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howard stateman ([personal profile] howeird) wrote2010-12-23 11:44 pm

Senior Lunch, and another Deep Thought

Put in the subject of the last post but forgot to write about it. Where I work they provide a free box lunch every day. There are usually 5 choices, one of them is always veggie, another is a salad with and without meat, and a sandwich. Lately soup has been a choice. Or tacos. Thurs-Fri of Thanksgiving there was no lunch provided (my boss reimbursed us though) but today and tomorrow they are offering a soup, sandwich & salad buffet.  Not sure what the plan is for next week. Boss is hinting that we should all take off the 31st.

And now a slightly boring story about how I came to be introduced to the music of Jimmy Buffet.

It was the final quarter of 1971, probably around the start of October more than a month before I turned 21. After marching band practice one day, someone suggested we walk across the Montlake Bridge and have a beer warm up at the tavern across the street. It was Irish themed and had a classic Irish name, which I cannot remember now but will probably come to me in a dream, which I will forget when I wake up. It doesn't exist anymore. So, a bunch of us are in the tavern, a mix of band members. There were 144 in the band, but only about a dozen made it to the tav, seniors and grad students mostly. I was a senior, everyone assumed I was 21 already. Someone put money in the jukebox, and what played was what I was told was the tav's official song, and almost everyone in the bar sang along at the chorus. It was an easy chorus to learn.
Why don't we get drunk and screw?
I just bought a waterbed
It's filled up for me and you
They say you are a snuff queen
Honey I don't think that's true
So why don't we get drunk and screw?

I loved the tune, and the lyrics appealed to my twisted sense of humor.

But I had no idea who wrote it or sang it, and nobody was saying. The card in the jukebox was  blank.

I'm not sure when I finally identified it, but when I did I bought the album, which had the catchy title of A White Sports Coat and a Pink Crustacean. I was somewhat disappointed in the LP, some of the songs were downers, like He Went To Paris, Death Of An Unpopular Poet and Railroad Lady. But it also has the quirky Grapefruit - Juicy Fruit and Cuban Crime of Passion. Not to mention They Don't Dance Like Carmen No More. The next one I bought appealed to me a lot more: Changes in Latitudes - Changes in Attitudes. I still play the title song before and/or during any trip. And it also has Margaritaville and the cleverly worded Banana Republics (sing me a song I can dance to or a melody that rhymes).

It went downhill from there. I own maybe 2/3 of his CDs, I've been to several Jimmy Buffet concerts, but lately the people in the cheap seats have been way drunk & rowdy and the good seats are too expensive.

Strange but true, currently the song he's most famous for is It's 5 o'clock Somewhere. Which he didn't write, and was mostly sung by Alan Jackson with Jimmy as a surprise special guest.


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