Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans

Yes, Peter, I spent last Saturday at the small patch of high ground at the Jazz Fest Acura stage I took to calling Base Camp Biloxi to make sure we had a good view of Jimmy Buffet. And I did not mangle the words to “Let’s All Get Drunk And Screw”. Hell, everyone at Betz Brown’s Abbey on Decatur (not to be confused with the Abbey of subsequent owners) was required to cease all conversation and sing along when ever that came up on the juke, which occurred with alarming frequency. In spite of the fact that I was probably every bit as much afloat at that point in my life as the legendary Mr. Buffet, those words are pretty much imprinted on my consciousness forever (even if that song is in a solid tie for least-favorite Buffet song with “Great Filling Station Holdup”).

There was no way I could miss seeing Buffet, whatever my feeling about the other “big name” acts that Jazz Fest brings in. Jimmy Buffet has always had a special connection to New Orleans and the whole Gulf Coast. And for me it was another of the special moments of healing at this Jazz Fest. Belting out Jimmy Buffet songs at the top of my lungs while I shoveled a foot of snow off my corner lot’s extensive sidewalk, or listening to Biloxi sitting in the cockpit of my sailboat after a day on the water during our all-too-short northern summer were some of the ways Jimmy Buffet Saved My Life. He was, along with all of the music of New Orleans, a large part of what kept my sanity during that long decade in the cold and the dark. I’m glad he did not sing “Biloxi” or I might have wound up curled up in the mud balling, but I have to admit that I pretty much misted up for “Mother Ocean”. Buffet is one of those songwriters who become a part of your life if you’ve lived it right, a good friend you’ve never met.

Jimmy and I have have cleaned up our act a bit since the Mardi Gras day I saw him on Conti just off the corner of Royal, back in the days before the police station was on the corner of Royal, before the state building there was fenced. Back then the people who hung at that corner paid hearty tribute to the building’s name of Wildlife and Fisheries Building (and not in any way involving fish), and it was the place to hang or regroup. He borrowed a guitar from some longhairs who had stopped there to practice their rice paper origami skills and belted out a couple of songs–I only remember clearly that he closed with “Volcano”, then split before the crowd got too big.

In spite of Jimmy and the rest of us being on the High Road of Good Living (now, stop smirking; that’s not what I meant), we are all at some level still “The People Our Parents Warned Us About”.