Jimmy Buffett at 60
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James Joyner | Wednesday, January 10, 2007 |
Slate music critic Jody Rosen sums up the career of Jimmy Buffett, who turned 60! this past Christmas:
Buffett is one of the music business’ singular success stories. He has parlayed an unlikely subject—getting shitfaced while cruising the Gulf Coast in your power boat, basically—into a multimillion-dollar industry, a perennial place on Forbes‘ list of highest-grossing entertainers, and the most passionate concert audience this side of the Deadheads. (He also has written a couple of New York Times best sellers, operates a chain of seaside bars, and has his own seaplane airport, Lone Palm. Take that, Mick Jagger.) Buffett has done all this without altering his music one iota—indeed, without any evident effort at all.
She says that like it’s a bad thing. Indeed, combined with the ridiculously prolific production of Christopher Hitchens, who, according to a recent New Yorker profile, manages to crank out first-draft-equals-final-copy columns in between cocktails while hosting dinner parties, Abraham Lincoln’s (perhaps apocryphal) retort to his complaints about his commanding general’s alcohol problem: “I wish some of you would tell me the brand of whiskey that Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to my other generals.”
About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and infant daughter.
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- Below The Beltway linked with Jimmy Buffett Turns 60
Powerboat? Try sailboat. If this person can't get the most basic thing correct in the story how can I believe she researched any of it. He may have a powerboat today but his career was based upon sailboat songs.
As for altering his music any long term fan will tell you he has had many shifts in style over his long career. Personally I won't buy any of the new stuff, why when the early stuff was so good.
I listen to his Greatest Hits about once a week. I noticed his music started making more sense as I entered my 40s.
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