Parrotheads Invade Philadelphia

I bet you can’t guess what these three musical acts have in common:

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.

The Rolling Stones.

Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefer Band.

Give up? Each can sell out an outdoor stadium concert venue in minutes.

Jimmy Buffett? Yeah. Jimmy Buffett. And we’re not talking some 8,000 seat indoor arena. We’re talking the new Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, with a seating capacity of over 46,000 people for a ball game. Jimmy Buffett filled it. Twice. In three days.

I’ve been a fan of Jimmy’s for as long as I can remember. I heard and enjoyed Margaritaville when it was brand new (long before I knew what a margarita was). However, I never really realized how big a draw he was on the road until it hit me that, year after year, I’d never been able to get tickets to any of this shows. As a fan for almost thirty years, I was surprised when it struck me this past spring that I’d never had the chance to actually see Jimmy in person. I discovered that my inability to get tickets is because Buffett, probably more than any musical act today, has a fan base that is rabidly loyal and single-minded in its desire to be part of the experience that is a Jimmy Buffett concert. (Think “The Grateful Dead” with a beach motif and you’ve got the Jimmy Buffett fan base.)

I have heard the tales. Buffett concerts are more than concerts; they’re events that are part concert, part carnival, part vaudeville show, and part bachelor party. The liquor flows freely, the partying starts early, and the music puts you in a vacation state of mind no matter what time of year it is.

Having gone to college in Ohio, my knowledge of Buffett-ology grew as a result of the counter-intuitive love-affair between Jimmy and Cincinnati. Somewhere along the way, the city of Cincinnati adopted Jimmy as its own, and Mr. Buffett has always returned that love. His concerts in Cincy sell out in minutes. (I always suspected that the connection had something to do with the fact that I-75 connects Ohio directly with Florida and, ultimately, to the Keys). I’d heard that the term “parrothead” was actually coined in Cincinnati. (According to some, “parrothead” describes the look of the hair on your head the morning after a night of heavy drinking, smoking, and partying at a Buffett concert.)

But I didn’t need any of that background to appreciate Jimmy. Songs like the aforementioned Margaritaville, Changes in Attitudes, and Volcano all put me in a laid-back, low key, vacation frame of mind that I always strive for, (and, let’s be honest, long for) every day. That’s the appeal of Jimmy Buffett. There’s always been something about him that evokes visions of the beach, and sitting on a hammock strung between two palm trees, nursing a frozen concoction while watching the sun bake all of the tourists scattered on the sand around you.

But actually getting Jimmy Buffett tickets has proven to be quite a challenge over the years. I only ever found out about tickets long after they went on sale, and thus long after the venue was sold out. (Buffett tickets have been known to sell out in as little as 16 minutes.) This year, though, I was determined to get tickets somehow.

Thank goodness for the Internet. With about a gajillion brokers, plus e-bay, I had a lot of options available to me. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’m persistent to a fault. As a result, after a determined search, I was able to narrow the brokers down to a select few with decent tickets at decent prices. I wound up paying $125 for $88 tickets, which gave me two seats on the field, about 150 feet from the stage. (Here’s a little tip, by the way: it pays to shop around, because other brokers were selling seats in the same section and the same row for $200.)

Jimmy was playing two dates in Philly, a Thursday and a Saturday. I chose Saturday so that we could make a day of it, which was well worth it. We headed down to Philly with reservations for an early dinner in a little Italian restaurant in South Philly. (Absolutely wonderful place, by the way. L’Angolos. Check it out if you can, on the corner of 15th and Porter. I know, I know -- not exactly a Buffett kind of place. But, at the risk of being blasphemous, man does not live by cheeseburgers alone.)

