Polly Prior was a Wellington-based singer-songwriter and the video for “Got Me On My Knees” was another recipient of the $1500 from Positively Wellington Business for producing the video in the Wellington region.
The video starts with an intriguing premise. Polly is sitting on the roof of an old closed-down rural petrol station. She sees something coming and springs into action with her team, quickly transforming the petrol station into an open, inviting business offering “half price gas”. It’s surely a trap, like something from The Twilight Zone – but who is being trapped, and why?
It’s a middle-aged man in a fancy car. Who is he? A dad? A former lover? A boss? He’s lured into the servo’s ladies’ loos and locked in, giving Polly the chance to get in his car and go for a hoon.
And that’s it. She safely brings the car back, the man is freed from the toilet, and Polly and her gang walk away. It seems like a lot of effort to go to in order to have a ride in a fancy car.
Other videos with the $1500 Wellington grant have gone to great effort to not feature Wellington in their videos, but this is the first one where it is recognisably set in the Wellington region. Perhaps the elaborate carjacking was just done to enjoy Wellington’s coastal scenery.
Best bit: when the man is lured to the women’s toilet because plot.
First, a description from the video’s director, Ivan Slavov, over at Amplifier:
“You know what it really is? It’s an anti-video. It’s a non-performance performance video. It’s Elvis Presley, lounge, Pink Flamingos. It’s Vegas. It’s nearly reality TV, but a music video. Honesty is something that New Zealand can sell to the world and this song has honesty in bucket loads.”
I read that and I thought, wow, that video sounds amazing. And then I watched it. This is what happens: the group play the song in a black studio. And that’s about it. The only other things of note: a film of an earlier performance is projected on the band, and sometimes graphics of song lyrics song float across the screen. There is no Elvisness.
The thing is, “Good to See You Again” is a really sweet folky love song. There is no loungey swagger to it, so it gets a bit lost amongst the attempted sophistication and swagger of the video.
To me, a song like this is about daylight and outdoors, not a shadowy Vegas world. The honesty might be there in the performance, but the setting is keeping it hidden.
Best bit: lead singer Kelly Horgan photographs rather well.
The Sky Tower has featured in music videos since Rikki Morris performed in front of the under-construction concrete pillar in 1995. It mainly shows up in the background of an Auckland cityscape shot, but never before has it been such a major part of the music video like it is in “Like This”.
The video opens with Base FM DJ Jason Eli giving a cool introduction to the song, then we find Definite & Bling on the streets of Auckland central at night.
Wherever they are, the Sky Tower is somewhere in the shot. Sometimes its a distant speck of light, other times they’re standing right at its base. There’s no clue in the lyrics why the Sky Tower should play such a big part in the video (it’s a generic good-time hip hop song). Given that no other humans can be seen on the empty streets of Auckland where Definite & Bling roam, maybe it’s just a declaration that they, along with the Sky Tower, own the town.
At the end of the video they leave the Sky Tower and venture indoors to a hip hop club where they rock the house. Proof, perhaps, that the lords of the Sky Tower can also mingle with the masses.
Best bit: the girl in the club who has a very concerned look on her face.
Katchafire’s sauciest song opens with the titular rude girl leaving her inner-city apartment (or office?) and taking a shortcut through a Chinese restaurant downstairs to an alleyway out the back of a building, where a taxi awaits. None of these locations are faked – there is indeed a Chinese restaurant on Wyndham Street that leads through to Durham Lane. Though it would have been whole lot easier if she’d got the taxi to come around to the front entrance.
The taxi takes a surreal journey through a warehouse, lit in neon, with various members of Katchafire doing unusual things. It’s like a Levi’s ad from the ’90s. Rude girl isn’t bothered. She’s probably seen it all before.
The taxi takes her to Katchafire playing at a makeshift bar in the middle of an otherwise empty warehouse. Partying ensures. The next morning the rude girl gets into the taxi. NZ On Screen notes that “its kooky hydraulic suspension is utilized to rude effect”, which is a polite way of saying that it implies that the taxi is getting an erection, as taxis do.
The video does all look really stylish, and the whole experience has a dreamlike feel. It’s something that Katchafire’s previous videos have never managed, despite it really suiting the laidback style of their music. The video was rated #83 in the Film Archive’s poll of the top 100 New Zealand music videos.
