Don McGlashan has played drums, horns, guitars and PVC pipes, created memorable songs with Blam Blam Blam, The Mutton Birds and as a solo artist, and won a run of awards for his soundtrack work. As Nick Bollinger puts it in this backgrounder, his songs are good for occasions big and small. 

Don McGlashan began his career as a restless teenage French horn player. He started to thrive in the post-punk era, writing iconic songs with Blam Blam Blam, mixing theatre and music with The Front Lawn and composing for film and TV, before forming The Mutton Birds in 1991. This episode of Sunday traverses McGlashan's life as he launches his belated solo career. Friends like Dave Dobbyn and Mike Chunn wax lyrical about McGlashan's talents, and snippets from his 2003 Auckland Festival show at the St James Theatre demonstrate why he is so beloved in Kiwi music history.

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.

This Feltex Award-winning documentary dives, abseils and squeezes under the mountain — Mt Arthur in Kahurangi National Park — to record the exploration of the subterranean world of the Nettlebed Cave System. At nearly one kilometre underground the system is New Zealand’s deepest cave, and a mecca for cavers from around the world. The cavers relay their motivations and anxieties as they negotiate the uncharted water-carved limestone labyrinth. Directed by Ian Taylor, it screened in the Lookout series. Claustrophobes beware: there are no lattes at Soft Rock Cafe.

In Peru, beauty and poverty go hand in hand. Westie comedian Ewen Gilmour begins his Peruvian journey in Lima, the capital - which he describes as a "sprawling, largely chaotic urban mess". Locals offer drugs and warn of muggers, but there are lighter moments when Gilmour entertains an enthusiastic audience in the city's historic centre, despite speaking only un poco Español. Later the former stonemason is impressed by the precision stonework in the ancient hilltop city of Machu Picchu, and visits locals who live on floating islands of reeds, on Lake Titicaca.

The video for Tex Pistol's chart-topping, electro-pop remake of 60s track 'The Game of Love' was a stylish triumph for budding teenage director Paul Middleditch. Tex Pistol — aka former Th'Dudes member Ian Morris — is dressed in black and white, with silver tipped cowboy boots and a red semi-acoustic guitar. Suiting the less is more approach of the remake, the video features Morris and backing vocalist Callie Blood in a world of darkness, rain and reflective surfaces. 'The Game of Love' hit number one for one week; copies of the single ran out early on.

In this episode of Talk Talk musician Don McGlashan discusses politics, growing up and the art of communicating emotions and ideas, with journalist Finlay MacDonald. The Talk Talk host starts by asking McGlashan to explain how he managed to offend Kiwi seafood lovers across the country with a political analogy during the 2008 general election. Then the pair explore McGlashan's early inspirations and musical development. McGlashan finishes with a live rendition of his 2009 single 'Marvellous Year', complete with accordian, theremin and strings.

Blackmail, lies and secrecy feature heavily in this TV3 documentary, which follows the teenage daughter of the photographer killed in the 1985 bombing of Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior. Marelle Pereira was just eight when her father Fernando died after French Secret Service agents set off two bombs in Auckland. The boat was set to protest nuclear testing in French Polynesia. Now 18, Pereira and her mum travel to French Polynesia, France and Aotearoa to ask why the French carried out the attack. Pereira interviews Rainbow Warrior crew and former Kiwi PM David Lange. 

A helmet cam records the claustrophobic reactions of a rookie mercenary (Elliot Travers) as an interplanetary combat raid goes wrong in Ferand Peek's debut short. Peek produced the one-shot DIY Gravity in Wellington over five years. Audio was recorded first, then Travers (shot in a special rig), then CGI effects were forged with the help of Miramar/Weta filmmaking crew. The result was touted by io9 doyen Annalee Newitz: “All we see of the world around him are reflections in his helmet, and yet the suspense is incredible. Plus, the story [is] surprisingly moving.” 

June 1944. On a sabotage mission shortly before D-Day, a Kiwi Commando (Outrageous Fortune’s Craig Hall) sneaks into a German bunker on the Channel Islands. Inside he finds an SS officer who is an expert in the occult (Out of the Blue’s Matt Sunderland), much blood, and a mysterious lone woman who may not be what she seems. Shot in Wellington, the feature debut of effects man Paul Campion ratchets up the tension in the claustrophobic setting. The makeup effects — horned demons, bullet wounds and gore — are led by Weta veteran Sean Foote.