Captain Festus McBoyle – The Prose and Cons (Manic Music) (13th Floor Album Review)
Captain Festus McBoyle claims to be “NZ rockers and punks who are now producing palatable Family Music which offers More Grit, Less Sugar”. The 13th Floor’s Alex Robertson passes judgement.
The inexorable march from child to adult is destiny for most of us as we eschew the liberty and unselfconscious swagger of immaturity to shackle ourselves to the conformity and serious demeanour of grown-up life. For some lucky individuals, however, a foot in both camps is their destiny: an ability to pretend with a veneer of respectability and the charade of gravity masking an anarchic, impish and puerile persona.
Captain Festus McBoyle is one of those fortunate few, a fellow so devoid of adult pretensions that to cast him in a pall of respectability would be akin to taking a vampire for a walk at noon.
The man positively reeks, he would be the first to admit, of silliness and idiotic behaviour, so inured to the practicalities of adulthood that his performative prancing as a pirate is the only possible proposition for a prolonged profession.
The Prose and Cons, McBoyle’s fifth album-length release under his piratical personage with the help of sidekicks Miss Lucy Drawys (aka Mrs McBoyle) and the Great Ebenezer (strongman extraordinaire), is a kind of coming-of-age for this perpetual pre-pubescent. The familiar poems and songs from their ever-popular live show are rooted in English folk, wry observation and storytelling through music that The Kinks turned into classic pop hits are the fare with clever production and sound effects thrown in for good measure.
Festus plays with some newer musical forms including hip hop on Baby Rap, a nod to flamenco on Layed by the Plague, country blues on Cat be Free and even the metal-inspired Slug that will keep the older kids (mums & dads) interested as they listen along with junior and missy. But pirate fans will not be disappointed with many songs played on squeezebox (accordion) and ukulele in the privateer tradition.
There’s plenty of scatalogical humour and jokes so off centre that if you were to ask for them in a fast food restaurant the order would be “Dad jokes with extra cheese, please!”
And why not? Spike Milligan, Pam Eyres and even our own John Clarke as the archetypal Kiwi joker Fred Dagg, all employed goofiness, absurdity and nonsense in their respective brands of humour.
Pirates have long been associated with laughter and levity finding fans globally across all cultures. Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow (to whom Captain Festus passes an uncanny resemblance) is, perhaps, the most famous, but other phenomena such as International Talk Like a Pirate Day, Gasparilla Pirate Day in Tampa, Florida, Pirates Week in the Cayman Islands and the Brixham Pirate Festival in the UK are all testament to the high regard in which pirates are held.
Perhaps it’s the irreverent disregard for rules, customs and adult stuff such as law and order that keeps pirates so popular – pirates are funny because they just aaaare!
And because of characters like Captain Festus McBoyle, of course.
Alex Robertson
The Prose and Cons is out now via Manic Music
Official Website – www.captainfestus.com
