Jimmy Buffett

Hey, welcome back to Taxonomy. We’re having fun. Today I’ve got a little scene report on Keep the Party Going, a truly star-studded tribute to Jimmy Buffett at the Bowl. Plus, the first installment of Things I Would Have Tweeted. ✌️🥥🌴🍹

Jimmy Buffett invented a type of guy. You might know him as Matthew McConaughey. Blond, ruggedly handsome, chill nearly to the point of parody, strong opinions on weak beer. The Buffett look of the mid-1970s—bushy mustache, hair peaking in a few different directions, Hawaiian shirt, sailor cap—has never stopped being A Look, but what the bros who pack the Flora-Bama miss about his whole vibe is the essential kindness at the center of it. His desire to get out and have fun never seemed to mask aggression. He was always ready to turn the party up, but no matter how far out things got, he never seemed to have lost touch with the people who ventured with him. 

I took my mom to her first Hollywood Bowl concert last night, the extremely star-studded tribute to Buffett, who passed away last year from skin cancer. My parents took me to see Buffett a few times in the early ’90s—I want to say once at the rickety Tad Gormley Stadium in New Orleans’ City Park on a death-humid summer afternoon—and it felt like a nice full-circle, almost valedictory moment. Other than peacocking my love of “A Pirate Looks at Forty” in a kind of demonstration of how open-minded I am, I’ve not engaged with his music in a very long time. But as I watched a po-faced Zac Brown singerize his way through a new tribute song called “Pirates and Parrots,” and a sunglasses-wearing Eric Church pinch “Son of a Son of a Sailor,” I thought about how the thing that makes Buffett’s music work so well was his inherent trust in his songs. As is befitting of a man who made a billion dollars on margaritas and PTO, he didn’t feel the need to work the songs too hard. He assumed they were strong enough—and that you were aware enough—for their  power to come through on their own. That doesn’t mean you have to like them, but it does make them more emotionally available than their reputation probably suggests.

The Bowl has done these tributes before—Bob Weir sang a phenomenal “Blues Eyes Crying in the Rain” at last year’s Willie Nelson party—but this was my first one, and I think the first truly HOLLYWOOD event I’ve been to in seven years of living in L.A. County. I wasn’t surprised by the number of celebs who either performed, spoke, or appeared via video, but I was touched by how deeply and sincerely they seemed to have loved him. The more stories they told, the clearer it became to me that Buffett was simply a dude from the Gulf Coast who became extraordinarily rich and famous but never lost touch with his essential Gulf Coastiness. Growing up in Louisiana, I met dozens of men like Jimmy Buffett; it’s just that none of them could get Paul McCartney to play “Let It Be” at their deathbed. 

A few more thoughts/observations/reports about this very strange concert, as well as a list of people who popped up:

• Kenny Chesney. Man still wears the heavily creased baseball cap. I’ve never seen this dude’s forehead.
• Woody Harrelson. In a pair of coke-white bell-bottoms wide enough to carry a dolphin in each leg, the man from Midland drawled a bit about how great the Gulf Coast is (he’s right and he should say it). Claimed to have smoked a J with Buffett on the roof of the Vatican, which is, of course, a variation on the actually-true story of Willie Nelson having smoked a J on the roof of the White House while Carter was president. “Jimmy invented a genre,” he said, correctly. “And a chain restaurant. And a resort. And an old-folks home.”
• Harrison Ford. Once got his ear pierced because he saw Jimmy had done his. He was 40! 
• Angélique Kidjo. I screamed. A shocking one for me. She was predictably great, probably the best performance on the night. I’ve now seen her sing Philip Glass’ interpretation of David Bowie’s Lodger and her own version of Buffett’s “One Particular Harbor.” I love you, Angélique.
• Zac Brown. Really, honestly, a great voice. I don’t nec love what he does with it, but I’m willing to hear him try.
• Pat Riley. That’s right, former L.A. Lakers and Miami Heat coach Pat Riley. He told a story about Buffett getting kicked out of a Heat game for yelling at the ref. Riley says the ref told him Buffett had called him a parrothead (Riley: “That’s not an insult, that’s a compliment!”), which seems unlikely. Why would Jimmy Buffett tell a referee that he, the referee, was a fan of Buffett’s music? Anyway everyone in the crowd, every single person, in unison, said “Pat Riley??” when his name came on the big screen.
• Timothy B. Schmit. Of the Eagles, Poco, and Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band. He was apparently the first person ever to call Buffett’s fans “parrotheads.” Nice to see etymology done in real time. Sang “Volcano” and made a meal out of changing one line to “Don’t want to go to Mar-A-Lago.”
• Jane Fonda, immediately next. Claimed she was actually the person to smoke a bowl with Jimmy at the Vatican. More believable imo.
• Brandi Carlile. Jimmy Buffett loved that he had a friend who was a lesbian whose primary fanbase was lesbians. Apparently he would use their friendship to secure access to obscure fishing locations known only to crusty old lesbian sea captains. One of the lines in the song she sang went something like “Give me shrimp and beer every day for a year and I’ll be fine,” which I identify with.
• James Taylor. Via video, but his appearance produced Beatlemania-like shrieks. Every time a graying legend appeared, a woman behind me would very loudly say, with happy surprise, “Oh, he looks good!”
• Alan Jackson. Again, via video, from the back of a boat. Unrecognizable to me, I wish he’d been waterskiing in jeans like he does in the “Chattahoochee” video.
• Will Arnett. Look, Will Arnett’s whole thing? It’s been a very long time since that worked for me. Performative baritone masculinity in the face of an emasculation you capitulate to still, at the end of the day, is just you talking in a real deep voice. I was genuinely surprised to hear that he and Buffett were close, though. He stayed with Buffett in the tropics while going through a hard time and was invited to sit in the cockpit while Buffett practiced his takeoffs and landings at the St. Bart’s airpot. He declined.
• Snoop Dogg. Old white people love Snoop so much. And Snoop is so game to just smoke weed with whoever. He said if we have any sticky-icky, to roll it up for his main man Jimmy Buffett. At the end of a full, uncensored performance of “Gin and Juice,” he said, “I’m gonna smoke this to the very end, I love you my brother. I love you Jimmy B,” prompting my mom to go, “Aww, he’s sweet.” When he got to the “mackin to this bitch named Sadie” part, he pointed at the geriatric pianist and said “She used to be this man’s lady.” (My mom aww’d at “Sadie,” too.)
• John McEnroe. Makes sense.
• Pitbull. Also makes sense. Did “Don’t Stop the Party,” then brought out Bon Jovi, who rapped a guest verse on a new song called “Thank God and Jimmy Buffett.” Mmhm.
• Judd Apatow. Performatively stoned. Claimed to have stayed with Buffett at St. Barts and was invited to takeoff and landing practice and went. “The moral of this story,” he said, very slowly, eyes blanked, “is that Will Arnett is a pussy.”
• Sheryl Crow. Honestly wish she’d stayed out longer. She did “Fins,” and was so happy to do the hands-over-head-fins-to-the-left thing. Shamed the gathered elites (on stage and in the crowd) for not being willing to do the hands-over-head-fins-to-the-left thing. I really wanted her to stay and do “Every Day is a Winding Road.” 
• Kelly Slater. Of course.
• Jack Johnson. Did “A Pirate Looks at Forty,” and did it justice.
• Dave Grohl. Came out to drum on “Brown Eyed Girl,” which I’d forgotten Buffett had turned into a kind of calypso thing. By the time he did his big ole drum solo, the night was starting to feel a bit like a talent show—all these nerds showing up to do their one special skill. 
• Dave Matthews. Via video, awkward in his lil speech delivery, but nice.
• Don Johnson. This man said the first time he hung with Buffett was in Aspen, at a dinner party with Hunter S. Thompson and most of the Eagles. Buffett made a duck so good they were actually able to taste it through the ice wall of cocaine they’d all done. 
• Eagles. Shame on all of us for thinking the Eagles would do a Jimmy Buffett song at a Jimmy Buffett tribute. We got “Boys of Summer” (Don Henley, I swear, looks like he’s trying to pinch the high notes out of himself when he sings; to his credit, he or his live tuner hit them), a surprisingly nice “Take It to the Limit” sung by Vince Gill, and, sure, Joe Walsh’s “In the City.” I’m not sure about Joe Walsh still trying to be A Rock Guy but his peers seem cool with it. 
• Paul McCartney. Look, Sir Paul was wasted. Hair a little mussed, a light beard growth. Did a little shimmy as he walked to the piano, though that’s nothing new. He leaned in to the mic and, full Scouse, yelped “Hollywood—Fuckin—Bowl!” He pulled it together for a genuinely lovely “Let It Be,” but I’m glad he was having fun. He did a lot of what I guess you’d call Beatlesy gestures and little dances—things you’ve seen him do a million times on camera but that he didn’t do when I saw him at Dodger Stadium a few years ago. I suspect it was a bit of an Irish wake situation, too: McCartney’s love of Buffett seemed very genuine. He was there in Buffett’s last days, visiting him on Long Island, playing him songs. At one point, when everyone was on stage for “Margaritaville,” the camera caught him taking a big sip of his drink, pointing to the sky, then tapping his heart. McCartney gets so much credit for having expanded the minds of millions of people, but I know enough British men to know that him meeting someone like Buffett—relaxed, easy, open, unconflicted about having a good time, unconflicted about having emotions—must have been life-changing, too. It felt like one of the most intimate and heartfelt performances you’re likely to get from Paul, truly touching to watch him navigate it all. 

THINGS I WOULD HAVE TWEETED

In an act of profound self-care, I logged out of Twitter a few weeks ago and have only logged back in to promote the existence of this newsletter. But I like my little jokes, so I've been saving them up for an occasion like this. Here are things I would have tweeted if I'd been tweeting (you can include basically every bullet point above).

Blue Öyster Cult invented shoegaze vocals.

Guys…when the New Radicals guy says “come around, we’ll kick your ass in!”…that’s very scary. He is prone to violence.

A generic complaint about how the bigger a record label is, the more you can bet their promo downloads won’t be properly tagged.

Tiny voices, distant squeaks, the strum of the guitar mixed so it’s essentially percussion… PJ Harvey’s “Rid of Me” is recorded like an ASMR track 

The Train to Mars Hotel. A Grateful Dead tribute in the style of Hum

Trent Reznor having five kids does not sit well with me. 

The numbering system for Super Soakers got out of hand. 

Anaïs Nine Inch Nails

That's it for Taxonomy for now. Thanks for reading. I love you.