Best bit: the car with an “APPLAUSE” sign where a “TAXI” sign would normally be.
Goodnight Nurse become “Goodnight Nerd”, and a comedy nerd voice kicks off the video by saying “This is gonna be totally awesome!” followed by comedy nerd guffaws. The video is set in bleak suburban Henderson – a location well suited to the punk-pop of Goodnight Nurse, but less to the 1950s nerd stereotype.
The song is about a guy who is slowly realising that his girlfriend is seeing other guys, so our nerd hero (played by Grammy-award-winning songwriter Joel Little) is suitable nuts over a girl in the video.
The lyrics attempt to slut-shame the girl (“Whats it like being such a ho? What are they gonna think of you when theres no one you haven’t screwed?”) but she’s shown having a (paddling) pool party with a few of her dude friends who then throw the nerd in the pool. But there’s a happy ending – the nerd finds a cute puppy to love.
This is another of those videos that aren’t anything special, but aren’t terrible either. It’s just an adequate visual depiction of the song. And that’s about the minimum you’d want in a music video.
Best bit: the nerd’s grandpops, cheering on his nerdy grandson.
The video starts off ok and everything is fine with this chilled out tale of a lost love. There’s Bennett hanging out by the pool at the Hilton in Auckland, sometimes accompanied by the girl he’s saying goodbye to.
But then Bennett sings, “Now it’s too late for excuses. You make me abusive, make me want to lose it”, which is accompanied by footage of Bennett pummelling a punching bag.
There are two ways of looking at this. Either Bennett is getting into peak physical condition so when he comes to being abusive, he’ll be in top form. And that’s awful. Or he’s just working out his frustrations with the punching bag. It’s not clear which is the case, so the video ends up having a really sinister undertone to it.
The rest of the video is Bennett telling his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend why they have to break up at various scenic points around central Auckland. It seems a no-brainer – she’s cheating on him, he has anger management issues. They’d both seem a lot happier without the other in their life.
Best bit: the distant cityscape of St Mary’s bay with the setting sun behind it.
A lot of Katchafire’s previous videos have involved the band playing at some sort of concert, but this video goes a step further and is a recording of an actual live performance.
It all looks like a pretty standard Katchafire show, with no rockstar (reggaestar?) antics wheeled out for the camera. And it’s so good to see a real audience in a performance music video. The enthusiastic crowd dance and cheer, seemingly of their own accord.
The song takes a while to get going. In this live version, the bass doesn’t kick in until almost two minutes into the song. Before that happens, the build-up feels like one big tease of EDM proportions.
Strangely enough, throughout the performance we can hear the constant chatter of the crowd. Is this normal at a Katchafire concert? Because it seems to me if you’re talking loud enough to be heard over the music, then you’re probably not really paying all that much attention to the music.
It ends up being a fairly ordinary documentary of Katchafire playing a live show in 2004. Maybe that’s the problem. To be in the crowd, dancing along with your friends with your favourite band would be a great experience. But somehow these emotions don’t translate so well to the screen.
Best bit: the positioning of the NZ On Air logo at the end of a beam of light.
After a long, successful run with the Exponents, Jordan Luck went solo, accompanied by his new backing band called Luck. “Here They Come, There They Go” was his only solo video to receive NZOA funding.
The video for his first single attempts to delve inside the subconsciousness of Jordan, starting with the singer asleep in bed, having a dream involving two bikini-wearing chicks who also have the head of a fish. I dunno. I just always imagined Jordan Luck’s dreams would be a bit more interesting than femme-fish erotica.
Fortunately real life proves to be more interesting. He takes a shower then sits down to enjoy a nice full English cafe breakfast, only for the sossies and to transform into chocolate fish and other oceanic delights. Oh, and the waitress has a fish head.
Much of the video takes place on a double-decker bus, full of Jordan’s band (including serial session bass player Mareea Paterson) and various freaky friends. There’s also a bit of action around Western Springs, with even yet still more fish-headed people and some punks feeding jelly worm sweets to the ducks.
The song has a fun singalong chorus and the video joins in with all the energy of that. Even when Exponents videos were being lively, there was always a seriousness to them. Jordan’s solo video just gets down and has a great time.
