R.I.P Kevin Williams AKA Mojo Buzz – 1957 – 2021

Kevin Williams R.I.P

For a very long time I had heard his name – Kevin Williams

Mutual friends told us both we needed to meet each other. It took years but when we did meet we became good friends. Mutually obsessed with all kinds of music facts and data that others thought was another language. And it was I suppose. But when you meet someone who actually understands what having a certain album on a particular label of a first pressing it’s a biggy. Kevin Williams loved music. And I don’t mean he had a couple for cds and played an instrument. I mean he lived and breathed it. He ate it for breakfast and he had a midnight snack of it before going to bed.

One year he came down to Waikaretu to run the mixer for one of my concerts and we hit it off. I really left my mark on him, literally. A mixer needed running repairs and I burned him with the soldering iron. We both had alter egos – Kevin had Mojo Buzz, New Zealand’s answer to John Peel and I had Dexter, the geek with a tweak. We had a lot more in common we found out as time went on and many a fine small hour was spent at his place in Thames or mine in Whakatane discussing band pedigrees and extreme recording trivia.

Nowadays Kevin is my go to MC and DJ for my festivals and concerts – I can throw any genre at him and know he will have in his extensive library an amazing playlist to keep the punters happy.

I last saw Kevin on May 24th 2021. The Fuzztards played a gig in Auckland and I decided to take the long way home and catch up with him and Bernie and stayed the night at Kevin’s before heading home. Kev had been diagnosed with pancreatitis and was off the grog and told us he had never felt better. He’d met up with a teenage sweetheart and was living, and loving, the life.

He looked great and in the morning after a healthy granola breakfast took me into Thames and showed me the vinyl stores. We had lunch, butted elbows and said fare thee well.

Kevin was a fucking good bloke and good friend to a lot of good people. If your life is measured by the quality of the friends you make then Kevin Williams, Mojo Buzz, lived a good life full of riches.

Kev would probably not be a big fan of Townes Van Zandt, but he’d have appreciated his story

Days, up and down they come
Like rain on a congadrum
Forget most, remember some
But don’t turn none away
Everything is not enough
And nothin’ is too much to bear
Where you been is good and gone
All you keep is the getting there