I heard “Margaritaville”, Jimmy Buffett’s song about an imaginary place where you can go and live an idyllic life of pleasure and daily half-inebriated fun, way back in the early nineteen seventies. I liked it, as opposed to his first charted song, “Come Monday.” “Monday” was too country for me, and his twangy voice grated on my sensibilities like chalk on a blackboard. Later, I heard “Cheeseburger in Paradise” which I really enjoyed, but Buffett was still just another voice on the radio. I was not a big fan and didn’t anticipate ever being one.

Then, I saw Tom Cruise in “Cocktail.” I was enchanted by the tropical scenery, and the Beach Boys hit from that movie remained in my conscious thoughts for weeks. “Kokomo” filled my imagination with tropical dreams, and when I went on a family vacation to Florida in the Fall of 1988, I was hooked on the warm weather, sea breezes, sandy beaches, and the little Tiki bars that dot the coastlines. When I got back to Upstate New York, the plane landed in a snowstorm and I made it to the parking lot wearing shorts with a long-sleeve shirt and sock-less sneakers. I wanted to jump back on the plane and go back to sunny Florida.

Within the next couple of days, I went to a local music store looking for tunes to transport my mind back to what I now saw as Paradise. When I got to the B section of the racks I saw a long-haired, barefooted guy carrying a guitar slung on his back, walking in what looked to me like a warm place on the cover of an album. I don’t recall which album it was, but I asked the clerk if they had that one in cassette tape. He smiled and said it was selling well since the first snowfall of the season had arrived. I played it on my car stereo for the next several months, nearly to the exclusion of Bob Seger, the Stones, and whoever else I had in my cassette case. The hook was set and I couldn’t pull it out.

Soon, I owned all of Buffett’s tapes except the early hardcore Country music he started out with. Eventually, I bought every book he published and started on my quest to get tickets for one of his concerts. That quest started in the early nineties and I finally landed a pair of tickets to catch Jimmy and the Coral Reefer Band in New Jersey. Then the fun began.

We pulled into the Meadowlands parking lot that afternoon, to find a shocking array of events occurring before our eyes. There was an ocean of people with open grills, cooking up cheeseburgers, shrimp, and other delights. There were $100,000.00 campers that had signs covering their sides, with pictures of parrots, palm trees, Margaritas, and girls in bikinis. One very expensive tour-bus-sized camper had a gigantic shark fin fastened to the top. The most shocking part of the unfolding scenario was the people. Most of the revelers were in shorts, tees, and flip-flops. There were ladies in flip-flops wearing grass skirts and real coconut shell bras. The temperature that winter day was in the upper forty-degree range! We’d never seen anything like this before. It was amazing, but the best was yet to come.

Inside the sold-out arena, it was another big party. I guess it was probably a continuation of the tailgate party that had been raging in the parking lot. Everybody was drinking and laughing. There was a lot of backslapping, greeting old friends, and making new ones going on all around us. New to all this revelry, we could only watch in wonder as we were in the middle of the biggest party we’d ever seen.

I’m not sure when it started, but at some point, there became a conga line. Not just a few drunken Parrot Heads staggering around in a loose line, but literally, a thousand or more costume-clad Buffett fanz congaing on all levels of the arena at one time.

Then, Jimmy and The Reefers took the stage. The standing ovation lasted what seemed like five minutes or more. After the crowd settled down, Jimmy began the show. To my amazement and surprise, everyone in the audience seemed to know every word of every song. Then there were the songs where the crowd participated, like “Fins”, and “Margaritaville” where everyone knew what to say and do. But it was all about “Don’t Stop the Carnival,” the Herman Wolk book that Jimmy had set to music for the play he was presenting later. I don’t think anyone sat in their expensive seat. Meg and I surely didn’t sit down again until we were in the car heading back to New York.

That was it for us. We didn’t know it yet, but we’d become Parrot Heads. I wasn’t aware of the term until I told a friend that we’d been to the Buffett concert. She said, “So, you guys are Parrot Heads.” I asked her what that meant and she told me it was what the dedicated Buffett fan base is known as.

As you might imagine, the bug had bitten us and we began trying to make it to a Buffett show every time we could get tickets. That was made easier when a couple from Binghamton, NY who were super fans decided to start a local Jimmy Buffett fan club chapter. Of course, we became charter members and were then able to buy discounted concert tickets reserved for Parrot Head Club members. That affiliation led to another level of Parrot Headedness. The monthly Phlockings, the bus trips, and traveling en-mass to Buffett concerts with the attending tailgating, greatly enhanced the experience.

All of the involvement with the Parrot Head Club and Jimmy Buffett’s music made me not just a Buffett fan, but a fan of the Trop Rock/Beach Music genre as a whole. I became so involved that when asked by Jim Jowsey, the founder of Shore Life Radio, a web-based Trop music Internet station, to join him in broadcasting all of the artists who play the Buffett-based type of songs, I agreed. Oops! There went ten years of my retirement.

My story is likely a clone or near clone of thousands of other Parrot Heads in Jimmy Buffett’s Parrot Head Nation. It’s the one music in all my lifetime of being a music lover that totally sucked me in. I wear “island shirts” year-round. My deck is decorated as a Tiki bar. My office has Parrot Head memorabilia on the walls, and there’s always Trop Rock beach music on my Alexa, car stereo, and deck. Jimmy Buffett is the reason I learned to play the guitar after I retired, and his songs have been the soundtrack of my life for about the last forty years.

I’m going to keep playing his music and acting like an old beach bum even though Jimmy has sailed off into the sunset. He passed away on September 1, 2023, but his music will live forever in the hearts and souls of millions of people who revere it just as I do. We’ll miss you Bubba, but we’ll keep playing your music until we join you in departing this “big round ball.”