Jimmy Buffett Doesn’t Live in Key West Anymore
Right now I’m in the middle of conducting an interview via email of below-the-underground Florida writer Jack Saunders. At one point in our conversation he brandished this song, by way of criticizing how little is left of Hemingway’s Key West. It was penned by infamous half-joking bigot and “Gulf and Western” outlaw singer-songwriter David Allan Coe.
Click play and read along for a weirdo trip down the A1A:
There’s sailboats and conch shells and palm trees galore,
But Jimmy Buffett doesn’t live in Key West anymore.
Sister “Spare Change” has a bumper sticker on the door,
Says Jimmy Buffett doesn’t live in Key West anymore.
Hey smugglers hate those Buffett songs, snitching on the sly
Bringing heat where it’s already too damn hot to die.
Son of a son of a son of a bitch, what’s all that bullshit for?
Jimmy Buffett, he don’t live in Key West anymore.
Sailing to the Carribean Jimmy might well be,
Pictures up in Rollin’ Stone for all the world to see.
The rich keep getting richer, the poor they just stay poor,
And Jimmy Buffett doesn’t live in Key West anymore.
Now Jimmy’s moved to Malibu, with all them other stars,
He’s not down on Duval Street hanging out in bars.
All them goddamn tourists got to be a bore
Jimmy Buffett doesn’t live in Key West anymore.
So don’t tell me I sound like Jimmy Buffett
Just because I got that island beat.
Jimmy might have grown up on the ocean,
Me, I kinda grown up on the street.
Music’s just a way of life, me I’m livin’ free
So don’t lay all that Key West Jimmy Buffett shit on me.
Now “Divers Do It Deeper” must have really made them mad
Some of them reviewers said it really sounded bad.
Well they liked Margaritaville, me I liked it too
Someday Jimmy, why don’t we just both get drunk and screw?
Oh, all those creepy mother fuckers that think music is a whore,
Tell ’em that you just don’t live in Key West anymore.
There’s sailboats and conch shells and palm trees galore,
But Jimmy Buffett, he don’t live in Key West anymore
Sister “Spare Change” has a bumper sticker on her door,
Says Jimmy Buffett, he don’t live here any more.
All right boys, sound like Jimmy Buffett now —
The obstinacy, the mockery, the pure “Fuck You”-ery: here is some Florida shit that usually only comes out in dive bars or on the analyst’s couch. Rarely the kind of thing you can refer to in anything recorded, it’s fascinating stuff and irrevocably part of some corpus of Florida art.
And another
Just for consistency’s sake — here’s another review I wrote for Beached Miami.
hooowahhhh
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Passover in South Florida: Rae’s revenge
Chag Pesach Same’ach to you and yrs. ‘Sbeen a tour de Floride these past few days. From Tampa to Sarasota to Miami and not yet back in two tanks and a single Surfer Blood CD. Yes, I am deaf now.
Below, a review of the Wu-Tang show I wrote up last night for the good folks over at Beached Miami. It was a crazy blazy time. Special thanks to Joe Abboud for sending me off from srq, proper as the Queen.
Recap: Raekwon at Revolution, 4/7
Nothing to Fuck With. photo by Kefira Baron
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Bill Sharpe, 59
Today, I am unspeakably injured.
-Bill Russell at Wilt Chamberlain’s funeral, 1999
That is my mood today too, having heard that Bill Sharpe has killed himself. The police have not yet released the bodily details of his death, but we know what finally did him in. He, at last, succumbed to what my good friend and erstwhile Floridian Lindsey once called “the tough as shit fight people put into also making something good happen” here. The fact that he could not prevail despite his best efforts — and they were very good — shows me that it is not altogether a fair one.
Bill embodied that fight. His now-defunct South Tampa Community News was a reliable gem full of common sense and communal concern in a landscape full of slick, essentially commercial publications like South Tampa Magazine. Once the chair of the Pinellas County Democratic Party, his most recent endeavor was the Tampa Epoch, a monthly newspaper designed for sale by the homeless. In the face of a wave of anti-homeless ordinances intended to hide the problem of Florida’s masses of bridge dwellers, Bill responded the only way he knew how, with a newspaper and good will.
photo credit: CL Tampa
Faced with foreclosure on his Bayshore condo, Bill Sharpe chose the Epoch and Tampa’s least fortunate over personal comfort: he moved himself and his cat into the newspaper’s offices. His good works earned him little material wealth along with rebukes from the Mayor, the City Council and lots of angry Tribune readers, who objected to his initiatives to keep the homeless alive and making honest money.
He was a good person who cared about this place and his fellow man. Rest easily, Mr. Sharpe.
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