Jimmy Buffet RIP

Damn this is sad. Just a short while before I heard about this, I was thinking about Margaritas.


https://www.margaritaville.com/

This one hurts. Not the greatest singer, not the greatest guitar player but man could he tell a story, play to the crowd and sell an idea. My college roommate introduced me to him. I didn't really like him back then but every Thursday night you'd hear Five O Clock Somewhere blasting out of our dorm room which was the signal that a night of excessive drinking had begun.


My Ma's boyfriend was working security for a local music festival in '95 and got me into see him for the first time. To say it was a life changing experience is an understatement. I went to every show, rain or shine, from that year on, with the exception of the Covid years and one year, when a contract dispute with the venue kept him away. The Buffett show was the biggest party of the year. We'd arrive at noon, party in the parking lot for seven hours then head to a two hour plus show. The parking lot party was often the THING to experience. Total debauchery, in a good way. He would often send members of the crew into the parking lots before the concert to get video of the shenanigans going on, then splice together a little montage to play on the screen during the show. We used to stock up on beverages and well, "let's go for a walk." We'd walk the lots for hours, blowing out flip flops and stepping on pop tops. Run out of a drink? Not a problem, there was always somebody willing to throw you a beer, make you a margarita or pour you a shot or two or three or four, usually at a small price ( I never flashed my breasts but plenty of folks did), always in good fun.


The great thing about a Buffett show is he knew why you were there and he wasn't going to let you down. Nothing worse than going to see a band and they refuse to play their hits for whatever reason. That never happened at Buffet show. A good chunk of The Songs You Know By Heart with a few new songs, some deeper cuts mixed in and a few surprises were his usual set list. He performed a lot of these songs thousands of times and you wouldn't know it from watching him on stage. He genuinely looked and sounded like he was loving every minute of it. I never got tired of seeing 35,000 thousand people with their fins circling around, "fins to the left, fins to the right and you're the only girl in town" and I don't think he did either.


One of my favorite memories was when he did a Beatles medley and had the entire crowd on board The Yellow Submarine. Not quite sure why that one sticks out but it was incredible to hear all these people joining in on a song that none of us were prepared to hear. Same thing when he covered Lionel Ritchie's All Night Long. He had an instinct for what covers would work to get the crowd on board and was never wrong as far as I could tell. For me, Southern Cross and Scarlet Begonias are Buffet songs.


On a personal note one of the funniest things I ever saw was at my cousins wedding. A Buffet ballad had just started to play and my Grandma, who loved to dance, asked (told) my Ma's boyfriend to dance with her. He was a little, uh, uncomfortable. "Let's wait until the next slow one okay, Betty?" She wasn't having that and dragged him out onto the floor. We were all watching with huge smiles waiting for it to happen. So there slow dancing and the chorus hits - "So, Barmaid, bring a pitcher, another round of brew, Honey, why don't we get drunk and screw."

I always thought of him as a Caribbean Cowboy as far as his ability to tell stories through songs. He Went to Paris is one of Bob Dylan's favorite songs. More than a few are based on real events with one of the more incredible songs being about the the time he piloted his airplane to Jamaica to pick up some chicken with U2's Bono and family on board. The Jamaican police thought he was a drug smuggler (well he did run his share of grass) and proceeded to shoot at the plane. Fortunately nobody was hurt but Jimmy being Jimmy thought Hey, that'd probably make a good song and Jamaica Mistaka was born.

The last ten years or so we would be walking out of the show wondering if this would be his last - "Tonight...that last song was just Jimmy, his guitar and a stool...that's his goodbye" and every spring his new tour would be announced and we'd start planning. Now we don't have to wonder. It's over. We often thought about, when this day came, who would take his place? The answer is nobody. We're Parrotheads. He was a one of a kind, there will never be another Jimmy Buffett. Not for us anyway.