“Banana Wind”: going on a vacation with Jimmy Buffett

A Buffett a day keeps the doctor away. Wise words indeed. I live by them, and I hope with more reviews, I’m slowly converting more of you guys to join me in this post-modern beach bum lifestyle. If I haven’t convinced you yet, I am sure that Jimmy Buffett’s 1996 “Banana Wind” might do the trick.

“Only Time Will Tell” starts off the album with a playful yet existential look at life and the endless march of time. There are many things that appear permeant or unmovable to us, whether it be physical constraints like keys and locks, or social ones, such as the question of “are we destined to be ruled by a bunch of old white men.” Time answers to no one, and nothing lasts forever. Empires fall, locks break and there are some things we will never truly know the answer to, but as Buffett tries to tell us, only time will tell! The instrumentals and steel drums of this song are great, and it’s a nice place to start the album.

Going from an uncertain look to the future, we turn our focus to the past, with a little tale of what happens when you “stay in touch with the world of love and luck.” In “Jamaica Mistaica,” we hear how Jimmy Buffett learned how to fly planes, and that this son of a son of a sailor had to have a boat plane, the kind the coast guard used in WWII. His plane is called the Hemisphere Dancer. Now, you must understand that flying a 50-year-old plane that lands in the water can be seen as suspicious, and that’s how the Jamaican authorities saw it when he flew down to Negril. The song details how he was shot out of the sky by them, all because they thought he was running dope. What a shame. Buffett survived, and so did the Hemisphere Dancer, which is now on display at Universal Studios in Orlando, bullet holes and all. This song is funny in retrospect, and the instrumentals, from the steel drums to the steel guitars are hauntingly great.

“Schoolboy Heart” is another biographical song that Buffett wrote, but this song takes a different approach to this format we often see from him. Rather than describing himself normally, he equates himself to Frankenstein’s monster in the sense that he is composed of many different parts that make him unique. He stitches himself together from his “novelist eye,” describing his love for exploring fiction, to his “nomad feet,” which take him across the world on his Gaudi adventures, to his “vaudevillian style,” demonstrating the comedic songs and performances he never ceases to do. This is a fun song to listen to just in how you see Buffett define himself, and the live version is so entertaining to sing along to due to the energy he brings.

Buffett burns a lot of energy with some of these initial songs to start off the album, so “Banana Wind – Instrumental” serves to cool down. As the name implies, this is an instrumental song. Its soothing and repetitive melody surely can bring you to a beach on some island, almost like it hypnotizing you into beach mode. It’s nothing too crazy, but it’s good for what it is, and it serves it purpose well. By the way, the waterpark Aquatica by Seaworld plays this song at least 6 times an hour, or at least it feels that way. No complaints from me.

If the last song’s instrumentals didn’t give you the idea by now, maybe “Holiday” can get the message across: put down your work and forget about it for a while. Simply put, it’s going to get cold really soon; you aren’t getting anywhere with your attempts to climb the corporate ladder, so why not just jump out of the rat race already and go where it’s warm, and the weather is much friendlier. You can stay stuck behind your computer all you want, but as Buffett says, “all that fiberoptic gear still cannot take away the fear like an island song.”

Believe it or not, but in the song “Bob Robert’s Society Band,” I got a bone to pick with Buffett. He starts the song off with the lyrics, “Well, you heard about the alligators sleepin’ in the shade. You heard about the sugar barons screwin’ up the glades.” It clearly is in place to rhyme with the word glades; however, anyone who has ever stepped foot in the sunshine state would know that alligators sunbathe like gas station hot dogs. You would never find a self-respecting alligator in the shade; they have cold blood and will get chilly. Beyond that, I love Buffett’s environmental and political commentary in that single line. The song itself is about a band that’s down a little dirt road, who performs music like it’s the golden age of rock in the ’50s. Overall, it’s a nice song for some old vibes.

That’s the first half of the album, and so far, not a single skip; we’ll have to see if Buffett can keep the streak up. The second half changes the vibe in some regards, so I look forward to discussing that. Thank you for reading, and remember, alligators hate the shade.