 Hooray
For Me!
A Quinn Martin Production
Starring Captain
Spaulding
One Margarita Too Many?
Gripes turn up in the strangest places. I was in
Jamestown, NY, a bucolic burg of brick-paved streets and shady lawns, out driving with a
friend. We noticed some post-adolescents in tie-dyed shirts and cutoffs having what
appeared to be a jam session with guitars and congas on somebody's front porch. My friend
launched into a tirade against youthful Deadhead wannabes such as these who are
unsuccessfully trying to engineer a time warp and re-create Haight-Asbury via the band Phish.
My reply was that a far more guilty exponent of such tribal escapism is Jimmy
Buffett. I don't know, maybe it was the fresh summer air that got me all cranky
about fruity alcoholic drinks and herdlike bacchanals.
Buffett's Caribbean-crazed fans, called
"Parrotheads", exhibit the same sort of quit-your-life-and-follow-the-tour and
Rocky-Horror-bring-all-the-right-props-to-the-show mentality people used to associate with
Deadheads before Jerry Garcia sampled the Great Blotter in the Sky. The difference is that
Parrotheads eschew the frozen-in-amber retro of thirty years ago in favor of a luau kitsch
that will never run out of style as long as fat guys keep giving their old Hawaiian shirts
to the Salvation Army.
I've had a hard time figuring out Buffett's appeal. He
has some overlap with country music, demonstrated by his facile lyrics and their general
preoccupation with liquid substance abuse. But his origins were as the house folkie at
Chicago's old Quiet Knight nightclub, which explains the simplicity and directness of his
musical approach. Near as I can figure out, he has made a career out of tapping into the
Tahiti Syndrome--which has been both ubiquitous and compelling since before the days of
Paul Gauguin and Robert Louis Stevenson--translating it (for reasons of proximity and
affordability) to a Caribbean milieu, and spiking the whole concoction with a lot of
spring-break sophomorism. When Americans want to think about living out a tropical island
fantasy, they turn away from the bloated-carcass self-indulgence of Marlon Brando and
towards Jimmy Buffett and his Coral Reefer Band.
With this in mind, the man deserves some sort of a
collective congratulations from pop-music cognoscenti. How many other singer-songwriters
have carved out such a unique niche with such potential for mass appeal? Further, the
ranks of Parrotheads are testament to the man's ability to tap into some hidden reservoir
of serotonin in the frontal lobe of American pop music. I know two guys who are devout
heavy-metallers (one considers The Who "bubblegum music") who nonetheless swear
by Buffett.
My college peer group's former resident martini snob, for
whom devotion to Sinatra saloon songs and hatred of all things rock-n-roll were two sides
of the same coin, is a paid-up-in-full Parrothead. As I noted, there are legions of
country types "and" perpetually slumming ex-Deadheads who have fallen under
Buffett's spell. And let's not forget the inchoate masses of no particular taste
whatsoever who relish the idea of getting drunk and swaying arm-in-arm in a bar to the
strains of "Margaritaville".
Further, the guy understands that the historical core of
the pirate lifestyle is capitalism. A modern-day swashbuckler may wear madras and deck
shoes on the high seas, but he rakes in the bullion with a theme bar in Key West (the
Disney World of boho castaways). There, would-be roues and rapscallions can pay top
doubloon for neon, high-octane rum drinks and colorful t-shirts with "Jimmy Buffett's
Margaritaville" emblazoned on them, and the singing entrepreneur can feel just like
the cat who swallowed the shoulder parrot.
But what brought on the gripe? After my automobile tour
of Jamestown, I was a few miles north in the summer resort town of Bemus Point. In a bar
overlooking beautiful Lake Chautauqua, friends and I commenced to enjoying ourselves
despite the presence of a jukebox larded with the unlikely combination of the Beatles,
Garth Brooks, Motley Crue, Sheryl Crow, and Jimmy Buffett. At one point, Buffett's version
of the Van Morrison classic "Brown-Eyed Girl" came on. Having never heard
Buffett's take before, I listened closely. It erased the poignance of Morrison's version,
the bittersweet memory of a long-lost romance as interpreted in the Belfast Cowboy's
understated soul manner. It superimposed the Buffett trademarks of a loping, bubbly Yamaha
organ arrangement and a sardonic lyrical reading over it. A friend turned to me and said,
"This sucks. It's sacrilege."
He was right. You can't build a career as the suntanned
rebel telling in-jokes and laughing all the way to the bank and then expect to land within
a hundred nautical miles of sincerity. There are some things in life you just niche your
way out of. I'm not the killjoy who's going to pray for a snowstorm on Key West, but my
thoughts on Buffett and All Things Parrothead took a turn southward that night. And not
southward into sunny climes, either.
CAPTAIN SPAULDING
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Two years ago, Captain Spaulding sorted all of this out for you in Hooray For Me! |