Indoctrination as a Parrothead – junior member level – started with umbrella drinks, a steel drum tribute band and a lot of laughter at a pre-show party around the pool at, appropriately, the Flamingo in Las Vegas.
We were on the wrong side of sold out for the actual show that time, but that party – the closest they could get to the tailgating scene we later found at Southern California Jimmy Buffett shows – revealed so much pure Parrothead joy that we knew we needed the full experience soon.
Buffett, who died Friday, Sept. 1 at 76, mastered the art of making others experience the low-pressure bliss found in his intoxicating songs. He was a hall of famer at lifting Parrotheads and even first-time dabblers out of their daily doldrums whenever he glided into town or they played his catalog that was so much more than just “Margaritaville.”
While he played in San Diego twice in the past year and in Palm Desert early in 2023, he most recently played locally on Oct. 12, 2019 at Honda Center, an Orange County switch for him after regular appearances at Irvine Meadows – and its various names – over the years, including one of the final shows at the venue in 2016.
Quick aside for my top three places I’ve listed to Buffett music:
3. Any of his Orange County tailgates, where seemingly a third of the people had no intention – and, after some time, no faculties – to enter the concert but just wanted to be among their own;
2. The deck of a house in the Bay of Islands in New Zealand, looking at the Southern Cross constellation while listening to, yes, “Southern Cross.”
1. The lawn atop Irvine Meadows with my wife, our friends and some of the drunkest, highest adults in aloha shirts and parrot headwear you’ll ever see.
A Buffett extravaganza – starting hours before he took the stage – was the sort of escape he sang about in “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes” and “Fins,” the latter of which inspired anyone who arrived…
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