The YouTube description for this video notes, “I don’t really know anything about them, just found it on an old VHS tape.” That’s what I like to see. Get those old videos online, especially if they seem obscure.
Total Magenta were an Auckland four-piece, at the centre of which was blonde bombshell Lorna Storm, a “frontal weapon”, claims their Amplifier bio. They sound a bit like the Sneaker Pimps, with chopped up guitar and beat mixed with fragile vocals.
In the video Lorna plays a hip young woman living in a rundown house with a large, old-fashioned working-class family. She refuses to help pregnant Mum look after her six younger brothers and sisters, and instead packs her bag and hustles away, having a Maria Von Trapp moment on a hillside.
Free at last, she is then found playing with her band. Lorna has a guitar, but we hardly see her play it. Instead the camera mainly stays on her face and occasionally her handsome band.
This was the only NZ On Air video funding that Total Magenta had. They quickly came and went, with Lorna Storm left doing some telly in the mid ’00s. But this video captures the band doing some good weirdness, like a less commercial version of the videos Goldenhorse ended up making.
Best bit: the family dog, who also runs away.
Next… from the church to the palace.