http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzRQyt0aTHA
Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reef Band
You know an artist exhibits true greatness when one can listen to a song, stop, look at their surroundings and realize how the lyrics and attitudes of the music affect the world around them while establishing an intimately personal connection within the listener’s life. Jimmy Buffett’s songs directly evoke these same feelings and reactions that one exhibits when experiencing music characterized by such simplistically profound and humanizing lyrics. His band was named the “Coral Reefers” in which he serves as a conglomeration of different types of artists, including a singer, songwriter, author, businessman, and movie producer. Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reef Band are best known for their ideas of “island escapism”, which describes how he loves living a nonchalant and carefree life as depicted through several of his songs, including some of his greatest hits, “Cheeseburger in Paradise”, “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes”, and “Margaritaville”. His songs help listeners understand the value of the present moment as well as implicate how to find pleasure in the simple things in life and enjoy all the things we take for granted. This charismatic songwriter originated from a humble beginning the late 1960s in Nashville Tennessee as a country singer when he recorded his first album, “Down to Earth” and since then has exploded with over 30 albums and millions of records sold. He has acquired 8 Gold Albums, and 9 Platinum and Multi Platinum Albums. This amazingly talented songwriter even won a Country Music Award for his song “It’s Five O’clock Somewhere”, in combination with Alan Jackson. The highly acclaimed singers Jimmy Buffett, Alan Jackson, and George Strait were also nominated for the CMA Event of the Year Award for their song, “Hey Good Lookin”.
Jimmy Buffett is also a very economically intelligent businessman through which has utilized his name and songs to the fullest through his business ventures including the Margaritaville Café, Fort Myers Miracle, and the Madison Black Wolf. Through his albums, records, and business ventures, this tasteful artist earns approximately $ 100 million yearly. Buffett has also capitalized upon the public’s love for his music and themes by creating his own beer under Anheuser Busch with the Margaritaville Brewing Label called the Land Shark Lager based solely upon the success of his song “Margaritaville”. Currently Buffett is planning on continuing to prosper immensely by building a Margaritaville Casino and Resort in both Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Biloxi, Mississippi. Despite this extravagant accumulation of wealth, this brilliant artist is highly involved in many different charity efforts. Buffett and Bob Graham founded the Save the Manatee Club, which is one of the world’s largest and most influential manatee preservation efforts. He also served as the primary funding for the “Singing for Change”, which provides grants to charities for environmental, child, and family effects, through his proceeds from his 1995 concert tour. He also raised large amounts of money at the “Surviving the Storm” Hurricane Relief Concert to provide for the victims of the devastating Hurricanes that hit Florida, Alabama, and the Caribbean. This amazing contributor also held a concert in Hong Kong that rose over $63,000 for the Foreign Correspondents’ Club Charity Fund. Many of Buffett’s actions and ideas are also centralized around charity, donations, and relief which solidifies his image as such a beneficial and humanizing artist.
Jimmy Buffett’s song “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes” influences all different types of people in all different ways, such as helping people realize they must take life as they are dealt it and worry less about the materialistic and consumerist society that we live in. In this song he reminds the listeners to be thankful for all of the small things in their life that they may take for granted. His lyrics “Visions of good times that brought so much pleasure” and “If we couldn’t laugh we would all go insane” describe how we need to remember the good times in our life in order to have hope and progress in the future. These lyrics also push ideas that we need happiness, relaxing, and laughing to remain sane and live life to the fullest. In this song, Buffett utilizes simplistic diction which helps the listener to relax and feel the impact of the music. This simplistic diction also displays how we can all relate to one another at some basic level despite how different we may appear. Parallelism is prominent within this song, in such instances as “All of the faces and all of the places”, “changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes”, and the last three lines “If I couldnt laugh I just would go insane, If we couldnt laugh we just would go insane”, which depicts Buffett’s feelings that continual hypnopaedic statements and progressive ideas will leave an impression upon them. This song also features an uplifting tone by inserting irony within the song through the lyrics “If we werent all crazy we would go insane”, which depicts how we all have problems, so rather than scrutinizing these unimportant circumstances, we should instead focus upon the beneficial and hopeful things in life. Buffett’s optimistic view of life, coupled with his intense feelings of relaxing and taking life as dealt, are evident within his songs and ventures that display how we can all listen closer and understand life better if we step back and take a break.
In Buffett’s other songs, he also suggests taking a vacation as a means of stepping back away from our over consumptive and highly serious society by sitting back, relaxing and drinking a beer or “wasting away in Margaritaville” to help ease the stresses, tragedies, struggles, and pains that one continually feels. By recognizing one’s gifts and being grateful for all that they have, one understand how to cope with all of the difficulties in his or her life. Buffett and the Coral Reef Band help people understand that taking a break from the hustle and bustle of high society can often times initiate some the truest and most productive times in life which helps people to see the larger picture for themselves in life.
By: jimmy buffett
1977
I took off for a weekend last month
Just to try and recall the whole year
All of the faces and all of the places
Wonderin where they all disappeared
I didn't ponder the question too long
I was hungry and went out for a bite
Ran into a chum with a bottle of rum
And we wound up drinkin all night
Chorus:
Its these changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes
Nothing remains quite the same
With all of our running and all of our cunning
If we couldnt laugh we would all go insane
Reading departure signs in some big airport
Reminds me of the places Ive been
Visions of good times that brought so much pleasure
Makes me want to go back again
If it suddenly ended tomorrow
I could somehow adjust to the fall
Good times and riches and son of a bitches
Ive seen more than I can recall
Chorus:
These changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes
Nothing remains quite the same
Through all of the islands and all of the highlands
If we couldnt laugh we would all go insane
I think about paris when Im high on red wine
I wish I could jump on a plane
So many nights I just dream of the ocean
God I wish I was sailin again
Oh, yesterdays over my shoulder
So I can't look back for too long
There's just too much to see waiting in front of me
And I know that I just can't go wrong
Chorus:
With these changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes
Nothing remains quite the same
With all of my running and all of my cunning
If I couldnt laugh I just would go insane
If we couldnt laugh we just would go insane
If we werent all crazy we would go insane
