Tim Mahon is best known as the bass player for Blam Blam Blam back in the early 1980s, and was a member of The Plague and The Whizz Kids prior to this. In his Blam Blam Blam days Mahon played in Hamilton at the Hillcrest Tavern, not far from the University. Back in 2016, he recounted some of his memories of playing in that venue for us – of “the smell of old beer and stale cigarettes as we packed in. I still remember that revolting smell, even though the Blams’ car accident robbed me of my sense of smell in 1982”.
Mahon clearly enjoys sharing history, as on his new album, ‘The Great Kerfuffle’, he provides us with some further lessons. The lyrics sent me down a few rabbit holes while listening, which is what I appreciated most greatly about the album. No more so than the album opener, ‘The Ballad of William’, which chronicles some history relating to New Zealand’s early pirate radio days. Some of the stories were already somewhat familiar:
“Dance to the Tiri, Dance to the Tiri, there’s a pirate on the Hauraki….”.
The Tiri I was already familiar with, as the vessel that acted as the offshore broadcasting studio for Radio Hauraki, anchored just outside of New Zealand’s territorial waters so as to bypass the state’s control over the airwaves. But who was the titular William?
“This is the ballad of William.
He sailed all the way, all the way home,
from Casablanca to Amsterdam.
Across the Bay of Biscay…. in winter,
in a river boat designed for better weather”
To answer that I had to do a bit more digging. It turns out Mahon, for many years a real estate agent, acted for the former Radio Hauraki pirate Bill Calvert. From a Stuff article I discovered that Calvert had told Mahon various stories relating to how he got the job on board the Tiri, and another crewing a riverboat from Casablanca to Amsterdam, right across the Bay of Biscay…. in winter.
It’s following the breadcrumbs like these that can make an album like this both interesting and thought provoking. The song ‘Vote’ is another highlight.
“Democracy is the most inefficient way to run a country, but it’s still better than anything else”, it begins, paraphrasing Winston Churchill.
“Vote, vote, you’ve got to vote, I don’t mind the colour of your coat… you can vote for a goat”.
It’s such an important message, but it was also another thread to follow. My first thought listening to this was of the Republic of Whangamomona, where “Billy Gumboot” was elected President in 1999. But it got me investigating other elected goats, such as “Clay Henry” in Lajitas, Texas, USA, in 1986. There, a businessman was elected the mayor of the town, but locals argued that a local goat would make a better leader and so put the caprine on the ballot. The goat, of course, won in a landslide.
I’m sure as I keep listening there will be many more such themes to explore. The Great Kerfuffle – it’s well worth a listen, just for the places it takes you.