Best bit: the throwback to the gold commedia dell’arte mask originally seen in the Exponents “House of Love” video.
The video opens with Danny Watson. Forget the distant future where Goodnight Nurse’s lead singer wins a Grammy. All that matters it that it’s 2004 and Danny Watson is in the “Taking Over” music video.
At the peak of his ponytail phase, he plays a suburban dad who’s off for a weekend away with the suburban mum. They leave their teenage daughter home alone. Will she enjoy a quiet weekend? Of course not. Her punk-arse mates in Goodnight Nurse will come over and throw a massive party.
Soon the band set up and a large number of partygoers show up at the door, including a pizza guy, nurses, a mime artist, and Martyn “Bomber” Bradbury. Yeah, pretty much everything you need for a bangin’ time.
Goodnight Nurse prove themselves capable of rocking the house, and it’s perhaps more effective to have a small living room full of people rocking to some punk-pop, rather than trying to fake it with an actual performance venue.
The music video based around a crazy house party is nothing new (Loves Ugly Children used the concept for “Sixpack”), but the trope pretty much demands some sort of payoff at the end. But disappointingly, we don’t get a return visit from Danny Watson. Instead there’s a generic morning-after shot involving one of the partygoers sneaking out. The only way that could be more boring is if we were shown the remaining party guests cleaning up.
Best bit: the awkward camera angle that makes Danny Watson’s daughter look more than a head taller than her him.
“What You Owe” was the third single by Rockquest winners The Have. The group were one of five New Zealand acts to perform at South by Southwest in 2004, with “What You Owe” being included in a best of SXSW CD included with UK music industry publication Music Week.
Director: Adam Jones
February 2004
Falter “Fear Of Heights”
Christchurch punk-pop band Falter, the 2003 Rockquest winners, have their second single “Fear of Heights”. The single was recorded at York Street Studios as part of their Rockquest prize package.
The saga of the missing video for Crumb’s song “Got It All” has the best story. Basically, the band had agreed to work with a director who was planning an ambitious semi-animated video. It involved something like the lead singer performing at a gig, seeing a mysterious girl who zaps him and he’s sucked into a cartoon world. The production was all going well until the band saw the finished product. It was terrible. No one was happy. The label refused to pay and the video never saw the light of day. No known copy of it exists, just some raw footage and a few stills. One can only hope that some day “Got It All” will surface in all its glory.
Dimmer “Case”
“Case” is the final video from Dimmer’s second album “You’ve Got to Hear the Music”. It’s one of those great Dimmer tracks that sounds like the soundtrack to the best/worst weekend. The video used to be hosted at Amplifier and a lone screenshot is all that remains.
Gramsci get gruntier with the very röck “Recovery”. 2004 feels like the tail end of the early ’00s rock revival. It will be interesting to see how much rock there is in the years to come.
Lucid 3’s song “Pitch Jumping” is their most popular track on Spotify, so it’s sad the video isn’t available anywhere. It’s a typically laid-back Lucid 3 track, with some cool organ playing.
The Have’s song “Monday Through Friday” is another track that might not have actually had a video made, but the Rockquest winners were keeping busy and have more funding to come.
The Heavy Jones Trio song “Free” was their second funded video and the first single off their debut album. Director Ivan Slavov vaguely but intriguingly noted that the band “gave us freedom of expression which lets us do our job.”
Niki Ahu won a Mai FM talent quest and had her single “Nobody Knows” produced by UK producer Colin Emmanuel. The Kiwi Hit Disk quoted Niki describing the song as “deep, grunty and heartfelt.”
Strawpeople “Love My Way”
“Love My Way” was the Strawpeople’s penultimate NZ On Air funded video, another track fro their final studio album Count Backwards from 10. The song had vocals from Leza Corban.
“Homeland” was the follow-up single from No Artificial Flavours, but also their final NZ On Air funded video – though I’m not actually sure if a video was made. There was talk of an album, but that doesn’t seem to have happened. But I found a 2009 profile of frontman Taaz where there’s mention of new music.
Salisha Taylor “I Saw An Angel”
Young singer Salisha Taylor had her debut single “I Saw An Angel”. There’s little trace of her online, but I found a post on the soc.culture.new-zealand newsgroup where an enthusiastic member of her team described her as “a real diva but she still replies to all her fan mail.” This prompted someone to cruelly reply: “It’s good to see New Zealand music in the international spotlight. It’s a shame its shit New Zealand music.”
