5000 Ways to Love You – Page 74 – Exploring the world of NZ On Air music video funding

Greg Johnson “Hibiscus Song”

“Baby, how it slides in and out of you,” sings Greg. Something about a flower, yeah?

“Hibiscus Song” is like an old folk ballad given a contemporary arrangement, but it’s all the work of Greg Johnson himself. At the centre of the video is a young woman who “smelt like red geraniums, wore hibiscus in her hair”. When we meet her, she’s dramatically applying make-up, seeming startled at her reflection in the mirror.

Out in the street, Miss Hibiscus hurriedly walks, holding a violin case. While she looks like the sort of person who’d fit in with such an urban environment, she is very ill at ease here.

In the choruses, Greg Johnson sings the song against a plain black background. He fades in and out, as if he is the dream and the Hibiscus lady is real. But then she appears in the same black space with her violin. Did Greg summon her?

Back on the street, she wanders. She stands in a fountain (the old one outside the Auckland Art Gallery, I think). Guys, it’s not looking good. Greg Johnson comes to the spot to scatter some flowers. Oh no.

Both the video and the song remind me a little of Nick and Kylie’s “Where the Wild Roses Grow”. But where Nick Cave was going for a traditional ballad, the song and video for “Hibiscus Song” have a modern flavour. It’s like a folk ballad for a troubled young woman who’s come to a bad end in a big city. Yeah, take that, Nick Cave.

Best bit: the perfect lipstick application.

Director: Bruce Sheridan
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… a pinch of salt.

Garageland “Kiss It All Goodbye”

“Kiss It All Goodbye” takes inspiration from Pop Up Video, the VH1 series that combined music videos with pop facts and was insanely popular in the late ’90s. The video begins with one such ‘fact’ – “Garageland members are famous for having personalities like animals”, and the shocking revelation that bassist Mark isn’t just like a tiger, but he wears a tiger mask. Of course, today a dude in an animal mask just looks like a hipster, but kids, back in the ’90s it was really weird.

Mark wanders around Newmarket (and passes a Truetone record store), baffled by strangers’ cruel reactions to his tiger mask. Meanwhile, Jeremy is tormented by many cups of decaf as he waits in a cafe, Andrew G is a football-loving office worker, and a bound and gagged Andrew C fights to escape from a dark room.

Subtitles give us further insight into the four. Mark is very baffled; Jeremy is very tormented, Andrew G really loves football and Andrew C is trying hard to escape.

When the chorus comes along, we take a break from this chaotic world and experience Garageland performing the song in a simple, sepia-tone setting. It’s a nice break because all those subtitles and crazy adventures are a little exhausting.

The video doesn’t quite deliver on the premise. It has a good sense of humour, but it just feels like a lot of effort has been made to set up something that doesn’t really go anywhere.

The four finally reunite at Jeremy’s cafe, sharing tales of man-tiger discrimination, soccer love, daring escapes and truckloads of decaf. The video concludes and threatens “To be continued…” Oh, I hope so.

Best bit: The irate music story owner, banning man-tiger Mark for something terrible that happened “last time”.

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… they called her the wild hibiscus.

Fiona McDonald “Breathe”

Set in a spotless suburban home of the 1950s, Fiona plays a frustrated housewife – and that’s a Betty Draper level of frustration.

The problem is her husband (played by Ian Hughes, who we’ve previously seen in a Greg Johnson video and a Bike video that was also directed by Jonathan King). He just doesn’t notice her. Fiona brings him his dinner (meat and three veg) and she’s perfectly dressed – elegant hair, a fine ladysuit and pearls.

Husband continues to be uninterested in Fiona even as she drapes herself over him as he watches telly, sensually writhes on the bed as he trims his nose hairs, snuggles up next to him as he reads his Adventure Annual in bed, and erotically plays with an ice cube as he practises his golf swing. What’s a girl gotta do to get a little affection?

But in the end, she can’t take it any more. A leg of lamb, previously destined for the oven, gets a new use… as a murder weapon. And this neatly evokes the dark Roald Dahl short story “Lamb to the Slaughter”, which adds a perfect conclusion to the saga.

A few times there’s black and white footage of Fiona in the present day, a reminder that she’s not actually a frustrated housewife; she’s a pop singer. But to me, it feels like the fun that Fiona has playing the frustrated housewife – especially her hilarious efforts at bedroom seduction – reveals more about her than any moody black-and-white footage could.

