Many years ago I wrote a post about unofficial state songs in America. For the most part, the official, government-appointed songs were adopted a century ago with old-fashioned titles like “Idaho, Sweet Idaho, My Potato Grows For Thee.” But in the subsequent decades, these quaint songs of yore have been supplanted with a host of unofficial anthems, ones that might be played at sporting events to get the home crowd juiced up, like Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” or Tupac’s “California Love” or any song at all with Texas in the title.

It’s not just limited to US states, though — this goes for countries, as well.

Let’s head to New Zealand!

As I’m sure you all know, a 19th century poem titled “God Defend New Zealand” was put to music in 1876 and serves as the country’s official national anthem. But 40 years ago, another song came along and has since provided a more contemporary, unofficial anthem for the Kiwi nation. And it all started with a comic strip about a black and white dog.

(No, not that black and white comic strip dog.)

In the early 70s, cartoonist Murray Ball created “Footrot Flats” about a fictional sheep and cattle farm in the New Zealand countryside, centered around Wal Footrot and his dog, a border collie known simply as “the Dog.” The comic strip first appeared in 1976 and eventually featured in hundreds of newspapers and garnered millions of readers at the height of its popularity in the mid-80s. This popularity led to the production of an animated film in 1986 called Footrot Flats: The Dog’s Tail Tale.

Every movie needs a soundtrack, of course — and that brings us to Dave Dobbyn.

Dobbyn spent the first half of the 80s as part of a very popular New Zealand band called DD Smash. Although they didn’t find success outside of their native homeland, they scored three Top 10 singles on the local chart. The band broke up in 1985 and Dobbyn began working on solo material.

Right around this time, someone working on the Footrot Flats movie decided to contact him about writing songs and a score for the soundtrack — partly because they liked his music with DD Smash, and partly because they knew he had some newfound free time on his hands. He agreed immediately.

One of the songs Dobbyn provided, called “Slice Of Heaven,” became the main theme. He used an E-mu Emulator, a kind of early sampler/synthesizer using disks to store sounds, to create a bed of music over which he played an electric guitar. He asked New Zealand reggae band Herbs — a multi-ethnic group featuring members of Māori, Samoan, Tongan, Cook Island, and New Zealand European heritage — to provide backing vocals, and the whole shebang was recorded in only two days.

Released as a single in the fall of 1986, “Slice Of Heaven” ascended the New Zealand charts and stayed at #1 for eight weeks, helping Footrot Flats: The Dog’s Tail Tale become one of the highest grossing movies ever at the time. It subsequently hit #1 for four weeks in Australia and featured in New Zealand tourism ads for decades. Dobbyn and Herbs were both later inducted into the New Zealand Music Hall Of Fame and Dobbyn eventually received a knighthood.

Given all its associations, it would be difficult to find many songs more representative of New Zealand. God defend it.

Footrot Flats was introduced to my family by my father’s New Zealand coworker back in 1985 when we lived in Malaysia. It’s been a part of our lives for the past 40 years but we had no idea there was a movie!

Many thanks to the Australian TV show Fisk for featuring a cover version of “Slice Of Heaven” in an episode a few years back, which then led me to look up the original song and discover its origin story.