January 5

The GCC has been updated with "When The Wild Life Betrays Me," "Elvis Imitators," "Domino College," "Goodnight Irene," "Banana Wind" (in progress), and "Pascagoula Run."

A plea for help:

Thanks to the posting on the website, my girlfriend and I learned that we were quoted in the LA Times. We too waited in line for almost an hour and half before getting into the NYE show. A great way to kill some time wound up being interviewed by the paper.

But, I need some help and the Church of Buffett website is the ideal altar. Perhaps you'll recall that moment of the show when several phans went onstage and helped sing "Why Don't We Get Drunk?" Guess what? We were some of the people chosen. Perhaps many of you saw us in our glow-in-the-dark "2000" eyeglasses! Well, Buffett's people did and scouted us out during the show and dragged us up there (kicking and screaming) to play.

Here's the deal: are you aware of any video recordings of the show? Or, can you put out a note to all of the phollowers to see what we can do? I'd love to know that I can forever see myself up there dancing with the man! I know we spent an entire song onstage, but it felt like 3 seconds.

Thanks,
Derek Rollins
Dallas, TX

Jerry Jeff Walker is coming to Charleston on May 13th. This will be a Bar-B-Q style benefit for the Center for Birds of Prey. It will be held at Boone Hall Plantation with gates opening around 1pm and the concert starting about 4pm. Tickets are rumored to be in th $50 range, but are not available yet...

Press release:

The Biggest party of the new Millenium will happen on January 28, 29 and 30th in Charleston, South Carolina. The event is called The Key West to Charleston Revue, and is being held at the famous Cap'n Harry's Blue Marlin Bar. This years musical guests will include many of Key West's favorites, such as Scott Kirby, Robert Hutto, Jonathan Birchfield and Bill Blue. These guys will be backed up by the Chris Clifton Band, with Chris on guitar, Wayne Mitchum on bass and Mick Kilgos on drums. Other events are also planned, like the Home Made Bikini Contest (open to male and/or female, depending on where you are from), the Conch Horn Blowing contest, oyster shuckin' and eatin', ribs, a genuine Key West Mercantile with CD's from all of the artists, t-shirts, tropical shirts, henna tattoos, and all the plain old debauchery one can expect from the end of US 1. Key West Sunset Ale will also be served in the bar.

So, you ask how much can all this fun cost? This year, the party will be bigger, badder, longer and- believe it or not- CHEAPER!!! We have decided to keep it simple- just $7.00/night gets you in, and Friday night admission includes a FREE ticket for Saturday's BIG Key West Stuff Giveaway. (so we make sure you come back both nights) We also have special rates at the neighboring Hampton Inn and Embassy Suites, just call them and ask for the Parrothead Discount. Those numbers are: Hampton Inn- 843-723-4000, and Embassy Suites 843-723-6900.

This is the second year of an up and coming tradition, so make sure you are part of this years' "semi- true stories" and make your plans soon!! If you need any more info, please contact Fred Murray at (843)577-7989 or by email at CAPNMRGN@aol.com.

January 4

Margaritaville Tequila will become the primary sponser for the tour 2000. Corona is going to stay on board as a secondary. News is Jimmy will use a modified version of "Margaritaville" to inculde the lost verse along with a Margaritaville Tequila insert. This all comes on the heels of national permotions.

Pat Reid passed this along:

I was just flipping through during a commercial break and on MuchMusic (Canadian MTV) was a Backstreet Boys press conference. Someone had asked what their favorites songs were and one (Nick, I think) said his favorites songs were "Heaven" by Bryan Adams, "Love Song" by the Cure, and "He Went to Paris" by Jimmy. While he finished talking one of the other guys started singing "Fins to the left...fins to the right..."

January 3

Each month the Towns Around Biloxi PHC offers original artwork for sale with 20% of the final sale price going to charity (Alzheimer's Association). This months selection is "Plane ole Fun" by Cheri Salvetti on 16" x 20" oil on canvas (Cheri is "Rhythm" of "Rhythm & Rain", the Northern Caribbean's premier Buffett cover band). The artwork may be viewed and bids placed on their web site.

Fellow Hoosier Brian Pearson passed this along:

Flipping thru 90 some channels of useless cable that I pay $40 a month for I had to tell you about this one. It was our very own Fingers Taylor doing an infomercial for Nu-Hart hair transplant systems! It is about a 10 minute segment and it shows clips of Live By The Bay with Jimmy! Then it goes to Fingers talking about life on the road and how he didn't want to be a bald rock star. You then actually see Fingers in surgical bandages as they begin the actual surgical process.

Now I bet you weren't expecting to read that today!

January 2

More on the Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays switch to jewel cases:

When I received my copy from CDNow, I couldn't wait to play it. I got home, tore off the packaging and put it in the CD player. And the damn thing wouldn't play. I was convinced that my CD player had hit Y2K early. After a minute or so I looked a second time at the CD and saw that it was cracked. The packaging was too flimsy and you could see exactly where the whole thing had been bent and cracked the disc. My guess is this happened to more folks than just me.
--Andrew

From The Vault has the missing clip of "Morris' Nightmare -> Miss You So Badly" from the Radio Margaritaville broadcast of the Sag Harbor show last November.

