It's the holidays: time to let your hair down, have a swim, give in to your appetite...and have a boogie. From Kings to The Clean, from 'Ten Guitars' to 'Trippin', let NZ On Screen supply the music, with this epic playlist of classic Kiwi party songs. In the backgrounder, music fan and publicity maestro Nicky Harrop takes us through the tracks, before bidding adieu to NZ On Screen.

In April 1984 Poi-E was atop the NZ music charts, with ‘Jo the breakdancer’ starring in the song's music video. So it's apt that this edition of the TVNZ youth show looks at “the craze currently sweeping New Zealand — breakdancing”. In her first presenting gig, future MTV host Phillipa Dann heads to Mangere to bop and head-spin. Elsewhere in this season opener, David Hindley reports on a School Certificate controversy, and why young drivers are dying on country roads. Co-presenting back in Viewfinder’s Dunedin studio is Uelese Petaia (star of movie Sons for the Return Home).

Each episode of this TVNZ show takes a well-known Kiwi and invites them to introduce their neighbourhood. In this episode Lukasz Buda (aka Luke Buda from band The Phoenix Foundation) showcases the people who make up the central Wellington suburb of Te Aro. Holocaust survivor Clare Galambos Winter talks about finding a home in Wellington after World War II. Also interviewed are Bari Chin, then running breakdancing group Juvenate, Armenian screenprinting artist George Hajian, and Tee Phee and Keith Cheah, founders of Wellington restaurant Little Penang.

Shazam! rode the 1980s music video boom created by the advent of MTV and the renaissance in NZ music. Aimed at a younger audience than Radio with Pictures, it played in a late afternoon, weekday time slot, and featured artist interviews and live concerts as well as sponsoring a Battle of the Bands and a music video competition. Presenters were Phillip Schofield (later a presenter with the BBC and ITV), Phillipa Dann (who moved to London with husband and future head of MTV Europe Brent Hansen) and, finally, Michelle Bracey (who became a documentary director).

Telethon was a 24-hour live television spectacular aimed at securing donations from viewers for a charitable cause. The first, in 1975, launched the second channel (TV2) and raised over half a million dollars for St John's Ambulance. By 1981 Telethon had hit the $5 million mark. Along with willing local celebrities, volunteers and a receptive public, it attracted overseas stars: Basil Brush, Entertainment Tonight's Leeza Gibbons and Coronation Street's Christopher Quinton (who famously got together after the 1988 show). "Thank you very much for your kind donation!" 

Coming on like a 1970s exploitation film, this video sees The Sagittarian (aka Shae Sterling) pounding the streets of Bangkok in a white suit and sunglasses. While on the hunt for a mysterious quarry, he encounters guns, breakdancing monks and some spectacular scenery. Fellow musician and filmmaker Mikey Rockwell, who features on the track, adds a touch of comedy in the finale. The video won a Knack Award at the 2007 Kodak Fringe Awards. After Sterling starred in this, he went on to direct videos for many other musicians, including Stan Walker and Maisey Rika.  

Dancer and performer Mika (Neil Gudsell) introduces his urban Māori, Pacific dance troupe Torotoro in this episode from a series made for secondary school music students. He formed the group after seeing an opportunity for a big, young, funky Māori show during his own overseas performances. Torotoro fuses breakdance, kapa haka, hip hop and Pasifika influences, and its members have graduated from Gudsell’s Mika Haka youth programme. They talk about how the opportunity to travel and perform internationally has changed their lives.

This uplifting promotional clip is as famous as the chartbusting song. Accompanied by Jo, the breakdancing guide, for a tour of Patea and surrounds, the Patea Māori Club are captured "bopping and twirling like piwakawaka": at the local marae, in Wellington's Manners Mall, and on Patea’s main street, where milk tankers and sheep trucks pass by the Aotea canoe remembrance arch. So does the impresario himself: Dalvanius does a pūkana out a car window. In 2010 'Poi E' re-entered the charts thanks to Taika Waititi hit Boy. A documentary on the song was released in 2016.

"E tu stand proud, kia kaha say it loud", Dean Hapeta's lyrics typify the socio-political messages in NZ's early rap music. The four elements of hip hop: breakdancing, graffiti, DJ-ing and rap are examined through interviews with key players in the hip hop scene (including King Kapisi, Che Fu, Upper Hutt Posse). A recurring theme in the Sima Urale-directed documentary is that local hip hop artists are less interested in the "girls, booze and bling" school of hip hop, and more interested in using their art to make a political statement. 

Che Fu’s influential debut album 2b S.Pacific (1998) melded Pasifika with reggae, soul and hip hop, to create a unique musical home brew. The first single 'Scene III' went to number four on the local charts, and this follow-up (a double A-side, paired with 'Machine Talk') got to the top in October 1998. Cinematographer Duncan Cole (Born to Dance) directs the music video, which sees a pair of Fu personas (street and club?) facing cameras in a film studio, while singing about making "the planet shake". Later Che Fu adds some comedy to a breakdance battle.