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| Bad Lattitude "It's a semi-true story, believe it or not / I made up a few things and there's some I forgot / But the life and the telling are both real to me / And they all run together and turn out to be / A semi-true story" Yes, I can hear what you're saying... Jimmy Buffett? What in the name of holy God is Jimmy Buffett doing in this section? Here, in the land of lo-fi indie rock and 400 Neil Young reviews, what idiot has decided to include a guy whose legacy includes a paean to the cheeseburger? Yes. Excellent question. I'll get to that in a second, but first I'd like to paint a quick picture. Currently, I am 13 floors above a Chicago November, about two blocks west off of Lake Michigan. For the next three to four months, when I walk outside my building, said lake will shoot icy daggers of wind at my face at speeds somewhere around 90 mph. Rarely will I wake up to see the sun. I'll be eating my morning Pop Tarts here in a terminal grayness that won't let up until probably April. The snow hasn't come yet, but when it does, I'll get to scrape half-inch-thick ice off my car's windshield and kick the oatmeal-brown crap-slush out of its wheel wells. Now, having said that, can you blame a guy for trying to fool his mind into thinking he's on an island any goddamn way he can? Let me qualify myself for a moment. Yes, there are better songwriters than Jimmy Buffett. That much is certain. He will almost certainly not be inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. There are probably no Grammys in his future, or even a lousy episode of "VH-1: Behind The Music." His production of hit singles, mainstream success, and possibly - if the rumors are true - his summer tours have all probably come to an end. But if a great song is supposed to spin a tale, breathe life into a tiny scene, create a world and take you there, Buffett somehow spins, breathes and creates with the best of them. And therein lies the key attraction to Buffett's music: location, location, location. Specifically, one somewhere down south, under an impossibly hot sun, where rum and tequila flow like water and the only calls come from the sea. A location far, far away from Lake Michigan. The best Buffett songs manage to pull off, whether it's through simple storytelling, ("Read dozens of books about heroes and crooks and I've learned much from both of their styles"), quiet humor ("I have been drunk now for over two weeks / passed out and I rallied and I sprung a few leaks), island imagery ("Strummin' my six-string, on my front porch swing, smell those shrimp they're beginning to boil"), or the very use of a steel drum. There's nothing groundbreaking about the music — I had no idea one guy could write so many songs using only the G, C and D chords — or the lyricism. Neither of these things are the point. The point is a mood, a mindset, a way to flee, for three to four minutes at a time, from wherever you are to someplace warmer and friendlier. Most of Buffett's themes in both his lyrics and his live show — relaxation, friends, the power to let go, cutting through the bullshit, and a general sense of cheerful hedonism — can't be denied by too many straight-thinking people. At his best, Buffett represents an image of what is, for many, the Ultimate Dream Lifestyle, tapping painfully well into the impossible soul of the guy who quit his job, bought a boat, sailed around the world, drank a lot of rum, sat in tiny bars, shared bottles with old men and young women, and lived a life of adventure — the life that, for damn near all of us, will only ever be possible in books and music. Most of us left in the modern world won't ever come close to it. But most of us can't bring ourselves to call off the search for it either.
Buffett's required studio oeuvre stops and starts pretty much in the late '70s. This is back when the laid-back, guitar-and-hammock sound is only beginning to take shape, back in the days where Buffett's sound was more country than beach. Still, these early records reveal the markings of a surprisingly good storyteller — surprising, anyway, for people familiar mainly with that cheeseburger song. "A Pirate Looks At Forty," released in 1974 way before he probably even thought about reaching that mark, is a poignant reflection on his lot in life, an intimate chapter that people only familiar with the raucous stage shows might miss. The same goes for other early ballads - "Tryin' To Reason With Hurricane Season," "Life Is Just A Tire Swing," and jukebox staple "Come Monday" to name a few - all of which reveal an intimacy and wistfulness that gets lost in both his image as island party guy and the attempt to translate said ballads into the live atmosphere (said intimacy is somewhat lacking on "Why Don't We Get Drunk," off of A White Sport Coat And A Pink Crustacean. For anyone who has never been to a bar, the end of that chorus goes, "· and screw." Marvin Gaye this isn't, but try not to smile when you see 25,000 people singing that to each other in a huge lawn). Most fans agree that the one-two punch of Changes In Latitudes, Changes In Attitudes and Son Of A Son Of A Sailor, which came in 1978 and 1979, respectively, represent the peak of Buffett's canon. By the time Changes rolled around, Buffett was firmly established as the island bum with tales of the sea. Besides the title track, in which the storyteller, in Buffett's most recurring theme, pauses to reflect on his life only to be interrupted by a "chum with a bottle of rum," the album contains the ubiquitous "Margaritaville." The album is probably Buffett's peak as a songwriter, both for his own music and his takes on "Banana Republics" and "Lovely Cruise." Sailor, for its part, was a bit more upbeat and humorous, spawning the novelty hit "Cheeseburger In Paradise," the honky-tonk "Livingston Saturday Night," and the title track, which served as a bit of an autobiographical sequel to "Pirate Looks At Forty." This is about when the 1980s came around. Buffett became one of the many artistic casualties of the "Me Decade," seeing a serious slump in quality and sales. But all that changed around 1985-86 with the dawn of the modern Buffett live era, which, to this day, remains the man's legacy. Live Buffett shows aren't as much concert as they are