Elemeno P – Page 2 – 5000 Ways to Love You

Elemeno P “Urban Getaway”

Gibbo looks like a corpse. His skin has a grey pallor, with greasy stringy hair clinging to his face. Why, he looks like someone in need of a relaxing holiday.

The song us all about feeling claustrophobic in your own life, but the video takes its cue from the wishful sunny lyrics of the chorus. It seems to be shot on one take and sees Elemeno P all in a living room of a house. The camera is located in the middle of the room and it slowly rotates around room – 11 times, to be precise. As the camera rotates, the room slowly transforms from a bleak, grey hovel filled with miserable individuals, into a bright sunny room where the band are very much enjoying themselves.

I’m going to assume the video was filmed all in one go. If that’s the case, there would have been a lot of running around behind the camera switching out bits of the grey world for the colourful world – a bleak wooden sideboard suddenly becomes a cheerful tiki bar. I imagine there would have been so much stuff happening as soon as the camera was off a particular area, with everyone on camera having to ignore the other action.

The video is directed by Greg Page, and he’s used a rotating camera concept couple of times before. Once with an early Elemeno P video (“Nirvana”) and also with the Datsuns’ “Super Gyration”.

Ignoring the novelty of the concept, the video manages to keep the bittersweet flavour of the song. These are, after all, people having a tropical holiday in the living room of their flat, which isn’t actually all that flash.

Best bit: Lani’s book of exotic parrots.

Director: Greg Page
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… hydroslide fun time.

Elemeno P “Verona”

For the “Verona” video, director Greg Page put Elemeno P in an industrial freezer. Why? As he explained to NZ On Screen, “There was no legitimate reason for shooting in a freezer – I just enjoy torturing the bands I work with.” Rock on.

I’m sure they could have shot the video at the actual Verona cafe (it was also the setting of Fur Patrol’s “Lydia” video), but by using a much less predictable setting, the video is a lot more interesting than if we just saw the band playing in a bar.

So there are the band playing in an actual working freezer. It’s so cold their breathe is visible, but they’re all playing in t-shirts. Because it’s all bloody freezing, there’s a kind of tension to band’s performance in the video. It’s like they’re putting everything into rocking out but at the same time they’d also like to get out of there and into the loving embrace of room temperature air.

Because the freezer is relatively small, the band are shot individually. But the editing cleverly makes it feel like they’re all in there together, united in ice.

The freezer setting is a bit gimmicky, but the band’s performances and the cool-as cinematography make the video more than just a standard torture-the-band vid.

Best bit: the video starts with a bit of “Fast Times in Tahoe” and the lyrics “playing in the snow”. Lol.

Note: NZ On Screen has lots of behind-the-scenes stories, both on the video page and in this interview with Greg Page.

Director: Greg Page
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… classroom discipline.

Elemeno P “Everyday’s a Saturday”

This really kicked off the Elemeno P that would soon become a beloved live band. Lani, previously in Foamy Ed, had joined the group on bass, with the bonus being that she could sing, adding extra dimension to their songs. Also – Lani has the best hair.

“Everyday’s a Saturday” is pretty much an optimistic take on the miserabilistic anthem “Everyday is like Sunday” – the feeling when every day feels really awesome. The lyrics are more about how being in love makes everything feel perfect, but the video takes a more literal interpretation.

Like the “Fast Times in Tahoe” video, the band are again to be found in luxury surroundings. But this time they’re playing themselves – regular Elemeno P who just happen to be larging it in a fancy St Mary’s house overlooking Waitemata Harbour. It’s good-time, nice-guys fun band Elemeno P – much more likeable than the country club toffs of “Tahoe”.

The video opens with the band lounging around the pool, before heading into the kitchen for a hearty breakfast of Elemeno P-branded food (even though Weet-bix gets a direct mention in the lyrics), while a newspaper headline proclaims “Elemeno P rise to stardom”.

Then it’s time for a party, with the house guests getting a wrist stamp at the door. The video really dwells on the wrist-stamping scene, as if they’d spent so much effort setting it all up, they didn’t want to waste any of the shots. Hey guys, the drummer is stamping the wrists of the partygoers. Like at a gig. Lol.

The day (and the video) ends with a poolside concert, with all the wrist-stamped punters rocking out and not falling in the pool. But the big question is what will the next day be like? Will it be a Groundhog Day existence, the band forever doomed to live every day in their party house of Weetbix and wrist stamps?

Best bit: Lani’s very glam return from the shops, assisted by two shirtless beefcake helpers.

Director: Rachel Davies
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… a band’s very public breakdown.

Elemeno P “Nirvana”

I like a good low-budget video. Here’s Elemeno P slowly establishing themselves as a party punk group, with their ode to Nirvana and favourite their love of music.. Original bassist Jules was making his final appearance in the band, ready to be replaced by Lani from Foamy Ed.

The video puts the band in a room divided into four parts – red, blue, green and yellow, for each of the band remembers. They are identified by Scrabble tiles spelling out their names. I bet you’re wondering, so I’ve tallied up the scores: Gibbo (10) – two more points than “Dave”, Scotty (11), Jules (12) and Justyn (16). Justyn gets lucky with both the J (8) and Y (4) in his name. The band name, which spins around on a giant turntable in the centre of the room, is worth only 12 points.

The video is directed by Greg Page, which I had suspected by the rockin’ camera work. But then this little graphic kept popping up, a “Rock-o-meter” which indicates when the band is rocking really hard. It just seems like a Greg Page kind of thing.

With the group’s previous video, “Fast Times in Tahoe” putting them in a sedate country club, this is the video that’s a chance to show the band’s ability to really rock out. You know, they can play their instruments and all. Gibbo especially goes for it, putting on an energetic display in his monochrome Union Jack jumper, singing into one of four microphones.

But what impresses me most is that the lyric “Did I ever mention you’d look wicked in my video?” is not used as a cue to put a cute girl in the video. So in a way, the listener can imagine that she (or he) is the one who would look wicked in the video. With “Nirvana”, Elemeno P established themselves as highly entertaining music dorks.

Best bit: Justyn’s mighty rock poses.

Director: Greg Page

Next… crossword cheating never pays.

Elemeno P “Fast Times In Tahoe”

I don’t know if I can accurately describe how weird Elemeno P seemed when this video came out. Suddenly there’s this punk-pop group with a bit of a Weezer sound. The band was a couple of big hairy dudes, a really good looking frontman who did the Sprechgesang sing-speaking thing with a mix of American and New Zealand accents, and the other guy who was soon to be replaced by bassist Lani from Foamy Ed. And they had this song about having relation issues while on holiday at an American ski resort. They weren’t quite serious but they definitely weren’t a comedy band either. They were… Elemeno P. I think they invented their own genre.

“Fast Times at Tahoe” had the backing of Universal Records behind it, which means it looks a bit slicker than your average punk-pop video. The video opens with a Rolls Royce rolling through the guilded gates of the “Elemeno P Country Club”. We meet the band members dressed preppy style, strolling around the green grounds, each with an attractive young lady at their side.

The group have a round of golf, then retire to the country club lounge where the boys entertain the girls with a singsong, accompanied by an acoustic guitar and a tambourine. The girls are charmed by these talented young men, suggesting the fast times will keep going into the night.

It’s an interesting choice of style for a debut video. Listening to the music, this is clearly a band who are capable of rocking out (and that’s something that was featured in a lot of their subsequent videos), but for this one they’re doing preppie realness – about as opposite as you can get from the actual Elemeno P.

Best bit: Gibbo takes a phone call on a giant brick-style cellphone.

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… a maths lesson.