Erica and I saw Jimmy Buffet live last night. I mean, we didn't go for him, we went to the "From the Big Apple to the Big Easy" benefit concert at Madison Square Garden and he was there. The concert in total was part bizarre, part fun, part exhausting and part something else. The something else may have to do with the fact that the crowd was virtually entirely white, far as the eye could see. The whitest mass I believe I have ever seena assembled in New York City. I think we can blame this on Buffett.
The concert began with a lot of performers and groups singing one or two songs, then later being brought out for a little more of a complete set, sometimes to sing with each other and provide golden and unique memories. As well as a lot of cell-phone pictures.
Jimmy Buffett came out, the crowd went wild. Like, seriously apeshit. He starts playing. And keeps playing and playing and playing. All in all, he probably did 8-10 songs which was about double what anyone else played. It seemed like everyone in the crowd knew all of the words, it was echoing off the walls in that special concert-way it does when people are singing along. I had never heard any of these songs before. And what's more, I didn't like them. They were all about sailing and drinking and sitting around on islands. This kind of surprised me, since those are things I like, so why wouldn't I like songs about them? Because they are cheesey and boring, at least thats what I came up with. But the crowd didn't think so.... no the crowd was going crazy. The crowd put their two hands on top of their heads to make a "fin" and sang along "fin to the left, fin to the right" like it was a fucking Raffi record. We were stunned and there was something more than a little creepy about it. Not only have I been ignorant of this Jimmy Buffett sub-culture, but somehow Jimmy can control the crowd, dictate their actions and it didn't seem too far off that if you piss Jimmy off, he's sic a bunch of Long Islanders making hand-fins on you.
Basically, I had no idea Jimmy Buffett was so popular. Did you?
And Bill Clinton was there. That was cool.
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6 comments:
The Buffett fans were presumably the same folks who booed the divine Bette Midler for Bush-bashing.
They don't call it Madison SQUARE Garden for nothing...you think any of those folks had just been hanging out in the bleachers since the RNC?
what about clinton? did he make a hand-fin? did you get to touch him? ohhhhh...the glory.
We did not touch. We did see on a jumbotron screen that corresponded to a little bitty figure on the stage. Jimmy sent a middle aged man in front of us into some kind of coniption/orgasm when he covered a grateful dead song. "Deadheads and Parrotheads... why not?" in his cheesey-but-rather-good-looking-bright-blue-eyes-and-remarkably-well-preserved-for-a-man-who-by-all-accounts-has-been-sitting-in-the-sun-and-drinking-margaritas-for-forty-years kind of way.
The only friend I know who is a parrot
head is the only friend I know who voted for Bush. That being said, I heard if you play 'Son Of A Son of a Sailor" backwards you can hear somone faintly singing" I like money but hate black people" which I thought to be pretty direct as far as subliminal messages go.
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