Troublegum

The Mint Chicks are an astounding band - over their eight years of existence they have been indie darlings, reached the finalists of the countries top song writing awards, and won a slew of Tuis. All the while they've been incredibly innovative and not afraid to try new things or turn expectations on their head. The Mint Chicks often have more ideas in one song than some bands do in an album.

In recent months the band have been receiving praise and airplay for a couple of covers - Ray Columbus's 'She's A Mod' and The Tall Dwarfs 'Crush'. However The Mint Chicks have just released a great new original song, 'Bad Buzz', the title track of a new EP to be released on USB stick in mid February. So I thought I'd mark the occasion by looking back at some Mint Chicks material that you won't find on their albums.

Mid 2009 the Mint Chicks posted an untitled song on their website - a song with a catch. To listen to it you had to simultaneously play four videos embedded on the site, the four videos each featuring one band member but together making up one face. You can still see the video and hear the song here.

Anika Moa's live cover of The Mint Chicks 'Crazy? Yes! Dumb? No!' on TV opened up to many an awareness of the songwriting skill of the band, by allowing them to hear how the song still worked with such a different treatment. You can also see Moa perform the song on her 2007 Red Bull session. Red Bull have a real treasure trove of over 200 live performances filmed in HD available on their site including a great set by The Mint Chicks from 2008. The Mint Chicks have also covered Anika Moa - they performed her song Stolen Hill at the 2006 Silver Scroll awards. I have tracked down a copy of that performance but it's a pretty ropey audience recording so I'll post it here as a web only feature.



Another live in the studio session from the Mint Chicks available on line is a radio session recorded by American radio station KBOO. The whole session, which traverses the entire Mint Chicks career is available for free download or streaming on The Free Music Archive.

In Christmas 2008 the band released an on-line EP of chipset, or 8-bit, versions of two previously released songs and four that would later appear on the album Screens. That whole EP can be downloaded for free from The Mint Chicks website.

And now to mark the release of the EP the Mint Chicks are running a series of competitions including a remix competition of 'Crazy? Yes! Dumb? No!'. You can find out about the competition and download the tracks at Music Hype.

You'll also find some Mint Chicks videos on the video page, including the band covering the song Counting the Beat.

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