Captain Jim passed this along:

Before the NYE show started Steve Huntington mentioned the videos that are played in the Orlando Margaritaville and then while talking to JB he said that a tape will be released in the spring ... a compilation of videos.

The L.A. Times reports on Weather, Potential Partyers Give Festivities the Cold Shoulder:

An estimated 6,000 die-hard fans attended a Jimmy Buffett concert at Universal Amphitheatre. One of them was Gretchen Klasing of Dallas, who traveled to L.A. with three friends specifically to celebrate the millennium in "Margaritaville."

 Like others at Universal, Klasing and her friends had anticipated that Y2K would be more like Yawn2K. Still, they didn't want to miss out on the Next Big Thing, just in case it happened in L.A. on New Year's Eve.

 "I'd like to see something kind of freaky happen," admitted Derek Rollins, also of Dallas. "It would be quite a story to say, 'Yeah, I was in L.A. when the Hollywood sign fell down.' "

The GCC has been updated with "Turnabout." We're going to plead for help; not all of the songs are cross-referenced between the "songs" and "albums" pages. If someone wants to help out and do this...

January 1 2000

The L.A. Times has this excerpt from Rock Fans Celebrate With Signature L.A. Bands:

And perhaps no crowd was more colorful than the mob of "parrot-heads" who joined self-styled pirate balladeer Jimmy Buffett for a margarita party at the Universal Amphitheatre. Many paid more than $1,000 for the all-you-can-eat-and-drink fete.

"Sure it's worth it," said Pat Delashnutt, who traveled to the show from Iowa.

From The Pulpit has New Year ramblings.

While wading through the nearly 1000 emails in my CoB,O mailbox I came across some WCBO Reports that I had misplaced. So I spent an hour this morning putting those up. There are some fantastic reports there!

The Jimmy Buffett Online site has the majority of the show from last night online in RealAudio format. The first two songs are missing. Kudos to Bob, PH Since 75, he spent some time doing this... Jimmy ended with "Lawyers, Guns and Money" (a song he mentioned that summed up the 2oth century) and "You Can't Always Get What You Want." A complete setlist is available. Evan Chesler posted a review to the JB Listserv. Other tidbits from reporter Allan Wells:

We arrived :30 after the scheduled "opening" and waited over an hour to get in. We got a drink and waited :45 to get swag only to find out they had run out of almost everything and oh, by the way, the credit card machine quit working...cash only.

The opening was great: He entered over the audience dressed as Michael Flatley while 12 dancers did the "Riverdance" thing onstage. That was the highlight, although the music was great. A large part of the rest of the show was spent being tripped over by people who were trying to get down to the stage or just occupy any open space in the close rows.

My most personal disappointment came just after midnight, when Jimmy fast-forwarded to Margaritaville and said goodnight. He did do a 2 song encore, but even with that, the show was less than 2 hours. I saw a setlist afterward and it confirmed that they were scheduled to do basically the whole BHOTM tour set.

As we were leaving, I realized something else: contrary to the sales ads, we received no party favors, there was no reserved dinner seating, no mention of getting a concert video and certainly no mention of getting tickets to a concert (my choice or not) in 2000.

Dale Greer contributed these tidbits:

1) Another Buffett-related film has just been released on DVD. The 1982 cult classic "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" has been issued in a special DVD collector's edition, with comments from director Amy Heckerling and Cameron Crowe, the wunderkind journalist who went undercover in a California high school to gather information for his best-selling book of the same name.

The film features a cut by Jimmy Buffett named "Spicoli's Theme," written for the stoned surfer dude played by a then-unkown Sean Penn. Other future stars featured in the movie include Phoebe Cates, Judge Reinhold, Forrest Whitaker, Nicholas Cage (Coppola), Anthony Edwards and Eric Stoltz.

2) Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs, the audiophile record company that specializes in remastered 24-karat gold CDs, has closed up shop. The company fell victim to a corporate merger that left it without any means to distribute its music catalog, which included audiophile versions of two Jimmy Buffett CDs -- Son of a Son of a Sailor and A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean.

If you hurry, you may still be able to find these in stores or order them from CDnow.com. Besides excellent sound quality, both discs are well worth owning because they contain all original lyrics and liner notes. In the case of SOASOAS, these notes are faithfully reproduced as they appeared in the original vinyl LP, while AWSCAAPC includes additional photos.

3) Some of you may have noticed that Jimmy's last CD, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, now exists in two versions. While the music is the same on both, the packaging is markedly different. The initial pressings were pakaged in cardboard sleeves with liner notes stapled inside. Current versions are packaged in clear plastic jewel cases with back inserts and standard-issue CD booklets. There also are subtle differences in graphics and layout.

Not sure why Bubba made this move. Perhaps the earlier "environmentally friendly" packaging proved too difficult to keep in production?

The final edition of the PH Webring Newsletter for 1999 is available.

Finally Happy New Year!