Chris Stapp and Matt Heath made their name with bad taste bogan extravaganza Back of the Y. The TV series featured more than its fair share of out of control stunts. In this music video they plunge into drug inhalation, drinking while driving, and violent confrontations with the law in their familiar tongue in cheek style. The single was taken from The Hasselhoff Experiment's third and final album, Out of the Sandpit and Onto the Drive (2002). 

Director Sam Peacocke injected his love of motor racing into The Checks' first music video. Set in the 1960s, it contrasts a young Japanese driver heading out to the track with his girlfriend waiting forlornly at home. Tapping into his own racing experience, Peacocke (Manurewa) made the stylish, streamlined clip for  $30,000, filming at Hobsonville air base near Auckland. Peacocke chose two newbie actors, who "outshone all the people we auditioned from actors and model agencies". The meticulous attention to period detail includes authentic Lotus 18 1.5 litre Junior racing cars.

From Shihad’s first album Churn, the video for 'Derail' is a dark and unsettling affair, recasting everyday Kiwi pursuits in a tense, almost disturbing manner. It’s directed by ex-Supergroover Joe Fisher (now known as Joe Lonie), who marries their dissonant riffs and twisted time signatures to black and white footage of horse racing and punters at the track.  Added to the kiwiana gothic mix is some serious looking gumboot tossing, churches and religious imagery: cows and power pylons, golf, bumper boats, roller coasters and dodgems.

This follow-up to 1984 Narcs hit ‘Heart and Soul’ marked the first single off the trio’s second album. Recorded with US engineer Tim Kramer, 'Diamonds on China' got to 15 on the New Zealand charts. Influenced by Brit pop band Go West, 'Diamonds' is full of punchy guitar and synthesizers. Prolific music video director Fane Flaws showcases massed horns, street racing video games, his own distinctive illustrations, and drumsticks hitting the skins "like diamonds on china". Flaws' efforts resulted in one of his first accolades: Video of the Year at the 1985 NZ Music Awards.

The fall of the Iron Curtain was still several years away when Shona Laing wrote her first APRA Silver Scroll winner 'Soviet Snow'. The world had been "teasing at war like children" over decades of the arms race and Cold War brinksmanship and the threat of nuclear winter was very real. The video is a suitably chilly but dizzying montage that marries Russian iconography and Soviet imagery to the song's urgent synthesised beats. Laing later stripped 'Soviet Snow' of its synthpop trappings in an acoustic version on her 2007 album Pass the Whisper.

Dave Dobbyn and his DD Smash sidekick Peter "Rooda" Warren play dress-ups in this Aussie-made music video for the Kiwi classic. A skylarking Dobbyn gets to be a TV journalist, a filmmaker, and even a vicar; but it is heart-throb of the day Warren who bares his chest (and budgie-smugglers) as he is strapped into a sexy speed-racer jump suit. 80s big hair and make-up abound. What the Duran Duran-esque shenanigans have to do with the wistful sea shanty-style song is anyone's guess. Warren's model girlfriend of the time Debra Mains also makes an appearance.

Mi-Sex moved further into the futuristic sci-fi world signalled by their hit single ‘Computer Games’ with the release of their chart topping second album Space Race in 1980. The lead-off single ‘People’ emerged at a time when the world was still coming to grips with cloning, genetic engineering and test tube babies. The video showcases the band’s well honed combination of techno-pop and the more straight ahead rock’n’roll beloved of Australian pub audiences — with some visual special effects reserved for the future shock of the spoken segment.

Chris Knox's grungy collage-style clip suits this mournful song perfectly. The sequence offering multifarious images of what “turning brown” might mean — from a deep tan to race-swapping — is a particular delight. The shot of Knox's daughter Leisha as a toddler, with the scratched in message "there is always hope" gives the clip a surprisingly poignant ending. In his ScreenTalk interview for NZ On Screen, Knox recalled it was a technical problem that led to him scratching directly onto the film, in the style of his hero Len Lye.

This video certainly has an out of the box concept: cameras follow the band as they spend a day at races, gambling the money given to them by NZ On Air to make their music video. The hope is that they they will win big and be able to afford an even better clip. Cue the finale, where the band don silly costumes and let loose with a bunch of fireworks. I'm Lame was nominated for a b-net Award, and came second at the Night Vision Film Competition in Dunedin. The song appeared on both EP PEP Sounds and The Sneaks' 2007 self-titled album.

In the tradition of novelty songs, ‘Culture?’ was catchy to the point of contagion. Fuelled by carnival keyboards, it was The Knobz response to Prime Minister Rob Muldoon’s refusal to lift a 40% sales tax on recorded music (originally instituted by Labour in 1975), and Muldoon's typically blunt verdict on the cultural merits of pop music (“horrible”). The giddy, hyperactive video comes complete with Muldoon impersonator (Danny Faye), and casts the band as the song’s 'Beehive Boys'. In the backgrounder, Mike Alexander writes about his time as the band's manager.