Robo love, a face flashback, the streets of Paris, greenhouse and quirk, drinking with friends, and learning to fly.
Tag: Gareth Moon
August 2009: Shihad, Tahuna Breaks, The Black Seeds, The Lookie Loos, The Naked and Famous
The fans are blown away, a sweet lullaby, the newsreel, disintegration, and cutting to the beat.
October 2007: Salmonella Dub, Tahuna Breaks, The Black Seeds, The Brunettes, The Phoenix Foundation, Tiki Taane
Sunny Vanuatu, alluvial planes, epic littering, alien love, a Hadlee shrine, and a one-man show.
Continue reading October 2007: Salmonella Dub, Tahuna Breaks, The Black Seeds, The Brunettes, The Phoenix Foundation, Tiki Taane
June 2007: Steve Abel, The Black Seeds, The Braxton Hicks, The Electric Confectionaires, The Phoenix Foundation, The Rabble, Young Sid
DeLorean drama, the Seeds on tour, loneliness, painful context, split-level adventures, and North Island gold mining history.
Continue reading June 2007: Steve Abel, The Black Seeds, The Braxton Hicks, The Electric Confectionaires, The Phoenix Foundation, The Rabble, Young Sid
Seven Suns “Dragged Along”
I found a bunch of forum comments from Seven Suns fans, raving about how great they were live. Whatever that experience was, it doesn’t come across in this video. It is so dull.
This video was another recipient of the $1500 from Positively Wellington Business for producing the video in the Wellington region. And the video is indeed filmed in a Wellington location – the Clifton Terrace car park, which runs under the elevated motorway. It could potentially be used as an edgy urban setting, but instead it looks like a big, empty concrete car park, swamping the band.
The band all look utterly bored, like they’re running through the song for the 50th time. It doesn’t help that the song is fairly sedate and at times sounds like bad Christian pop (and not all Christian pop is bad). But when it’s accompanied by visuals of a grey car park, with almost all the colour taken out of the palette, it all adds up to a massive snoozefest.
This was Seven Sun’s only NZOA video funding, but lead singer Adi Dick returned in 2007 with a much better video for a solo song.
Best bit: the buffed-over graffiti on the concrete, a ghost of an exciting past.
Director: Gareth Moon
Next… more road stories.
The Black Seeds “So True”
“So True” is a chilled out song of love, and the Black Seeds celebrate that with a Coromandel road trip. Cruising in a Holden HR (and I thank YouTube commenters for that detail) three band members, a guitar, a ukulele and a Polaroid camera cruise around the Coromandel countryside and coast.
Bret McKenzie was in the band at this stage, and he’s shown behind the wheel with the shaggiest hair ever. The trio arrive at a motorcamp and join some friends for a barbecue, further cementing the Black Seeds as a barbecue reggae band.
Then it’s time for a bit of exploring around the coast, some beach cricket, a bit of swimming, some snorkelling, and a dramatic cliff drive.
There’s a stop at a dairy that looks like some very conspicuous product placement. The dairy is covered with Tip Top ice cream branding and Bret cleanly removes the wrapper of his pineapple Fruju with a flourish. This isn’t the first time there’s been product placement in a NZOA video, but it somehow sticks out a bit too much. Also: damn, I could do with a Fruju now.
The world of “So True” is an idealised North Island New Zealand, where it’s always summer and it’s always sunny and idyllic. The video has evoked emotional comments from people, both overseas and in New Zealand, who are relishing in that cruisy loved-up summer feeling.
Best bit: the pineapple on the back shelf of the Holden.
Director: Gareth Moon
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision
Next… sock it to me.