Best bit: A man, a woman, an Adventure Annual – there’s only room for two.

Director: Jonathan King
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… the man-tiger and friends.

Dark Tower with Dave Dobbyn “The New Outlook”

Dark Tower team up with Dave Dobbyn, reworking the DD Smash hit “Outlook For Thursday” into a manifesto promising a new outlook for the New Zealand music industry.

The video starts with a young woman giving a weather forecast, recalling that ’90s television trend for hot chicks reading the weather. Meanwhile, the Dark Tower lads are summoned by Dave Dobbyn, who is cooler than the young ‘uns, as this subtitled dialogue demonstrates:
Dave: Now is the hour of the Tower.
Dark Tower: Yo! Yo! Yo! The OG godfather wants us to kick it. Let’s bust a move, yo! Word.

We meet two versions of Dark Tower. In one, they’re three blinged-out hip hop gangstas, surrounded by a harem of hotties, ticking all the boxes of hip hop video cliches and inventing some of their own (cask wine!). In the other, they’re three New Zealanders, casually dressed, hanging out in the bush. Does this represent the conflict Dark Tower feel, torn between being pop stars and musicians?

Both versions hang out with Dave Dobbyn – in the first, he’s dressed like a Bond villain, in the second he’s casually hanging out in the recording studio.

There’s a lot to the song and the video. It’s pretty meta, criticising bands who sample old songs while doing the same thing themselves. (“Look around – all you see is grave robbin’… to the hook of David Dobbyn.”) There’s also room for a relevant Bible verse – Matthew 16:26.

But is the conflict between the two Dark Towers resolved? Two lift doors open and each version of the group emerge, acknowledging each other before moving off in different directions. A graphic asks “What’s the ‘real’? You decide.” Whoa.

Best bit: Dave Dobbyn as the OG godfather.

Director: Marc Swadel

Next… female problems.

True Bliss “Tonight”

TrueBliss is like patient zero of the modern phenomena of reality TV music stars. TrueBliss came from Popstars which begat Australian Popstars, which begat UK Popstars, which begat Popstars: The Rivals (which begat Girls Aloud and it was good), which begat Pop Idol, which begat American Idol, which begat X Factor… and it’s just been announced that New Zealand is getting its own X Factor series in 2013.

The original Popstars was nothing like the slick talent quests we know today. It had a much lower budget, for starters – a church hall instead of the O2 Arena. Popstars was more a fly-on-the-wall doco that didn’t have two of the most vital elements of shows today – no phone vote and no Mr Nasty judge. But it was crazy fun and managed to piss people off, which is always good.

Anyway, the newly formed quintet had to release their first single. “Tonight” was penned by Anthony Ioasa of Grace but it sounds like something taken from the filing cabinet of a middle-aged man: “Tonight’s the night we made love till the eeeeend”. It’s like an older man’s idea of what a young woman should be like. This is New Zealand. We do not “make love”; we root.

The video is better than the song. It sees le Bliss hanging out together in various locations. They’re at a slumber party watching home movies of themselves, hanging out in an edgy urban alleyway, relaxing at the beach, spilling things at a cafe, running around in elegant gowns, and grappling with all sorts of hairdos and make-up, some of which were even in fashion at the time.

But in a way, it doesn’t even matter what goes on in the video. “Tonight” exists as a kitschy document of pre-millennium New Zealand. The possibilities of digital video technology were crossed with the fun yet cynical world of pop and TrueBliss were what happened. They didn’t last long, with Carly leaving in 2000 and the band dissolving soon after. In a way they were a perfect pop group, a great formation story, a couple of hit singles, a tour, and then it’s all over.

~~Best~~ Worst bit: the awfulness of Joe being excluded from the sexy hula dance.

Director: Matt Palmer
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Bonus!
Watch old episodes of “Popstars”, including an excerpt showing the making of the “Tonight” music video, thanks to NZ On Screen.
And enjoy this vintage 1999 TrueBliss fansite.

Next… just a little reminder.

Weta “Let It Go”

Like the video for “Where Have You Been”, there’s only an excerpt of “Let It Go” online. But this time we get well over a minute of footage. It’s also not the greatest quality, so pixelly that I wonder if it was lifted from an old website.

