Finny Finn Finn

So my bf, being a New Zealander as well as a Good Doctor, has introduced me to some pretty awesome/classic Kiwi tunes.  If you're going to have a conversation about music that includes New Zealand, you can't really avoid the Finn Brothers.  In fact, I think that might be the whole conversation.

Neil and Tim (Finn) have played together, fought, broken up, and reappeared in many musical incarnations as New Zealand's chart-toppers (all this before the introduction of my true favorite Kiwi musicians, Bret and Jemaine).  So I guess I kind of knew that one song by Crowded House, but I didn't that realize Neil (younger bro) had started the band after the disbanding of Split Enz (Get it? nz? Like New Zealand? Thanks, Wikipedia), Tim's much less commercially successful endeavor*.  Just check this out.

So Neil was all, "Thanks for letting me be in your college band when I turned 18, bro, but now I'm on to better things!"  They sort of re-collaborated in the early 90s, again under the name the Finn Brothers, but then Neil kind of took the songs they had written together and gave them to Crowded House and then had to let Tim in the band because he worked on the songs and it would be awkward (slash copyright violation) otherwise.  But then Tim peaced out when they were on tour in Europe.  Brotherly rivalry much?  I'd be pissed, too, if my younger brother was a better song-writer and knew how to play an instrument.  

I think that's what I love most about that Split Enz video, though.  Tim is knee-bending and two-stepping his way around that weird makeshift set (I wonder if that was their university theatre department?) and his elbows seem to be anchored to his ribcage as he "dances" with his arms; then, right at the end, Neil bops up behind him on a guitar and they harmonize and you're like, "Who's that cute, bouncy guy seems way less awkward than the guy singing?"  

I do legitimately like that song, so no diss on Tim.  I also enjoy that New Zealand, or, you know, just its music scene from the 80s and 90s, has some kind of a dramatic history.  Yeah, yeah, there was other dramatic history in how the English tricked the Maori people into signing over all their land and rights (silly mistranslation of documents), but there's no grainy 80s footage of that exchange, and it doesn't make me smile.  I'll stick with the Finns for now and leave the evils of colonialism for another day.

IMPORTANT ADDENDUM: I was totally wrong.  The singer in that video was Neil not Tim; Tim came bopping up at the end.  So I guess Neil was even more openly upstaging big bro than I thought.  Lead singer in Tim's band!  What gumption.  I still like that video, though, and the song.

*I guess they were actually quite successful in New Zealand, Australia and Canada, but who even goes to those places?