rituals, less a big rock show than a backyard barbecue with a really great steel drum player. Why do Buffett shows sell out with astounding consistency? Another excellent question. It's not the setlist, which pulls from Buffett's Songs You Know By Heart greatest-hits CD with rock-solid regularity. Year after year, some of Buffett's finer songs are jettisoned in favor of the crowd-pleasers. That's just the way it is, and both audience and performer seem happily resigned to it. It goes like this: If you go to a Buffett show, you are going to hear standard crowd-swaying favorites - "Margaritaville," "Come Monday," "Volcano," "Changes In Latitudes" - that are dutifully interwoven with any number of summertime covers, carefully selected to maximize singalong potential: "Another Saturday Night," "Brown Eyed Girl," "Southern Cross," et al. But playing a greatest-hits show from year to year is a tricky proposition, and Buffett is forced into the odd situation of making the same songs fresh every summer. It's a feat he tackles well. 1996 saw him open the show by taking requests with a sole acoustic guitar on a small stage in front of the lawn, then making his way down to the main stage through a near-riot of fans. Several years ago, he played a variation of "Stump The Band," where they requested obscure Buffett nuggets with varying degrees of success (in two consecutive nights I saw him that year, he nailed a hysterical old-as-hell B-side called "Please Take Your Drunken 15-Year-Old Girlfriend Home," and failed to navigate his way through verse one of "Dallas.") On stage, these things come off less as novelty than a sly wink to the fans, a joke that all the fans are in on. Right. And then there are the fans. Crowds at rock shows, more often than not, tend to segregate themselves by choice. AC/DC people aren't going to the 'N Sync show, and they aren't letting their kids go, either. KISS doesn't draw the same fans as Dave Matthews does. And it's hard to imagine fans of any of those bands hanging out after a show for a drink. But everyone shows up to Buffett. Age, race, and gender lines are happily blurred at a Buffett show, usually in a sea of frosty malted goodness. The fans are known as Parrotheads, presumably due to their choice of attire: garish, candy-colored Hawaiian shirts, his and hers grass skirts, and really stupid looking hats. My God, these people even accessorize their cars. Buffett's got one song called "Fins" about a woman trapped in a bar and encircled by sharks — sloshed wannabe suitors — and Parrotheads have since taken that song to mean they should probably attach giant, papier-m‰chˇ shark fins on the tops of their minivans and SUVs. But more than their clothes, or their choice of vehicular adornments, the Parrotheads are notable for who they are and where they come from. They're everyone. They're everywhere. I've seen eight-year-olds there, attempting to form conga lines with senior citizens over on the blanket next to them. For the past three or four years, the crowd we personally bring to the Buffett show numbers 30 to 40, and includes any or all of the following: myself, my fiancˇ, my brother, my mom, my mom's boyfriend, my aunt, my college roommates, my high school friends, cousins, uncles, people we've met in the parking lot, friends of friends and friends of friends of friends. It's not uncommon for us to look around the lawn at any given time in the show and see a half-dozen people that we brought in the van and have never met. And although precious few of them have voices, and roughly no one I've ever met possesses any sense of rhythm whatsoever, they all sing and they all dance, and they all plan to come back next year. It's good-natured, rum-driven, Wrigley-bleachers-type debauchery in an amphitheater-lawn setting, and it's not an easy illusion to create. It's just fun as all hell. Come on, think about it. Soft ocean waves. Beer. Island breezes. Crowds of friends. Giant seafood feasts. People telling you to live life, do just as you please, and not take any of the rest of this shit too seriously. People wanting to live happily ever after, every now and then. It could be the perfect lifestyle that this man has tapped into. And whether or not he actually lives it, whether or not it's become a shady marketing ploy, whether or not any of it means anything at all is a point made moot in an ocean of friends and Old Style and loud, out-of-tune voices all singing together. Is it all an illusion? Sure. And a fragile one at that. But I subscribe to it because I can, and it beats the hell out of thinking about this lake wind. Epilogue I went home from work and began thoroughly feeling sorry for myself. I turned on Radio Margaritaville - each Buffett show of the summer is broadcast on the Web in RealAudio - and, 200 miles away, listened in on what I was missing. And, due to a spot of good karma, I clocked in right at the beginning of "One Particular Harbour," a personal favorite of mine since high school. And then the phone rang. It was my entirely-too-thoughtful fiancˇ at the show. It was also my friend Aaron. And my brother. And my Mom. And my Mom's boyfriend. And a cousin, I think, and some roommates and an aunt and about 30 other indiscriminately screaming voices I couldn't make out if I tried. Just calling to say hi. To sing my song with me. I listened to the show out of my left ear and my drunken buffoon friends singing, in the most god-awful voices you've ever heard, to me in my right. But there's this one particular harbour / So far but yet so near / Where I see the days as they fade away / And finally disappear. I'd rather not admit to singing out loud in my apartment by myself that night. I'd really rather not. But what are you gonna do. I grabbed another beer, turned up the concert 200 miles away and pointed myself toward Margaritaville. It beat the hell out of thinking about much else. |
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| Jeff Vrabel is NATN's resident ranter and eldest brother of staff writer David Vrabel (Beastie Boys). We're currently taking bets on how many NATN readers he can convert to Buffett fans with this piece. other articles by jeff vrabel Dress Like A Rock Star For Halloween I Touched Britney Spears! Facing 'Behind The Music |
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