a track on the band’s debut album.
“Pandora’s Box” was another song of Jordan Reyne’s 1998 album Birds of Prey. I have a suspicion that a video for this song not might not actually have been made.
Nothing At All! “Super Bullet”
Nothing At All! was the old band of Dion from the D4. “Super Bullet” was a tight 2:14 atomic bomb of a song that would have been a hit had it been released seven years later.
The Tufnels’ last stab at pop immortality was “Beautiful Ride”. I think it was an extra track added to a revamped version of their “Lurid” album, once they’d signed to a major label. So long, Tufnels.
More coolness from Urban Disturbance. “Figure This Kids” has echoes of what was to become the more laid-back sound of Zane Lowe’s next music project, Breaks Co-op.
August 1995
3 The Hard Way “B All Right”
For their second album, 3 The Hard Way were going for a more mellow sound. “B All Right” has a bit of the Death Row Sound, and continues the 3 The Hard Way theme of mythologising their childhoods.
Barry Saunders “Little Times”
The Warratahs frontman has a solo song called “Little Times”, a bluesy ode to the opposite of the big time.
Another of Ermehn’s early tracks is “Nuttin Personal”, which is strangely ungooglable. It could be a case where the song or song title was changed at some point.
Grace “Heart Of Stone”
“Heart of Stone” is a souly pop track. Instead of the video, here’s the brothers Ioasa talking about the inspiration behind their music from a 1995 episode of Frenzy.
Jacqui Keelan Davey “Nobody”
Hamilton songstress Jacqui Keelan Davey delivers a miserable but bangin’ dance number, “Nobody”.
Jordan Reyne “Millstones”
Jordan Reyne delivers a sweet guitar track with “Millstones”.
“Find Yourself” is a great song that shows off Sulata’s rich voice. I think this might be a video that wasn’t actually made, with the funding possibly transferred to another song.
Wonderkind have “Destiny Change”, an upbeat dance song about a teen prostitute. There was a lot of that in the ’90s – upbeat dance music about really depressing social issues. Here’s a very 1997 remix of the song.
“So Low” was a track off Dead Flowers’ third album. By this stage they were ruling the school, even opening on Pearl Jam’s NZ tour.
Jacqui Keelan Davey “Too Late”
Hamilton songstress Jacqui Keelan Davey has another single, “Too Late”. “Jacqui Keelan Davey has a voice that gabs you by the scruff of the neck and won’t let go,” enthused the Waikato Times.
Mara “Message At The Bottom”
Mara Finau – best known as co-lead singer of The Holidaymakers – went solo with a cover of Chaka Khan’s “Message At The Bottom”.
Ngaire “The Way I Feel About You”
Ngaire returned to the pop charts with “The Way I Feel About You”, which spent one ever-so-brief week at number 42.
“Back To Hong Kong” was another track from Sulata’s “Kia Koe” album. And this is another case where the video may not have been made or the funding given to another track.
Ted Brown and the Italians “Battle Inside”
“Battle Inside” was a track from Ted Brown’s album Shaky’s Blessing.
December 1995
CMB Swing “Your Love Is All I Need”
CMB Swing were a five-piece group (four vocalists and one percussionist). And were they named after the Cash Money Brothers from 1991 film “New Jack City”?
Another track from Hamilton songstress Jacqui Keelan Davey, this time with “Watching Me Drown”.
Maree Sheehan “Might As Well Shout”
The Kiwi Hit Disc described “Might As Well Shout” as a “fast-paced, catchy dancefloor number”. It features backing vocals from expats Mark Williams and Australian Idol vocal coach Erana Clark.
Papa “For What It’s Worth”
This is pretty much impossible to Google (it’s not a unique song title). I don’t know who Papa was, but it might be related to the record label, Papa Pacific.
Instead…
Meanwhile in the world of non-NZOA-funded videos we find “Manic (Is a State of Mind)”, the first music single from Jan Hellriegel’s second album. Filmed in Sydney, it takes place in a gloriously garishly painted art deco house (not a visual effect, the YouTube description notes!), and features a very sinister looking cafe fridge.
Jordan and the boys head down to the beach for some proto-Jack Johnson surf pop. Jordan, whose hair in this video resembles mine when I don’t straighten it, sings the song sitting on a shady beachfront porch, occasionally joined by the other Exponents. They seem to just drift in when they feel like it. But it’s just as well they do, as there are plenty of guitars that need to be strummed.
This is cut with black and white footage of the band down on the beach, distant shots of surfers riding the waves, dogs on going mental on the beach, and kids running around – all the signs of the classic Kiwi summer.
But whenever we see the band, they’re dressed in long trousers and long sleeves. This, combined with all the surfers wearing wetsuits, suggests that this very summery video was shot on a cold winter’s day. Is it a cheap attempt at a summer setting? Or maybe this sneaky seasonal set dressing is a way of creating a “summer you never meant”?
Best bit: Lion Rock reflected in the glassy water of Piha beach.
NB: Warners NZ used to host this video but the video has been since made private. However, another version of it is on YouTube but it’s been geoblocked to New Zealand (and Germany). Here’s the geoblocked version. Ask your auntie how to watch it.
