This is an HDU video. It starts with a circle. It’s shot in black and white and we’re not looking at anything in particular. Suddenly a curtain draws back and we’re on stage with HDU, looking at the band through a fisheye lens.
The stage is draped with white, which gives the impression that they’re performing in a marquee tent, which in turn makes me think of HDU being the entertainment at a wedding. And actually, that would be quite cool. It would be one way of getting rid of your drunk auntie, anyway.
The camera spends a lot of time lingering on the drummer, then well after a minute it moves onto the guitarist, then over for some bass and, oh, go on, some vocals too. Occasionally there’s a hint of an audience, but in my experience of the world of post-rock, bands never involve the audience like traditional rock groups do. So it could actually just be a random group of people lingering off to the side (wedding guests?), rather than fans of HDU.
Things end with a bright burst of light, then a lightbulb switches off. And, ok, that’s how an HDU video ends. Choice.
Note: Roger Shepherd listed “Schallblüte” as one of his five favourite Flying Nun videos, as part of the Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision’s celebration of Flying Nun’s 30th anniversary.
Best bit: the Playboy bunny sticker at the bottom of the bass guitar.
Director: Nigel Bunn
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision
Next… it’s smooth time.
“Gone” was the first single off Garageland’s final album “Scorpio Righting”. And while they never quite reached the levels of international success they were striving for, they could at least pretend. The “Gone” video is set in an alternate reality where Garageland are big in Asia.
Deluxe Boy was an earlier incarnation of the band that was to become known as Dukes. “Shadowboxer” was their only NZ On Air funded video. It’s a slick track, reminiscent of mid-’90s Britpop with some turn-of-the-millennium acoustic guitar thrown in, along with slightly disturbing lyrics.
When this video first came out, I saw a making-of item on some youth TV show. This is what I remember: it was filmed at the Mandalay in Auckland, and the big crowd up on the balcony was achieved through digital copy and paste.
At last – an animated music video that doesn’t look like it was abandoned halfway through or done by someone learning the ropes. “Come On” has a Sims style of animation and we meet our hero in his 3D house, getting ready for a night out. This leads him to a nightclub, where he pulls out his fresh Michael Jackson moves, and is promptly ignored by the bustling dancefloor.
This is a rather unusual video. We last saw She’s Insane in 1999. They have a late ’90s alterno pop sound, like a local Veruca Salt. Somehow by 2000 it’s all starting to sound a bit dated, a bit too thin and tweet compared to the fleshier rock sound that was making itself known.
At the heart of the “She’s Jive” video is a cautionary take about drugs. But the Pluto lads dress it up with a kind of Monty Python style humour. A lesson is a lot more palatable when there are lolz involved.
Before he was revealed to be the Ferndale Strangler on “Shortland Street”, Johnny Barker was the lead singer of Jester who had the sweet song “Fries with That”.
The “Saboteur” vid is a Tarantino-inspired outing, set in central Wellington. The action starts at the Marksman Motor Inn (just across the road from the Basin Reserve), with DJ Raw collecting King Kapisi for a gig. They cruise around Wellington in a vintage car where Kapisi takes a call on a chunky old Ericsson cellphone (but not old enough to be vintage). On the other end is Dave Fane, playing the “Samoan bar manager”, who rants at the “Samoan emcee” and “Samoan turntablist” (everyone in this video gets labelled). The duo arrive at Bar Bodega in its old location, before it was shuffled along Willis Street to make way for the bypass.