Pop CultureDecember 31, 2020

Lucy Lawless as Stevie Nicks is New Zealand’s forgotten comedy masterpiece

Contributing writer

Summer reissue: Twenty-two years ago, Lucy Lawless wasn’t just playing Xena, she was part of one of SNL’s greatest ever sketches. Sam Brooks pays tribute to Stevie Nicks Fajita Round-Up.

First published on January 26, 2020.

The year is 1998. Jenny Shipley is prime minister, we win zero medals at the Olympics, and an actress named Lucy Lawless is the first New Zealander to host American TV sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live. We’re at the height of Xenamania, and Lawless is not just the most famous person in New Zealand, but the most famous New Zealander in the world.

Looking back at the episode feels more like looking into some strange funhouse mirror rather than into a part of television history. Lawless’ monologue, New Zealand accent fully intact, rests entirely on a stretched-out joke about how Xena is a lesbian, complete with Tina Fey dressed like a trucker. It has not aged well, to put it nicely. Elliott Smith (RIP) is the musical guest. The sketches include one where Will Ferrell plays a sexually aggressive nude model, and one where Lawless plays a stripper clown who has to argue a case in front of Judge Judy. I guess we expected different things from our comedy in 1998.

Saturday Night Live is one of those cultural institutions that never quite properly reached our shores. One obvious reason is that it was never regularly broadcast here; another is that we don’t share a tradition of watching televised sketch comedy at midnight on a Saturday. I don’t count this as a flaw in New Zealand culture, trust me.

Every now and then a sketch breaks out and make headlines here – think Tina Fey and Amy Poehler playing Sarah Palin and Hilary Clinton, or Alec Baldwin puckering his lips and calling it an impression of Donald Trump. But mostly SNL is something that comes over here in drips, drabs and YouTube clips, free of episode-long context. And in the pre-YouTube era? Forget about it, with the exception of legendary clips like ‘More Cowbell!’ or the Debbie Downer sketches.

The other reason it never really took off here? A lot of SNL stuff is by design disposable. It’s a fast turnaround sketch show hosted by somebody who might not necessarily be very funny or good at live comedy. When SNL hits, it hits hard – any episode with Melissa McCarthy is wall-to-wall gold solely due to her commitment to the material she’s given – but it misses about as much as you’d expect it to, given that it’s a full 90 minutes of comedy written and performed in a single week.

But I’m not here to talk about Saturday Night Live. I’m here to talk about one of the best sketches that the show has ever done, one of the greatest pieces of comedy involving a New Zealander ever, and one has dug deep into my brain since I saw it on some off-brand video hosting website a few years ago: Stevie Nicks Fajita Round-Up.

The concept is very, very dumb, right from the intro line:

“Hello, I’m Stevie Nicks. Do you like the music of my band, Fleetwood Mac? And do you like fajitas, flautas, quesadillas, and other Tex-Mex specialties? ”

Yup. That’s the sketch. It’s a commercial for a Stevie Nicks Tex-Mex restaurant called Stevie Nicks Fajita Round-Up. Lucy Lawless, commits to Nicks’ goat-bleat of a voice and flowy mannerisms (complete with fan blowing her hair around all witch-like) and sings Fleetwood Mac songs turned into jingles that hawk burritos, fajitas and other Mexican food “for an affordable dining experience you’ll never forget”.

To wit:

You placed an order, I wrote it down.
Three enchiladas, the best in town.
Then I saw my reflection in a big pile of nachos.
Until a landslide brought it down

It’s dumb as hell, and in an interview a few years ago, Lawless herself admits that she doesn’t really get it. I was also surprised that she came to SNL with a Nicks impression prepared, because a Stevie Nicks tex-mex restaurant feels like the kind of idea that some impossibly outre homosexual (I say this from a place of identification, not judgement) would have had in his back pocket for five years, rather than something that comes from the host.

It’s one of those sketches that shouldn’t work. Lawless wasn’t known for her comedy, and I doubt anybody was expecting her to pull a spot-on Stevie Nicks out of her Xena armour. It’s also one of the rare SNL sketches that not only doesn’t outstay its welcome at a crisp two and a half minutes but rests entirely on the guest host’s shoulders. Then add the fact that it relies on one of the hackiest comedy tropes in the book: swapping out serious lyrics for funny lyrics that rhyme. By rights, Stevie Nicks Fajita Round-Up should have been forgotten alongside the hundreds of sketches performed by hosts who can’t even read cue-cards convincingly, let alone carry a sketch.

But damn if it’s not one of the best comedy clips I’ve ever seen, and one that I could watch on repeat quite comfortably for the rest of my life. Every time I pick up something new, whether it’s the way Lawless elongates the second syllable of “cocaaaaaine” or how truly spot-on and awful the photos of the food are.