The fancy NYC styles of “Too Much Violence” are a thing of the past. “Outside the Cage” gets back to low-budget, $5000 styles. According to YouTube user N0ISYLAND, the video is comprised of “Offcuts from Jeff Feuerzeig’s clip for “Too Much Violence”, Super-8 footage of NZ in the ’60s, and some new footage of [David Kilgour] and [Robert Scott] clowning around in Auckland, all hacked together by Stu Kawowski on a low budget tip…”
And indeed that’s what it is. The pair spend a lot of time mucking around hurling paint on a wall (express urself!!), before the action goes indoors and is filmed in fruity psychedlic negative.
This is a perfectly adequate Clean video. They have their fans, and it’s those fans who are quite happy to watch videos using the lazy music video trick of getting the band to hurl paint around. But they could – and have previously – made a much better video.
Previously seen as one of Moana’s glamorous Moahunters, Teremoana goes for a more casual look for her first solo single, opting for a baggy shirt and trousers as she performs the song at an outdoor concert.
The brown pride anthem (“Beautiful people – skin dark and brown”) is delivered to a large appreciative audience, cut together with shots of people out doing ordinary things, being beautiful.
To compare this with Shihad’s “Bitter” video filmed at the epic stadium experience of Big Day Out, Teremoana seems to have a better connection with her audience. We see a few New Zealanders standing with their arms folded, but there are many more who are happily dancing along.
While it’s a fairly predictable treatment for the video, it’s works. And after all of Teremoana’s work with Upper Hutt Posse and Moana, it’s cool that when she finally steps out with her own thing, she totally owns it.
Best bit: the slow-motion shot of a fisherman attending to his bait bucket.
The Big Day Out is a gift to bands. It lets them record a live video showing the band performing in front of a packed stadium. Shihad are always a massive crowd-pleaser at the Big Day Out, so it makes sense that they’d capture their 1995 performance in a music video.
The video looks like it’s been shot in such a way to avoid showing any Big Day Out branding. We never see a wide shot of the stage, and footage around the stadium is giving a choppy, black and white treatment to help draw attention away from the teens in jester hats (and indeed there’s no chance of me spotting myself aged 20).
At times there’s little sense that the performance in taking place in a stadium. They might as well be playing at the Powerstation (and, actually, that would have probably been a better location to shoot a music video).
But there is still heaps of live action. The video uses rapid cuts to disguise the live performance not matching exactly with the recorded version, but that pace matches the energy of the song.
We also see moshpit action – crowd surfing, stage diving, and a guy being pulled from the front by security. It’s like a perfect checklist of a mid-’90s music festival. Dudes, how’s the pit?
Best bit: the grungy brown filter making the sweaty teen audience at Mt Smart Stadium looking edgy and cool.
Maree is seated at a round booth at a nightclub. A man and woman sit down at the table across from her. Maree looks uncomfortable. She knows the woman. A waiter delivers a delicious fruit platter. And so the evening begins.
Other guests arrive. A woman who looks like a shave-headed Justin Bieber gives the camera a good stare, as if to preserve her Bieberesque likeness for future generations. Is Biebette there for the fruit platter? Maree simmers with the tension this situation is causing her.
A blonde-haired women appears at the table. Biebette gives Maree a goofy grin and lets Maree fondle her cigarette lighter. Suddenly a sleazy bro turns up, also smoking a cigarette. Another woman joins the table, bringing more seductive glances to drive Maree wild.
So many seductive glances! Such a tempting fruit platter!
Then finally it happens, following the rule of Chekhov’s Gun, the couple from the beginning feed each other delicious fresh fruit from the platter. For a video so packed full of bisexual desire, maybe Maree just wanted a good fresh melon.
Best bit: the highly symbolic fruit platter of desire.
Crash return with “Day at the Fair”, and it is to the credit of the director Greg Page that the video is not shot at a fair. Instead it follows a night in the life of a mannequin, going with the song’s metaphor of love being a roller coaster.
The video is – as its end credits note – made by Barbara Ward and her boyfriend Chris Knox. So as it’s a Chris Knox joint, there must be animation involved. This time the medium is claymation and we follow a little orange fellow, like a rougher, pointy-nosed 
Jordan and the boys head down to the beach for some proto-Jack Johnson surf pop. Jordan, whose hair in this video resembles mine when I don’t straighten it, sings the song sitting on a shady beachfront porch, occasionally joined by the other Exponents. They seem to just drift in when they feel like it. But it’s just as well they do, as there are plenty of guitars that need to be strummed.
The fancy NYC styles of “Too Much Violence” are a thing of the past. “Outside the Cage” gets back to low-budget, $5000 styles. According to YouTube user N0ISYLAND, the video is comprised of “Offcuts from Jeff Feuerzeig’s clip for “Too Much Violence”, Super-8 footage of NZ in the ’60s, and some new footage of [David Kilgour] and [Robert Scott] clowning around in Auckland, all hacked together by Stu Kawowski on a low budget tip…”
Previously seen as one of Moana’s glamorous Moahunters, Teremoana goes for a more casual look for her first solo single, opting for a baggy shirt and trousers as she performs the song at an outdoor concert.
The Big Day Out is a gift to bands. It lets them record a live video showing the band performing in front of a packed stadium. Shihad are always a massive crowd-pleaser at the Big Day Out, so it makes sense that they’d capture their 1995 performance in a music video.
Maree is seated at a round booth at a nightclub. A man and woman sit down at the table across from her. Maree looks uncomfortable. She knows the woman. A waiter delivers a delicious fruit platter. And so the evening begins.