Last April was the highlight of my year in 2015. Jimmy Buffett was playing in Tampa, and that is a show I always make it to as one of my close friends from college lives there and that has become an annual chance to get out on the highway, roll into town, catch up on new times with my friend, remember the crazy, old good times and see one of our heroes still rockin' more than 45 years after he started!! To add to the excitement, this year, another dear friend was making the flight to Tampa to join.
To my delight, Jimmy was playing a show in Orlando the Thursday before the Saturday show in Tampa. Alright! Made perfect sense to leave a day early since I drive through Orlando anyhow coming from the Eastern shore. This break from real life would be later dubbed by my better half as "The Buffett Bonanza." I had never been to multiple shows in a short span, so just the notion of this experience had me stoked from the get go.
I arrived in Orlando as planned and the hotel provided a shuttle down to the arena. The driver went around back and dropped me off. To my luck and surprise, Charleston and Snake, Jimmy's security, were standing in a doorway. I approached respectfully, and said, "hey, if y'all can't do this I understand, but I'd just like a picture with you two." They were complete gentlemen and obliged. I then made it over to the party lot and met up with a new friend I met on the Parrothead airwaves.
The next couple hours are kind of a blur, but when the show started, I was in the front row with a stack of speakers directly in front of me. What a gift that was! (Thank you!! You know who you are) This was surreal. Jimmy and the Coral Reefer Band was jamming literally, and I literally mean literally, right in front of me and the sound was figuratively blowing me away! It was strange, for the span of that concert, time seemed to not exist.
When Jimmy and the band got into Cheeseburger in Paradise, something came over me. I put my head directly in front of that speaker, and was in a trance of sorts. None of this was consciously done, but looking back, my eyes were closed and I was yelling the lyrics right along with Jimmy. It was so loud, I, again, figuratively, left the planet Earth. Like to Mars or something, haha. Near the end of the song, I sort of came to and when I looked up, Jimmy was standing on one leg, with his electric guitar, a signature move, laughing and smiling. It's now a memory, a vision that I won't soon forget. To see me acting this way must have been strange to any casual observer, but there's always more than meets the eye...
Two jobs before the one I currently do now, I had a half hour commute to and fro. I drove my '95 Tacoma. Old as it was, it was just as reliable. To this day, when I turn the key, it fires right up. The air and heat worked great and I had a decent deck installed in it so I had my music. As you can tell, I'm a real spartan kind of guy.
One particular day, on the way to work like all the rest, became sort of special to me. As I entered the freeway, Cheeseburger in Paradise came on. Now this in and of itself wasn't strange because I had a CD playing. But what happened next was sort of mysical. I had that CD playing non stop, over and over for a few days. I do that from time to time. I like all the songs. Without really knowing why and not consciously making a decision to do this, I turned the stereo up as loud as it would go and began singing/yelling the lyrics at the top of my lungs. Near the end of the song and shortly after it was over, I got a weird, wonderful buzz. In hindsight, I think a little bit of this was due to slight oxygen deprivation, but most of it rests in the magic of Jimmy's music. On that particular day, just a great outward expression was sort of cleansing, a release of sorts.
A couple weeks before the Orlando show, I was on Facebook and some people were commenting about how they never wanted to hear Cheeseburger in concert again. I told them that they should roll up the windows on their car, turn it up LOUD, you know like Bob Dylan says, in Live '66, in the prelude to Like a Rolling Stone, "Play f$%^in loud!" and then sing/yell the lyrics as loud as they can. I let them know that an experience was there to be had. A freedom to be found.
When I went to the concert in Orlando, I had dreamed and had wondered what would happen and how much fun I would have. I wondered if by some chance maybe I would meet Jimmy and get a chance to tell him a couple stories and maybe hear on or two from him. Luckily life offers up gems of experiences on her time, and we usually do not know what, when, where, or how these gems come our way. Isn't that part of the fun? I am thankful for that experience and the memory lives on from that day, bringing a smile to my face when contemplating the fruitcakiness of it all.
Here's to appreciating, pondering and learning from 2015 but don't look back for too long.
Here's to a New Year. May 2016 bring all of us more dreams, more fun, more compassion, more appreciation, more goals and just as important, more GEMS OF EXPERIENCE from the treasure chest Life offers! If you get a chance to turn your stereo up real loud and yell the lyrics to Cheeseburger, or you get the chance to put your head in a speaker that Jimmy's voice is coming out of, I highly recommend it!
In the words of Jimmy Buffett, "Keep paddlin' out!"
See you there!
Matt Gibbons
