Guitars, Drums, Tones, and Saxophones

Jimmy Buffett - A1A

OK, so this is gonna be a little different. So far here we’ve seen nothing but reviews of punk albums, with a bit of ska and one acoustic solo effort by a punk frontman to shake things up. But dammit, this is a blog about music of all sorts, and so we’re going to talk about this album.

So I think just about everyone on Earth knows who Jimmy Buffett is. He’s the guy who, as of 2008, makes a ridiculous amount of money playing songs about getting drunk on beaches to white, middle- and upper-class suburbanites while they sit on lawns at overpriced venues and pretend they’re the kind of wandering, carefree troubadours that Buffett sings about. You have probably heard “Margaritaville” at some point in your life, and every now and then you might see a new album on the “New Release” chart, probably with some silly, punny title. You scoffed, more likely than not.

Probably surprising to some of you, but this was not always the picture of Jimmy Buffett and his career.

[Editor's note: this is, I think, the longest entry thus far.]

In 1974, Buffett was a young singer/songwriter, with a band called the Coral Reefers. He had released a country-folk album on the small Barnaby Records label, recorded another for them that they promptly “lost” (until “Margaritaville” became a hit in ’77 of course), and recorded a pair of albums for ABC-Dunhill Records that did moderately well; “Come Monday” off Living & Dying in 3/4 Time had been a modest radio hit, and “Why Don’t We Get Drunk…” (“and screw,” the line ends) from A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean was a favorite on jukeboxes in dive bars around the country. Between the Barnaby records and landing with ABC, he had gone to Key West and undergone a conversion from wannabe Nashville star, to sun-soaked beach bum. And so, it is in this stage of his career that Buffett recorded and released A1A, his record named after the Florida coast road that takes one down to the Florida Keys.

The album, like much of Buffett’s output at that point, is a pretty country-oriented affair. Now for the younger audience among us who have no sense of history, or of genres outside of cultural jokes and lame modern radio interpretations, country does not merely mean songs about the dog dying, your truck getting repo’d, and your wife leaving the trailer. Country music was simply a style, music to set a ballad-type song to. And Buffett was first and foremost a storyteller, which threw him into the balladeer catagory. And this album is filled with stories; see tracks like “A Pirate Looks at Forty,” written about a man who frequented one of the bars Buffett hung out at in Key West, or “Nautical Wheelers,” which tells of a rambuctious group again down in Key West.

Side A (the first 6 songs on the album) is half covers, but they fit with the album; “Makin’ Music for Money” is pretty accurate for what Buffett was doing at the time (making music for the sake of being able to make music, breaking even if you were lucky to get out and see places and have stories to tell), “Dallas” is a pretty harsh indictment of the city, and “Stories We Could Tell” sums up a big part of Buffett’s storyteller’s love.

Side B kicks off with the aforementioned “A Pirate Looks at Forty,” and leads into “Migration,” where Buffett finds himself looking at the wave of newcomers coming to Florida- and more specifically, the Keys- and not liking the direction he sees things going in. In the ’70s, when Buffett arrived, Key West was not the vacation destination we know it as now; it was a refuge for outcasts and misfits, and the town was wild because of it. Of course, eventually it became gentrified, and the fun was taken out of it (some people would make comparisons to Buffett’s career, and wonder if one caused the other).

The album wraps up with a trio of Buffett classics, including the wonderful “Nautical Wheelers.” The song namechecks his previous album- Living & Dying in 3/4 Time- and is perhaps one of the best songs he ever committed to wax.

One thing someone only familiar with Buffett’s later career- or what people tend to say about him and his music- is the distinct lack of corny jokes and cheesy appealing/pandering to his long-time audience (since he didn’t have one at this point). The music is more straightforward and honest. At this point, Buffett has no mythic persona to live up to, and so he’s telling the stories of what he sees and making the music he wants to. The album, as a result, contains some of his strongest material to date, and the album has aged well; it serves as a picture of the Key West he found upon arriving there in the early 1970s.

In the interest of not letting this go on forever and ever (too late), I will close with this: if you’re not too put off by the idea of country music and Jimmy Buffett to try listening to this record with an open mind, I suggest you do so. You may be surprised by what you find. There’s no “Cheeseburger in Paradise” or “Margaritaville” to be found here. Just a guy, his guitar, and some stories to tell.

Rating: What do you think?

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