Before the Beach

[Bucarader]

So, I've had a couple of glasses of wine and I'm reading the liner notes to my copy of "Before the Beach". This is the same set of liner notes autographed by Jerry Jeff awaiting one more autograph. The album is dated '93 and Jimmy says that it is "...hard to beleive that he recorded these songs twenty years ago in Nashville...".

Twenty years. I was a junior at A&M twenty years ago. My roomate and I had decided to "upgrade" from our one Buffett CD, SYKBH, to the new Box Set. I heard Tin Cup Chalice for the first time. I went to my first JB concert at The Woodlands twenty years ago. It was the Camelon Caravan Tour. I still have the t-shirt. My wife was in second grade.

How far we have come, Parrotheads! Each of us has our own story to tell about how we became "one" with this music.

Someday, we should all tell our stories of where we were...Before the Beach!

[PetalMel]

It was the winter of my junior year in college. I believed I was "in love" with some guy who at this point I can't remember his name. He asked me to go to some "Buffett Beach Party" at his fraternity house. Didn't have a clue who Buffett was, but I was in love. By the end of the evening I realized I was in love, but not with what's his name. The next morning I went out and bought the "Changes In Latitude" cassette (yep, cassette) and by that summer I was at Camelot Music on the day Floridays came out to get that cassette. I was in line at Hudson's to get tickets for Pine Knob, waiting with a throng of people wanting Madonna tickets. The lady at the counter was shocked that I wanted Buffett tickets and not Madonna.

The year? 1987. What a ride it has been I have met a bunch of people I love more than some of my blood relatives and celebrated my 25th "Buffettversary" this year at Comerica Park.

[LiveandletLiver]

I was lifting weights in my buddy's garage in 1978 and he had this music on. I asked him who it was and he told me it was some guy named Jimmy Buffett. He said you have to go see him in concert to really appreciate him.

I went to see him at Universal Amphitheater two months later and now 48 shows and 34 years later I can't wait for Vegas.

Funny thing is my buddy quit going to see him when he got really big because it "wasn't special" anymore.

[Tiki Torches]

Hard to pinpoint an exact date but I'm guessing somewhere around '73 or '74. I asked one of my brothers, who was attending ECU in Greenville at the time, to pick up a copy of Alice Cooper'sBillion Dollar Babies for me, which he did. He was already a Buffett fan but he'd purchased a copy of Living and Dying In ¾ Time during the same run. When he came home from college that weekend we had a listening session in my parents' living room of both albums. This same brother had also turned me onto Alice circa Killer but I remember that by the time Billion Dollar Babies came out, he was a lot less enamored of Alice and was way more into stuff like Buffett. I'm pretty sure that's the first time I'd ever heard his music or had at least heard it in a way that stayed with me.

[mason]

It was the winter of my junior year in college. I believed I was "in love" with some guy who at this point I can't remember his name. He asked me to go to some "Buffett Beach Party" at his fraternity house. Didn't have a clue who Buffett was, but I was in love. By the end of the evening I realized I was in love, but not with what's his name. The next morning I went out and bought the "Changes In Latitude" cassette (yep, cassette) and by that summer I was at Camelot Music on the day Floridays came out to get that cassette. I was in line at Hudson's to get tickets for Pine Knob, waiting with a throng of people wanting Madonna tickets. The lady at the counter was shocked that I wanted Buffett tickets and not Madonna.

The year? 1987. What a ride it has been I have met a bunch of people I love more than some of my blood relatives and celebrated my 25th "Buffettversary" this year at Comerica Park.

J L Hudsons you say. ahhhh..the memories of year gone by.



"yes, we have been here before "

san jose march 2012

[The Remittance Man]

It was circa 1983 - I was ten or thereabouts - and my best pal was the kid on the next block, whom we'll call Jason. (Well, okay, that was his real name.) My mother couldn't stand him because he was a little troublemaker with minimal supervision at home because his divorced mother was a night-shift waitress at a country club. That, of course, meant I loved hanging out at his place. No parental supervision, we could do whatever the heck we liked, and when she was home she just might drive us out to her boyfriend's beach house in her Trans Am with the sunroof open and the radio blasting with that song about cheeseburgers that we couldn't get enough of! And although we never quite got the words right, we used to sing it while riding our bikes around the neighborhood as well: "I like mine with lettuce and tomatoes, I like mine with onions and potatoes...Onions and potatoes?! Ew!" But we'd sing it again and again anyway.

[Wino you know]

1983.
That was the year I started collecting Social Security.

[summeriscool]

I never listened to JB before I was 45. I had friends that always tried to get us to go but all I knew was Margaritaville and kept saying that's okay, I'll pass. My wife got sick in 2006 right before 2007 and my life went downhill from there. In 2008 I bought a Honda Element that came with XM for free. So I'm tuning in to all the different stations and I hear The Weather is Here... Well that did it. After over a year of being a caregiver all I wanted to do was pack my bags and take off where no one could find me. The song really hit home. With two kids and a sick wife depending on me, I couldn't do it and she passed a way a year later. JB got me through a lot of difficult times in the last 4 years. Hard times that still continue. Long story short, I saw him at Jones Beach this year and he did Weather is Here... Well I just lost it. Just wanna say sail on Dianne. And thanks Jimmy. I'll always be grateful.

[jbfinscj]

The first time I heard a Buffett song I was just a child. I remember going to Aunt Catfish in Port Orange, Florida for dinner with my family and the local musician was playing "A Pirate Looks at Forty." Now fast forward to 1996, I was 15 years old and my mom bought me "Songs You know By Heart." I was hooked from that point on, the following day "Banana Wind" was released and I have purchasing his music and going to concerts ever since.

[jbfinscj]

I never listened to JB before I was 45. I had friends that always tried to get us to go but all I knew was Margaritaville and kept saying that's okay, I'll pass. My wife got sick in 2006 right before 2007 and my life went downhill from there. In 2008 I bought a Honda Element that came with XM for free. So I'm tuning in to all the different stations and I hear The Weather is Here... Well that did it. After over a year of being a caregiver all I wanted to do was pack my bags and take off where no one could find me. The song really hit home. With two kids and a sick wife depending on me, I couldn't do it and she passed a way a year later. JB got me through a lot of difficult times in the last 4 years. Hard times that still continue. Long story short, I saw him at Jones Beach this year and he did Weather is Here... Well I just lost it. Just wanna say sail on Dianne. And thanks Jimmy. I'll always be grateful.

So sorry to hear about your wife. Your story holds a lot of truth for most of us. I remember when my sister was diagnosed with skin cancer (made a full recovery) I found myself listening to a lot of Buffett, especially his verson of the song "Pacing the Cage."