And it’s solely thanks to the commitment of one plucky New Zealander, doing her damnedest not just to mimic Stevie Nicks, but to show us what it would be like if music’s most notorious sorceress truly did open a Tex-Mex restaurant in the heart of Arizona. Bless you, Lucy. You’re more than Xena, you’re more than one of New Zealand’s most iconic performers and climate change activists. You’re also the bastion of one of New Zealand’s greatest comedy exports, and I bow down to you for it.

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Keep going!

John Campbell and Melodownz on the latter’s new show, Kava Corner. The former is, quote, off his nut on kava.

Pop CultureDecember 30, 2020

What happened when John Campbell got ‘off his nut’ on kava with Melodownz

Sam Brooks

Contributing writer

John Campbell and Melodownz on the latter’s new show, Kava Corner. The former is, quote, off his nut on kava.

Summer reissue: In the first episode of Melodownz’ new show, Kava Corner, John Campbell got a bit lit on kava, and it was utterly bloody delightful.

First published August 18, 2020.

Watching John Campbell do just about anything is guaranteed to make your day a bit better. His calm, empathetic style has been a balm to the nation for ages now, as the first voice you hear in the morning on Breakfast these days, reporting on Checkpoint back in the old days, and presenting Campbell Live back in the old, old days.

So, of course, John Campbell drinking kava is not just going to make your day a bit better, but a lot better. He’s the guest on the first episode of Melodownz’ new YouTube show, Kava Corner, in which the hip-hop artist shares a few shells of the mildly intoxicating beverage with a different celebrity each episode. Here’s what we learned about Campbell in the course of his 20 minute sesh.

John Campbell only drinks two nights a week now

Given that he has to be up at 3:30am every weekday morning, which is reason enough to never be a morning television presenter, he doesn’t drink from Sunday to Thursday. Wise!

However, when he does, he loves a good ol’ buttery chard. Take a note should you ever want to buy John Campbell a drink, Friday or Saturday night only.

John Campbell used to be a regular jet plane lolly indulger

On some of his hardest days, Campbell would stop into the local, buy a party pack of jet planes and “shove them into [his face]” so that he’d bring some joy home to his family. Leaving Las Vegas 2: A Pack of Jet Planes, anyone?

John Campbell used to be a DJ called Sparky Plug

A picture says a thousand words. Or in this case, three words.

John Campbell loves hip-hop, genuinely and unproblematically

Get you a man who talks about you like John Campbell talks about hip-hop. He talks about hip-hop like it cleared his pores, grouted his bathroom, and fluffed his pillow every night. Better yet, he manages to talk about hip-hop with the knowledge that he’s speaking about it as a middle-class white guy, and without making a show of that acknowledgment. Also, he’s geekily nervous when he’s asked what he would do when interviewing Frank Ocean, gushing like an ’80s teenager holding his first cassingle.

Also, you haven’t lived until you’ve heard John Campbell rap Public Enemy’s ‘Fight the Power’ like he’s reading from a gently scrolling teleprompter. I’ll revise my previous statement: Get you a John Campbell.

John Campbell might be running???

Look, I’m no politics predictor, but surely this is the statement of a man who is planning a run for office: “I am feeling a little bit stoned. Not that I know what feeling stoned feels like.” Given that absolutely anything – even managing the government’s Covid-19 response – would be better than waking up at 3:30am each morning, who would blame him for contemplating a change of career?

John Campbell drops exactly one f-bomb

You won’t hear that on Breakfast!

John Campbell knows who Noname is

When asked what rapper Jacinda Ardern would listen to on her drive into the Beehive, Campbell initially says David Dallas before backtracking after realising Dallas condemned the “Chinese sounding names” incident on ‘Don’t Rate That’, a slating Campbell says was “richly deserved, richly deserved.”

He then changes his answer to Noname’s Room 25, and I’m delighted to be able to include John Campbell and the excellent, boundary-pushing Noname in the same sentence. If my endorsement means nothing, and it should, then take Campbell’s word for it.

John Campbell shares his wisdom, generously

In all seriousness, this is a great interview that I can’t recommend highly enough, and hearing John Campbell talk about who gets to have their voices heard in the media is astonishingly frank, and everybody in his industry should take notes:

“I used to think that journalism was about speaking truth to power, but the problem with speaking truth to power is the people that get to speak to power have a form of power, so it’s the same circle of people interviewing and re-interviewing each other. And it tends to be from the perspective of the powerful. And I became obsessed, probably in the last 10 or 15 years, with speaking to people who don’t have power, the powerless. The people who don’t have access to the media very often, and that’s been the most rewarding work I’ve done.”

The most generous part of the interview, though, is when Melodownz shares a story about a time his music affected someone in his life (I won’t spoil its power by sharing it here) and Campbell says he won’t have any more kava unless Melodownz promises to keep the story in the final cut. In that moment, he’s empowering Melodownz to tell his own story on his own show, without putting the pressure or the weight of that on him.

As Melodownz says, “John Campbell is the man. Certified legend.” Can’t disagree. Now get that man a good night’s sleep, some buttery chard and a couple of shells of kava.

You can watch Kava Corner on Melodownz’ YouTube channel here.