Friday Vids Are Once Again Antipodean
Now that the whole left-blogohoopdy has gone YouTube crazy, we can post videos with the weighty gravitas of an old bewhiskered grandsire banging his cane on the dinner table. Or some sentence like that; I’m not really in love with the ‘bewhiskered grandsire’ image.
Might as well lead off with the holy grail of Anzac vids. Mi-Sex’s ‘Computer Games’ was a very minor hit in the US for about 3 1/2 days in 1980, but was pretty much a blockbuster in Australia and New Zealand. The band never quite got it together for a followup single, and indeed, their whole thing was basically a ripoff of early Ultravox. But that oughtn’t take away from the pleasure. Interesting things to watch for include the somewhat grizzled bar-band aspect of the band members (they were a bar band before hitting the new wave tip), the vintage video game graphics, the nice guitars that everyone had back then (the gold-top Les Paul with mini humbuckers is super-sweet), and the really toothesomely wonderful film stock, lighting, and editing, expecially in the computer-lab segments. This is a well-made video! Someone did a really good job.
What else we got here? Let’s see….
Oh.
This is just a great little song. It’s sort of a canned ‘great song’ by a band aware of their collegiate-precociousness, and the lead singer is way too indie-attractive to take totally seriously. But isn’t this a great song? That bass she’s playing is a Gibson Grabber or Ripper (they’re the same instrument except for the pickups). Some of them are very heavy and have an extremely nice, deep, confident grand-piano tone, while others, somehow, are feather-light and don’t sound noteworthy at all. I think that’s one of the light ones by the way it hangs. Of course you can never assume with a video that they played the same instruments in the studio. But it sounds like a lightweight Grabber/Ripper in the song. You know, I could just go on about this… But you watch the video and it’s like, ‘Oh look. Those are my friends. Except they wear more sweaters because they’re in New Zealand. Hello friends!’
Split Enz had a whole other career before they started to have hits. Dadaist music-hall. Serious, yo. Blago-bung, blago-bung, hot-cha-cha. Basswatch: That’s a Rickenbacker 4001 or 4003 (identical except for the electronics). You used to have to take out a capacitor to make them sound good, and install different pickups if you were really ambitious. Lemmy Kilmister stuck a Bartolini pickup in his. Ka-whong! Oh yes, they sound so good when you fix them up.
Not quite “message to my girl” that last one.
Posts like these make me feel old, and I when I feel old, my Althouse-Bartowe Syndrome starts acting up.
…*ahem*…I haven’t heard any good music since Alphaville…
Mal- hahaha.
Were you cruying your eyes out at high school graduation to….wait for it…..”Big in Japan”?
Fuckin’ ‘ell. That Split Enz thing is disturbing. I’m not sure I wanted to see that.
When would that be? ’78? ’79? Neil Finn must have been, what, 15?
Were you cruying your eyes out at high school graduation to….wait for it…..�Big in Japan�?
…*SOB!!!*
When would that be? ‘78? ‘79? Neil Finn must have been, what, 15?
The clip is from ’77. They’d been around a bit before that, but the Finn Brothers were still pretty young. They were probably in their early 20s there…
Wow. Quite a difference between that and Crowded “Made for your Prom” House. Spooky.
Nobody, if you thought that was disturbing, you should probably avoid watching the video of Lovey Dovey.
Just think – less than 20 years later they were performing their songs with the NZ Symphony Orchestra.
New Zealanders are so much fun.
Wow. I loved both Split Enz songs featured here.
Thanks!
Thank God for the NZlanders and the Aussies. The Finns, Hoodoo Gurus, the Church, the Go Betweens, …
Anyone remember the Triffids?
The Verlaines! You magnificent bastard!
The Divinyls , Men at Work, Cold Chisel, Australian Crawl, Mental as Anything…ahh, 1980’s Aussie pop music…
If you want some real fun, go search youtube for Radio Birdman and watch “New Race.”
That bass she’s playing is a Gibson Grabber or Ripper (they’re the same instrument except for the pickups).
Sadly, No! The Grabber has a different heastock; the Ripper is the traditional Gibson shape, the Grabber is a triangle. Easiest way to tell them apart. I had a Ripper and in one of the biggest bonehead moves of my life, I traded it away for a Rickenbacker 4001 (damn you Chris Squire, damn you all to hell for your pernicious influence!). Great bass guitar.
For prime Ripper sounds, Greg Lake on ELP’s Welcome Back My Friends… or Krist Novaselic on Nirvana songs like In Bloom are a good place to start. Gearheads rule.
The now-obligatory female bassist in The Verlaines vid is playing a Ripper. Dig the drummer who got rid of his toms in favor of Roto-Toms, another great New Wave instrument cliche.
Split Enz were fantastic, though it’s not surprising that the haircuts they got invited a lot of ridicule. It was funny in ca. 1980 to see bands that had been metal or bluesy hard rock jump on the new wave bandwagon. The long hair of the rhythm guitarist was always a giveaway. There was a fine local band here in Los Angeles called Mannikin that was sort of neo-prog (lots of Genesis and Yes references without the complex song structures) that, in the blink of an eye at a gig me and some friends went to, had transformed themselves in to a new wave act: white shirts with geometric patterns on them, no flares in the bright red pants, the haircuts that had all the hair on one side etc. It was sad.
If you want some real fun, go search youtube for Radio Birdman and watch “New Race.�
Got it saved for future episodes. Yah-ho!
Sadly, No! The Grabber has a different heastock; the Ripper is the traditional Gibson shape, the Grabber is a triangle. Easiest way to tell them apart.
Ah, that’s true. The Grabber has the Flying-V headstock.
You can also see the fixed pickups in the video, as opposed to the Grabber’s funny slidey pickup thing.
Anyone remember the Triffids?
Saw their last ever show, actually, before they broke up. Killer band. Funnily enough, about a year and a half ago they reformed for a one-off gig at The Corner in Richmond.
Still as good as ever.
Any of you guys get into the Lime Spiders? THE Aussie surf/punk/60’s-influenced band from the 80’s. Thumping stuff – see if you can get hold of the single or video of ‘Slave Girl’…
My bonehead move was to sell off my Rickenbacker 4001, 22 years ago–that and my knock-off MiniMoog (manufactured by Realistic, sold through Radio Shack)…What an ass I am…(But I’ve since indulged another old fantasy, & began last year to play the Chapman Stick…)