“I’m as blue as a new tattoo...since I lost you” sings Graham Brazier on this first single from Hello Sailor’s 1994 comeback The Album. Loss is leavened by the harmonica and guitar of the band’s energetic brand of pub rock. In the black and white music video they cruise around in a Chevrolet, intercut with Auckland street scenes and a young woman in a leather bustier walking her dog. ‘New Tattoo’ peaked at five in October 1994, the band's highest chart placing. In a 2013 AudioCulture profile, Murray Cammick rated it "a strong addition" to the Hello Sailor canon.

Chosen as the theme tune of Outrageous Fortune spinoff Westside roughly four decades after it was first performed, this guitar and sax-driven rocker appeared on the first album by the legendary, on again off again Hello Sailor. Taken from music show Ready to Roll, this performance sees Brazier and band talking tough in leather about danger on the streets, and "nights like a razor blade". Harry Lyon snarls over his red guitar, Graham Brazier plays a saxophone with a price tag on it, and Dave McArtney adopts classic bored rocker pose.  

'Lyin' in the Sand' closed Hello Sailor's self-titled debut album in 1977, the song's languid South Seas vibe providing respite after 'Gutter Black' and various guitars. Inspired by a spontaneous South Pacific parody from vocalist Graham Brazier one night, it was written by guitarist Harry Lyon after observing how Takapuna's smart set took their beach for granted. TVNZ filmed the band playing live in a Christchurch studio in 1978, just before the band set off to try to make it in LA. Lyon sings, so Brazier is absent; drummer Ricky Ball's hula confirms that the band’s tongue was in its chic.

This song is taken from the only new album released in the 1990s by Kiwi music legends Hello Sailor. In an AudioCulture profile of the band, writer Murray Cammick praised the Dave McArtney-penned track as one of two strong additions to the Hello Sailor canon (alongside song 'New Tattoo', also from 1994). The music video features the band playing (on a Ponsonby street, in a derelict building) intercut with archive clips (famous sporting moments, returned servicemen, Edmund Hillary, hikoi, the Beatles tour), echoing the song’s lyrical themes of waning memories and nostalgia.

Hello Sailor perform the classic single from their debut album, for TVNZ's cameras. 'Gutter Black' features what composer Dave McArtney called the band’s trademark “whiteman’s attempt to play that ska rocksteady beat” — plus the distinctive sound of amped-up drums and handclaps. 'The song was originally titled 'Sickness Benefit', with lyrics mentioning “dole bludgers living in Ponsonby” —  as revealed on a 1996 greatest hits compilation. Reconstituted as 'Gutter Black', the song took on a new lease of life as the opening theme for TV's Outrageous Fortune. 

This performance by Hello Sailor was recorded by TVNZ in Christchurch, at the Civic Theatre in Manchester Street. Singer Graham Brazier (who passed away in September 2015) is said to have written the classic song about love, destruction and hurt in 15 minutes. It was a last minute addition to the band’s debut album (and their second Top 20 single of 1977, reaching number 13). 'Blue Lady' was later considered as a possible theme song for an Australian police show. It would have been a strange choice: this Blue Lady came from the wrong side of the tracks. It was junkie slang for a hypodermic syringe. 

Coup D'Etat were a short-lived band featuring Harry Lyon (during a Hello Sailor sabbatical) and Jan Preston (from travelling theatre act Red Mole). The band's second single is an ode to "the dangers of having too much fun". The bright, breezy number was written by Lyon, with the familiar Ponsonby reggae beat favoured by Hello Sailor. Peaking at nine on the charts, it won Best Single at the 1981 NZ Music Awards. The pedestrians in Leon Narbey’s video are near Auckland's Civic Theatre on Queen Street. In the same period, Narbey shot the short film of the same name.

After four years as part of Hello Sailor, guitarist Dave McArtney stepped out with his own band The Pink Flamingos — and found himself very much the centre of attention in this video made by TVNZ for the Flamingos' debut single. With only his guitar for support, he roams the streets of downtown Wellington stalking the object of his desire, who remains largely impassive despite his protestations — and all but obscured in a haze of cigarette smoke. Locations include an empty Cuba Mall (beside the bucket fountain) and Plimmer Steps. McArtney died in April 2013.

In a typically polished effort from the industrious Thunderlips duo, Doprah vocalist Indira Force’s metamorphosis into a schizophrenic kawaii girl (Japanese for ‘cute’) makes for an unsettling contrast to the song’s slow-burning ambience — although a late cameo from bandmate Steven Marr in Sailor Moon-style garb provides some comic relief. The clip premiered on US music journal SPIN’s online edition, and was nominated for Best Music Video at the 2014 Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards.

Reflecting the nautical themes found on chart-topping album Time and Tide, the classic 'Six Months in a Leaky Boat' demonstrated that Tim Finn was far from out of good ideas, even though he was soon to leave the band he had sailed with for so long. Opening with scene-setting Eddie Rayner instrumental 'Pioneer' and images of boats at sea, the video soon reveals Tim Finn and band below deck, in sailor's garb. Finn's much-loved line about refusing to be overcome by "the tyranny of distance" was likely inspired by the 1966 book by Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey.