Nobody Takes Me Seriously, Anyway: Split Enz

By Less Lee Moore

[This piece was originally published in Smack Dab Fanzine #5, April 1996. With the exception of typos I may have corrected, all of the original text and formatting remain the same. I have also scanned the original artwork.—Ed.]

The first pop star I had a crush on was Barry Manilow. Looks aside, I was dazzled by his rhinestone-studded costumes and silly medleys. I cherished my monthly fan club letters for years until I turned on MTV in 1981. Then I discovered New Wave and the weirdest, most endearing brothers next to Jeff and Steve McDonald. Neil and Tim Finn from Split Enz.

Tim Finn

Heidi and I were not the only two girls we knew to have mad crushes on these guys, we were the only two people who’d even heard of them. Well, there was that time in the sixth grade talent show that I performed a self-choreographed dance to Split Enz’s “One Step Ahead” (complete with top hat and cane) and the more than slightly grody Billy Tolar actually sang along

Yet, the band’s complete obscurity only fueled the flames of love in my heart. When they appeared in harlequin costumes in the video for “History Never Repeats” I thought surely they were from another planet. But it was only New Zealand. I listened to Waiata incessantly. When Time and Tide came out, I close myself in my room and devoured the entire album in one breathless, wondrous listen.

Remember those Scholastic Book Club order forms that traveled around grammar school classrooms every month or so? Sure I loved Dynamite and books about horses as much as any other gal, but I really flipped for the paperback editions of the Guinness Book of World Records. I was fascinated by the world’s tallest man, Robert Wadlow, and the woman who had a twenty-pound hairball extracted from her stomach.

And then there was Sandy Allen. Who else but Split Enz would have devoted a song to the world’s tallest woman? This is when the Finn brothers earned a permanent place in my heart.

Time and Tide was (and still is) one amazing record. It had less of the uneven distractions of Waiata. Songs like “Small World” where Tim sings about tossing around the earth like a superball made me realize how finite this planet really is.

Tim was always my favorite Finn. With his perennial red socks (worn in every video), unruly black hair and eyes, and sarcastic smile, who could resist him? What a fox. And of course, there was that MTV concert where he did one-handed handclap push-ups. Wow.

It wasn’t until I was fifteen, however, when Crowded House was already somewhat popular, that I finally acquired True Colours. I found it even more unsettling than Waiata, and as a result, it was never my favorite.

Yesterday I finally found the coveted laser-etched vinyl version of it at a record convention. Listening to it after all these years, I was surprised to discover that it actually came out in 1979, even though it sounds almost more modern than Time and Tide. True Colours has all the qualities that made Split Enz so incredible and ingenious, self-mocking, sarcastic jabs like “What’s the Matter With You?” eerie instrumentals like “Double Happy,” love song with a sardonic twist like “I Hope I Never” and “Shark Attack,” and songs about escaping from the strangeness of reality and the self, like “Missing Person.”

What I find frustrating is that Split Enz is usually remembered for one or two songs, either True Colours‘ “I Got You,” or Time and Tide‘s “Six Months in a Leaky Boat.” Both are terrific songs, but there’s so much more to them than this. So they had weird haircuts and keyboards! They also had great pop hooks and most important of all, and edge of darkness, a taint of creepiness that always left me feeling nervous. “Walking Through the Ruins,” “Ghost Girl,” and “Log Cabin Fever” are the most obvious, but what about “I Wouldn’t Dream Of It,” which starts off catchy enough, but fades into wailing weirdness? And then there’s “Wail” (Waiata) which is precisely that. . .with a lot of nifty synths to push it into the realm of the bizarre. I still don’t know what “Ships” is about:

Some people pop a pill when they feel exposed
Long as I’m dressed to kill I make sure no one knows

Ah, well. Thank God for Weezer and Flop who do more than their fair share of carrying on Split Enz’s tradition of disturbing pop ditties. And there’s always hope for a tribute album.