A Pirate Looks at Fifty
by Jimmy Buffet
A Review by Dave Shultz
 When
I bought Jimmy's new book, A Pirate Looks at Fifty, I never dreamed
I would be reviewing it as a travel book but one look at the table of
contents convinced me this was more than just a half century of Parrot
Head stories. It read like a dream wish list of places I wanted to
visit. Time on the Water, Time in the Air, Time on the Bottom,
Leaving Florida, Cuba and the Cayman Islands, Costa Rica, Columbia, The
Amazon, and The Islands to mention a few. I've
always been a big Buffet fan and found his novels to be as creative and
entertaining as his music. A Pirate Looks at Fifty was no exception
and provided me with hours of quality daydream time as Jimmy and family
flew to exotic locations in his Albatross flying boat. The
book opens with a chapter titled 'My Life (In Four Hundred Words or Less)'
in which he gives us the Readers Digest condensed version of his life up
to now, in case that's all you want to hear but goes on to say if you
continue, there's a lot more meat on the bone. This is a considerable
understatement. His music allowed Jimmy to travel the world and be
the explorer he was born to be. I really enjoyed the quotes
from songs at the beginning of chapters. Until now, I hadn't
realized that most of his music was written from life experience.
When you read the quoted lines and then read the chapter, it all comes
together and now Buffet songs have even more meaning for me. A quote
from 'Creola'... It's in the mood, it's in the blood
It's in the food, it's in the mud
It's the spicy kind of life
Creola ..precedes a chapter on Trinidad detailing his
love of the steel drum sound that's heard in much of his music. He
describes his 'Journey Up the Hill' one night with Ralph MacDonald, the
king of steel drum music in Trinidad. His visit to 'the pan yard' in
Laventille is described this way... Up, up, up on the
hill we went, and then I heard it. The music flowed down from above
us like a stream of lava, and on the streets everyone was dancing or
moving to the music. The higher we climbed, the louder it got. The
bass pans were now clearly audible in their low register. My body
was humming with the electricity of the moment. I didn't want to
touch anything because I was so charged. I thought I might spark and
explode right on the spot. The book reads like a
travelogue but is interspersed with anecdotes straight from the heart and
life of Jimmy Buffet. If you like to read about real travel experiences,
you'll love this book. As Jimmy said in 'He Went to Paris' Some
of it's magic, some of it's tragic
But I had a good life all the way Order this book on
Amazon.com
(Hardback) or Amazon.com
(Paperback)
-Updated 6-5-99-
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