Overall picture: Mellowing with parrotheads at Buffett concert
Overall picture: Mellowing with parrotheads at Buffett concert
By: Bill Mead, Tehachapi News Columnist
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Posted by editor Tue Nov 30, 1999 00:00:00 PST
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0 responses 0 comments I know you're wondering what this old man was doing at a Jimmy Buffett concert in Irvine a few weeks ago. I'm wondering too.
If you're a red-blooded American you know that Jimmy and his Coral Reefer Band have acquired a huge following of fans who burst into tears at the opening bars of songs like “Margaritaville” rendered by elderly musicians dressed like beach bums. These Buffett fans call themselves parrotheads and travel long distances to see and hear the Coral Reefer Band play the same songs in the same way they have been doing it for the past 40 years.
When Jimmy and his social security set appeared a couple of years ago in Chula Vista I was ten seconds late in ordering tickets. By that time all the tickets were gone, even those for standing room in the lawn area miles from the stage. But justice has finally prevailed. I don't know how she did it, but my granddaughter got us all tickets for a Buffett concert at the Verizon Irvine Ampitheater early this month. As you might suspect they were for the cheap seats which turned out to be no seats. The tickets merely allowed us to fight with other parrotheads for limited space on a grassy knoll from which the stage looked like something we used to watch on those old seven-inch TV screens.
That was okay (one guitar picker looks like another) because the sound system worked great and the music could be heard as far as Central America. It had to be that loud because all 16,000 parrotheads in the audience knew the words to every Buffett song and sang them at the tops of the lungs throughout the show.
If you're not a parrothead you can't possibly understand the Buffett mystique so let me give you the basics. Most importantly, don't ever go to a Jimmy Buffett concert to watch Jimmy. You go to watch the other parrotheads. A long time ago I stumbled into a bizarre religious service and I can tell you that parrotheads display more dementia than any spiritually possessed group I can imagine. The second warning is that a great many sick people are followers of Buffett's Coral Reefer Band. I know that because at Irvine the odor of medicinal marijuana was virtually overpowering. We not only had grass under us but also in huge clouds over us.
I know you're as outraged as I am at the thought of anybody lighting up a joint under any conditions so please don't think I'm arguing for legalization of marijuana when I say the Buffett audience was more orderly and polite than almost any crowd we have ever been a part of. To make my position even clearer, let me tell you I think the argument that marijuana has some health benefits is a crock, if you'll pardon the expression. I'm sure there is some other reason why I kept feeling better and better as the show went on.
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