The music choices of the Hamilton West byelection candidates in a debate on TodayFM all date them to some very specific Hamilton bars at a very specific Hamilton time. A former Hamiltonian explains.
The Hamilton pub and bar scene of the late 90s and early 2000s is horrifyingly familiar to me. Styled in my best going out tops and good jeans, I spent every spare night I had in that city at the bars that made up the much beloved Chlamydia triangle.
If contact tracing and locations of interest had existed then, I stand by a theory that there were actually four bars involved in the localised spread of that STD and it’s factually inaccurate to have assigned a three-sided shape to that proud local phenomenon. The traditional triangle plots bars on Hood and Victoria streets and includes The Outback Inn, The Loaded Hog and the originally named The Bank, which was in an old bank. The fourth and often overlooked plague site was the Fat Ladies Arm’s on Alexandra Street.
Hosting a short debate with four of the Hamilton West byelection candidates – Labour’s Georgie Dansey, National’s Tama Potaka, independent Gaurav Sharma and Act’s James McDowall – Today FM’s Tova O’Brien asked them all about their favourite bands and songs this morning. Only a flaming backdraft could have rocketed me back to that bacterially magical time in Hamilton faster than their answers did.
Gaurav Sharma started well, picking Dave Dobbyn as his favourite band. Dave Dobbyn is one man but you can see how Sharma might make that mistake. If Sharma had just stuck with Dobbyn we could locate him at the Outback Inn, specifically at 2.33am in November 1999, just before ‘Closing Time’ played and the lights came up to reveal a horrible truth.
He’d be in the warm embrace of a posse, all whaling and hoisting up shiny red boob tubes from Principals, while balancing in pairs of popular platform mules that actually offer no real stability to your loyal lower body prone to precarity and collapse.
But then Sharma threw in a curve ball when asked about his favourite karaoke track, naming Eminem’s 2002 song for the technically legal, ‘Lose Yourself’. This locates him exactly halfway between the Outback and the Loaded Hog, standing alone in the middle of Hood St, hoping to not get run over by a party bus.
Georgie Dansey chose ‘I’m Good’. At first glance, this situates her in a bar I don’t know about because the song is from 2022. But the present day David Guetta and Bebe Rexha banger is a remix of ‘I’m Blue (Da Ba Dee)’, a 1998 horror show of a song and frankly, a concern for her and the Labour Party. ‘I’m Blue’ could situate her at any of the bars within the quadrant in 1998, but I’m lobbing her into Monkey Feather, a bar I never went to and only knew as the “doof doof bar”. Dansey can always leave after being approached by a reporter from Stuff.
James McDowall picked Queen. A fine choice but he’s definitely at The Bank which played the hits of the 80s and 90s. Billy Joel’s ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ is cued next, followed by Culture Club’s ‘The War Song’.
Tama Potaka is at the Fat Ladies Arms with Chumbawamba’s ‘Tubthumping’, a 1998 drinking anthem about winning and singing and winning and singing. It’s midnight and people have test tubes dangling from the ends of their fingers after drinking the tequila shots they were served in. He’s up on a table, riding high above everyone according to a shoutout from the Curia / Taxpayers’ Union-funded DJ. He’s loving everyone and everything including the government’s housing policies and yet he’s inexplicably fallen off the table and is now the underdog. Though he may fall, he’s getting back up again.
Only someone who grew up in Hamilton West is allowed to say this, but Hamilton West, your candidates are extremely Hamilton West. Voting closes in the byelection tomorrow, and queues to cast your vote should be shorter than the ones for the Outback in 1999. Find out where to vote here.
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