Concert Tailgate Party Stirs This Girl’s Caribbean Soul
Whenever I mention how much fun Jimmy Buffett concerts are to people who have never been to one, I always like to explain it with this story.
It’s the conversion of a Buffett concert virgin – as we call them – to full-on Parrothead.
I have a friend whom I nicknamed Olive Oil, and a lot of the time when she came to my apartment in Manhattan Beach, CA, I would be playing Jimmy Buffett music. So when Buffett came to town for one of his concerts, I naturally told her I would save a seat for her on my party bus.
(I always do party buses when Buffett comes to L.A.! Well, to Irvine Meadows anyway.)
“Listen,” she said in a stern tone (she’s from NYC, Brooklyn to be specific). “I don’t like Jimmy Buffett, I’m sick of hearing Jimmy Buffett all the time when I come here and I will never go to one of his concerts!”
“But the party buses are fun!,” I pleaded. “The tailgate party is a scene you can’t get anywhere else and you don’t have to know Buffett or even like Buffett to have a great time!”
But she would hear none of it because it’s impossible to explain a Buffett show to people who have never been to a Buffett show.
Well, the day before the concert she called to say she was going to it. “Sorry the party bus is full, over capacity, in fact,” I said. “And why the change of heart?”
Everyone in the area was going on the bus, she explained, and she suddenly had nothing to do or anyone to hang out with on that Saturday. “So I’ll follow the bus in my car, stay for an hour or so then come home.”
She said this with an angry tone.
Yet five minutes after her arrival at the venue, I looked up to see her sitting at a tiki bar with her friend. They had those tall plastic glasses like the kind you get from La Salsa in Las Vegas, and were being whisked away across the parking lot because the tiki bar was attached to a golf cart.
They were laughing and yelling “whooo!!!”
About an hour or so later she came up to me, playfully pounded her fists into my chest and yelled, “Why didn’t you tell me these things are so much fun!?!? I drove and now can’t drink – I should have been on the party bus!”
A few days later she called me, as excited as a kid at Christmas, and exclaimed, “the radio station is playing ‘Margaritaville!’ ”
From that point forward, whenever she came to my apartment, she always asked to hear Jimmy Buffett songs.
The conversion from Buffett virgin to Parrothead was complete.
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