48May had funding for their song “Spinning Around”. There’s no sign of the video, but instead here’s “Into the Sun”. It seems to have been made around the same time and includes outtakes from “Home By 2”, as well as ever reliable live footage.
Red Drum “Resurrect Jim”
Red Drum was a rock band fronted by Garageland frontman Jeremy Eade and “Resurrect Jim” was their funded song. A 2003 blog from Arch Hill Recordings mentions the production of a Red Drum song called “No Cross in the Crossroads”, but there’s no sign of that either.
This month’s consolation video is Steriogram’s lively “Walkie Talkie Man”, directed by the perpetually creative French director Michel Gondry, far removed from the world of NZOA. By the mid 2000s Monsieur Gondry was well established as one of the cool-dude video directors, so he was the go-to guy for Capitol Records when they needed an impressive music video to attempt to launch Steriogram in America. The stop-motion-animated woolly world was created by production designer Lauri Faggioni and her team of knitters. (This is also a good enough place to link to Gondry’s enigmatic video for “Sugar Water” by Cibo Matto, one of my favourite videos ever.) Seeing a big budget video like this makes all the New Zealand videos set on beaches seem like roughly made home movies (and in some cases that’s just what they were). Sometimes it’s just nice to revel in the world of the fancy international music video in all its glory. (Director: Michel Gondry; Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision)
Hey, this is the halfway point!
In almost three years, I’ve reviewed 777 videos, which is quite a lot, really. There are also 350 videos that aren’t currently available online (like the ones above), though there are definitely more videos available from the mid 2000s than there were from the early ’90s. And 57 previously awol videos have since turned up online, which is splendid. I just need to get around to catching up with those ones.
When I started 5000 Ways, I didn’t have a specific end date in mind, but I realised that I don’t want to do it forever (oh God). So I’ve decided that a good enough end goal is June 2011, the final funding round of $5000 grants before that was replaced with the current Making Tracks scheme. I’ve roughly calculated how long it’s going to take to complete it and I will reveal this: it’s going to take a bit longer than three years. It’s ok. It’s not like I have anything better to do.
The one thing this project has done is completely kill the joy of nostalgia for me. When I look at a video from the olden times, it’s like I’m seeing it how I saw it back then. And when I’m not watching old music videos, I only listen to contemporary music. Anything older than five years just makes me feel depressed. Yay.
Anyway. This is still loads of fun. Most videos are a pleasure to watch and there’s a lot of good stuff out there. The only ones I have trouble with are ones that are just really boring – because no one deliberately sets out to make a boring video. But at least now when I come across a difficult video, I can at least console myself that I’m over the hump.
Ok, on we go. Here’s a video right from the beginning, “The Beautiful Things” by the Front Lawn one of the first three to be funded.
Polly Prior was a Wellington-based singer-songwriter and the video for “Got Me On My Knees” was another recipient of the $1500 from Positively Wellington Business for producing the video in the Wellington region.
First, a description from the video’s director, Ivan Slavov, over at Amplifier:
The Sky Tower has featured in music videos since 
Katchafire’s sauciest song opens with the titular rude girl leaving her inner-city apartment (or office?) and taking a shortcut through a Chinese restaurant downstairs to an alleyway out the back of a building, where a taxi awaits. None of these locations are faked – there is indeed a Chinese restaurant on Wyndham Street that leads through to Durham Lane. Though it would have been whole lot easier if she’d got the taxi to come around to the front entrance.
Goodnight Nurse become “Goodnight Nerd”, and a comedy nerd voice kicks off the video by saying “This is gonna be totally awesome!” followed by comedy nerd guffaws. The video is set in bleak suburban Henderson – a location well suited to the punk-pop of Goodnight Nurse, but less to the 1950s nerd stereotype.
A lot of Katchafire’s previous videos have involved the band playing at some sort of concert, but this video goes a step further and is a recording of an actual live performance.
After a long, successful run with 
The video opens with Danny Watson. Forget the distant future where Goodnight Nurse’s lead singer wins a Grammy. All that matters it that it’s 2004 and Danny Watson is in the “Taking Over” music video.
