Gather round, all ye Parrotheads! Because I’m here to announce the government has just adopted a plan to lasso you all up and corral you in Kansas internment camps where your silly hats and overly loud Hawaiian shirts won’t pose a menace to the morals (and eyeballs!) of the more self-respecting members of our fair society! Just kidding, folks. While Jimmy Buffett has his fair share of slaggers I’m not one of them—sure, “Cheeseburger in Paradise” irks me no end, but I sing along to “Margaritaville” every time it comes on the radio, and “Come Monday” always melts my heart.
Buffett has carved himself a unique niche in American popular culture—he’s our great nation’s Official Tropical Escapist Balladeer, whose every song celebrates the freedom to sit on the shady porch of a dilapidated Gulf Coast beach house doing nothing but drinking margaritas all day without suffering the kinds of baleful consequences that land so many daily drinkers in the gloomy rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Relentlessly upbeat even when he’s singing about being down and out, Buffett’s as sunny as the sky above Key West, and just like the sun he wants to shine his warmth down upon all of us. The guy is, let’s face it, charming, and who can resist charming? Well lots of people, actually, but once again I’m not one of them even if I am a nasty cynic of the sort who usually casts a gimlet eye upon the type of guy who possesses the annoying knack of looking at the bright side of everything, including a slow slide into cirrhosis of the liver.
1985’s Songs You Know by Heart is a compilation of Buffett’s greatest hits from the years 1973-79, and like every greatest hits LP by every cult artist, it contains some songs that are only great if you’re a Buffett fanatic of the sort who gives his more casual fans a bad name. But Songs You Know by Heart makes clear that Buffett’s style of Gulf and Country music has its appeal, and only somebody even more jaded than I will write it off as so much unpalatable easy listening dreck. Why, where else are you going to find a perfectly nice country tune whose chorus goes, “Why don’t we get drunk and screw?” Which includes the lines, “I really do appreciate the fact you’re sitting here/Your voice sounds so wonderful/But your face don’t look so clear.” I mean, who am I to scoff at such a romantic sentiment?
Like any good-natured coastal dweller with salt water in his veins and an independent streak, Buffett considers himself a kind of friendly pirate, and he says as much in the pleasant “Son of a Son of a Sailor,” in which he announces he’s just glad he doesn’t live in a trailer. Meanwhile, in the slow and wistful “A Pirate Looks at Forty,” Buffett drops the mask of humor to declare himself a pirate come two hundred years too late, and it’s as sad as the beautiful “Come Monday,” which is lush with strings and has a perfectly lovely chorus and could be a Glen Campbell classic but isn’t. But I’ve gone astray because “Come Monday” has nothing to do with the sea, unlike the very chipper “Fins” which come to think about it isn’t about the sea either but about the kinds of sharks who hang around in beachside bars circling defenseless girls. Ladies beware.
“Changes in Latitude, Changes in Attitude” is a raspberry in the face of ugly existence and boasts the wonderful lines, “If we couldn’t laugh we would all go insane.” Which is the observation of a drunken philosopher if ever I’ve heard one, and if you think it a shallow sentiment I have to wonder about you. As for the infamous “Margaritaville,” it’s full of nice details and tells the story of a down-and-outer who may be wasting his life drunkenly searching for his lost shaker of salt but who knows the alcoholic rut he’s fallen into is his own damn fault. And he doesn’t sound all that sad about his plight either, which is a wonderful testament to the sustaining powers of the margarita, that “frozen concoction” that will see you through just about anything, including chronic alcoholism.
There are other joys on the album, even if they’re not really my cup of tequila. The very Caribbean-flavored “Volcano” features lots of steel drums and probably sounds pretty good if you’re at the point of inebriation where your musical quality control systems are on the brink of complete breakdown, and while you’re there teetering on the brink of blacking out I’ll bet you “Boat Drinks” sounds pretty good too. I like the part where he says he just shot six holes in his freezer, and the part where he orders two drinks because one obviously just won’t do the job. As for “Cheeseburger in Paradise” it’s catchy enough, but it makes me want to save the cows. And I love cheeseburgers.
Jimmy Buffett isn’t for everybody, but he offers folks an escape from their workaday lives. Do they really want to abandon their careers to sit around on the front porch of a seedy beach house on the Gulf Coast drinking margaritas all day? No. They’re far too abominably normal. But Buffett allows them to fantasize about such an existence, and I have no problem with that. Hell, I’d live such an existence myself if I weren’t dead certain I’d drink myself to death within a year. So more power to ya, Jimmy. I don’t love your music and your Parrotheads scare the bejesus out of me, but you? I think you’re just swell.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B
