RIP Jimmy Buffett

Bummer

I haven’t seen Jimmy Buffett in a number of years. The next time he was going to come to Vegas, I was going to see him just for kicks. Vegas is commercial, and sometime in the mid-1990s, Jimmy Buffett went full-on commercial too.

You have to respect it. He built a gigantic business empire that will throw money off to his descendants for at least a generation until all of my generation dies. Buffett died at 76. Since I am 61, that seems pretty young to me. Life is all about perspective. Doesn’t really matter how he passed, but I am glad it was peaceful with his family.

I remember when Margaritaville came out. I was a freshman in high school. The people who lived across the street were huge Buffett fans. They’d go every year and it looked like a lot of fun to a freshman. I never saw him until after I graduated from college. I never had money, nor the time, for stuff like that.

When I first started seeing him, I was on the lawn. One year, at Poplar Creek it rained. That concert venue in the northwest Chicago suburbs is no more. We were sliding up and down the hill in the mud. My wife and friends ended up at White Castle. Once I started trading, I used to pay up and see him sitting in the front rows. The concerts were always fun.

My wife and I would go with great friends and turn it into a big production. One time, we put a big plywood fin on the top of our minivan on the way to the show. Of course, we ditched the plywood fin on the way home.

When we were first married in 1987, we went to Key West for a vacation. We wanted to scuba dive and we wanted to check out Buffett and Hemingway’s old haunts. Turns out there was a tropical depression over Cuba and scuba diving was no bueno. I was so seasick! There is a reason I would never have been a good sailor. But, we made it to Margaritaville.

My father-in-law had a decent-sized power boat in Cape Coral, Florida. We drove out to the island, Cabbage Key, where legend has it Jimmy Buffett wrote “Cheeseburger in Paradise”. A hurricane tore up that key. I don’t think it’s there anymore.

Seeing him at Wrigley Field a couple of times was pretty cool. What made it cooler is that Buffett was a Cubs fan via his friend Steve Goodman, who passed away a long time ago from cancer. If you haven’t listened to Steve Goodman's songs, check out Lincoln Park Pirates and A Dying Cubs Fan’s Last Request.

Buffett was good pals with John Prine who passed away during Covid. Covid got him but lung cancer and other things were going to get him if Covid didn’t.

The last time I saw him was back in 2017, my wife and I went by ourselves. We saw him in Chicago at Toyota Park and bought tickets close to the stage at the last minute.

For some reason of all the songs he did, this one sticks with me. A Pirate Looks at 40. This resonates. A lot of people who led a similar “occupational” life as I did will get it.

Yes I am a pirate, two hundred years too late
The cannons don’t thunder, there's nothin' to plunder
I'm an over-forty victim of fate
Arriving too late, arriving too late

Mother, mother ocean, after all the years I’ve found
My occupational hazard being my occupation's just not around
I feel like I've drowned, gonna head uptown
I feel like I've drowned, gonna head uptown

Today sounds like a good day to play all three of those artists.

RIP Jimmy Buffett. Say hello to Steve Goodman and John Prine.