The video seems to be made with a kind of live-action stop-motion animation – or at least I’m assuming it’s stop motion and not the video quality. A small television set features broadcasting a footage of Aaron singing the song, and other footage. He also shows up holding the TV broadcasting that’s himself (meta!) and sans le telly.

Sometimes the video is set in the strange world of music videos, with strange machinery, swimming pools and flying TVs. But other times it’s recognisably Auckland, featuring the St James complex and the motorway.

Because this video is a poor quality excerpt, it’s hard to get a sense of exactly what is happening in the video as a whole. This just adds to the legend of Weta, the idea that the band had a good year or so of amazing rock before they fell apart. The video is like a glimpse inside that world, where it’s always 1999 and everything is good.

Best bit: using old TVs as floaty pool toys.

http://youtu.be/h-btckmMZu4

Director: Reuben Sutherland
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… I know this much is true.

Stellar “Violent”

There’s a crime wave in the city. Someone is stealing mirrors. Car mirrors, hand mirrors – they’re all game. What nefarious villain is behind this? It’s Boh.

Her minions deliver their latest haul. In villainess form, wearing a dark wig and light contact lenses, she looks totally different from the red-haired rock chick seen in other parts of the video. But what does this femme fatale want with all the mirrors?

It turns out she has a glue gun and precedes to glue fragments of the mirrors to the body of a nervous young man, like an R18 Good Morning craft segment.

The video, directed by Jonathan King and looking really good, teases us with this idea, spending a lot of time lingering on the band just performing the song. All is revealed at the end when the young man appears at a Stellar gig clad head to toe in mirror bits, dancing like a maniac.

The only thing left to do is borrow a gag from the Mighty Boosh and wonder if he has mirror balls.

Director: Jonathan King
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… a portable television.

Peter Stuyvesant 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.

Mary “Matt”

Girl band Mary have “Matt”, an ode to a troubled skater boy. The video feels like it’s had some money put behind it. Shot in both black and white and in colour, the video has lush footage of Auckland after dark, with Matt and his pals skating around an empty car park building. It looks good, but it feels a quite busy, a little too much going on.

We meet Matt (tall, handsome, shaved head, wallet chain; one of those guys) and his lady, a messy blonde skater chick. The video puts the girl on a train which magically manages to seem like a subway carriage, rather than Auckland’s crappy suburban trains of the ’90s. There are a lot of great shots of Auckland streets and urban areas being skated all over.

The girl and Matt seem to have a caring but troubled relationship. “When are you coming out of your hole,” the chorus asks. Matt seems like the kind of dude who’s got a lot going on in his head and while having a girlfriend is nice, other things keep distracting him. There’s a sense that his hoon along K Road isn’t so much skating as fleeing.

But it’s ok. The Mary godmothers are there for him. “Just let us in on your eternal goal,” they implore. Wouldn’t it be cool to have a girl band with sweet harmonies pop up to prod you along in times of trouble?

By the way, the YouTube uploaders wrote this: “we got paid in chocolate for our skating.but hey it was fun!”

Best bit: Matt’s carefree skate along the K Road overbridge.

Director: Matt Palmer
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Indigenous Funk Company “Take A Flight”

The IFC deliver some smooth R&B, a perfect seduction soundtrack. The group were formed by producer Richie Campbell, previous of Ardijah. And that’s about all I can find about them – a short but smooth career.

The very first beat of the song starts with a “yeah-ee-eh” that momentarily tricks my brain into thinking it’s the opening of the “Neighbours” theme tune. That’s unfortunate but the song soon leaves that behind, with a combo of smooth vocals and lightning fast rapping.

The video takes place in an old empty warehouse. Except everyone’s there through the magic of green screen. There’s no pretence that it’s anything but green screen. It’s used as a layer, with rappers and dancers fading in and out over the top.

The video is grittier than the groove the song creates. Rather than a smooth urban romance, the video makes things feel like the slightly awkward seduction efforts of young New Zealanders.

Even the dancers feel less like video booty girls and more like a couple of local fitness enthusiast girls who just happened to end up in this video. There’s odd interaction between the guys and the girls, like the guys are too cool to be smooth seduction dudes. And the two dancers really seem to really be into each other more than the boys. (This sort of confusion would never happen in a Maree Sheehan video.)

Best bit: the super low bucket hat of one of the Company. Take that, LL!

Next… he was a skater boy.