Dub dot dash

Back to the 80s
TVOne screened a cheesy documentary last night called Relive the 80s. They'd let someone loose in their archives, and they came up with a show that tried to jam in every cheesy bit of footage they found. This made for a densely packed jumble of images that was fun to look at, but wasn't really given any social or political context - the 81 tour was in there, fleetingly. The voiceover, written by Belinda Todd and mouthed by Charlotte Dawson and her lopsided lips (what's up with that?), was try-hard clever, and the brief interview snippets were so short that they didn't add much. Cept for Tom Bailey and Alannah Currie talking about their days back in the Thompson Twins - cue live footage of them playing at Live Aid to a huge crowd. That must've been some incredible experience; I'd love to have heard something about that. The focus on over the top fashions made it seem like every one dressed like that in the 80s - it was just a small group of Auckland central nightclubbers, really (who went on to become influential fashionista like Denise and Francis World). They covered breakdancing, but made no mention of rap music arrriving here. But there was heaps of music in the show, in fact I don't think there was a single second without some background 80s tune. Still, lots of great images.

One ad they featured made me think about how far we've come. There was the 80s ad for sensible drinking - the woman and man sitting at the bar having fun, he gets drunker and drunker, and she sings "Stop making love to that bottle, baby, you should be making love to me", which was too much for some folk back then, so it was amended to "Stop making love to that bottle, baby, and go and make a cup of tea".
In the Weekend Herald's business section there was a story about Lion Red's new ad campaign, to replace their previous 'red blooded' ad, with the boys night on the town, that screened last year. Lion Red dropped that ad, after one of the actors featured went on to play a gay character in a local tv show The Strip. Groan.