After dinner, we drove down to the stadium and marveled at the thousands of people, and the hundreds of tailgating parties, scattered around. As we walked through the parking lot, our senses were overloaded: men in every pattern of Hawaiian shirt imaginable; women (and men) in grass hula skirts and parrothead hats; tiki bars; wading pools; skateboard ramps; flowered leis every where you looked; pirate hats; sailors’ caps; blenders full of margaritas and other boat drinks. At the stadium, signs for Corona beer and Margaritaville Tequila banners were everywhere, and the tequila company had sponsored stands all around, to give you just a taste. Unlike some other concerts I’ve attended, a feeling of good will permeated the crowd outside the stadium and carried over to the stadium itself. Everyone was having a wonderful time, and it felt good just to be there.

Jimmy himself puts on an extraordinary show. His personality, which is charming, laid back, and real, easily projected itself throughout the stadium. He stepped out on stage at 8:15, wearing a Philadelphia Cheesesteak T-Shirt, peach-colored shorts, and no shoes. As he walked out, 40,000 people jumped up cheering. As I looked all around me, I could see five decks of people just going nuts, and the vibe on the field was intense. I can’t begin to imagine what it felt like for him, who was, after all, the object of everyone’s affection that night.

I didn’t keep track of the set list. A Buffett concert really isn’t about that. Everything he played was familiar and fun and made you feel good. He did some of the stuff from his latest album, License to Chill. He did some of his older stuff: Fruitcakes, and Grapefruit, Juicy Fruit. He did some other people’s stuff: Brown Eyed Girl and Southern Cross (which, quite frankly, should be a Jimmy Buffett song). He showed video clips of his life, and his travels. He also showed plenty of footage of “Adults Acting Like Children” (as he termed it appreciatively), taken in the parking lot before the show, as background visuals to his songs. He had a guest appearance from the Phillie Phanatic, the baseball team’s mascot, who helped the Coral Reefer dancers with some numbers, and also brought out some of the toppings for the temporarily renamed “Cheesesteak in Paradise” song. It was all fast-paced, feel-good, fun stuff.

He took a fifteen-minute break after about an hour and twenty minutes and came back with a ten-minute video tribute to the late, great Johnny Carson. He reminisced about his first appearance on The Tonight Show back in the day, how much being on Johnny’s show meant to him, and how it influenced his life and his career. He then started the second half of the concert with what he told us was one of Johnny’s favorite songs, which he could never play on the air: Why Don’t We Get Drunk. From there, he did another hour and ten minutes, which he concluded with Fins.

Fins, for the uninitiated, is a song about a girl who travels from Cincinnati to Florida, and then the Caribbean, looking for life (and presumably love) while surrounded by “sharks that swim on the land.” (Unfortunately, my little summary is woefully inadequate to capture even one-one-hundredth of the free spirit and good feelings of that song.) To cue the song, Jimmy clapped both hands together over his head, fingers extended, so that it would look like a make-shift shark fin over his head. In unanimous response, 40,000+ people clapped their hands over their heads, forming their own fins, and with the lyric, “Fins to the left, fins to right,” the crowd moved in unison, dancing with the song. Buffett himself couldn’t help but appreciate the sight, as he commented to us all, “You can’t believe how funny that looks from up here!” I looked around, and watched five decks full of people point their fins to the left, then to the right, as a giant, air-filled, remote controlled shark hovered over the crowd. It was simply amazing.

Jimmy then proceeded to do two encores. After the first, I was watching him on the big-screen monitor and, off-mike, I could read his lips as he said to his backstage producer: “This is awesome!” That moment sums up Jimmy Buffett. He truly enjoys what he does. He really revels in it, and it shows. At one point in the show, he commented about how he loves his summer job -- meaning, of course, the fact that he gets to do what he does for a living. It is obvious that we all love to share it with him, and he with us. Jimmy knows what he’s got, and he understands and appreciates his fans. His albums don’t ever disappoint, and his concert was the epitome of what he stands for.

His last encore consisted of a Buffettized version of the Springsteen classic, Glory Days. This selection was perfect, not so much for what the song was about, but because it showed that Jimmy was aware that, in Philadelphia (no more than an hour away from Asbury Park), his fans would appreciate the fact that he was paying tribute to The Boss in The Boss’s backyard. Just as Jimmy had recognized moments before, it was awesome.