Phins up!

- August 10, 2021

Why yes, we did attend the Jimmy Buffett concert at Jones Beach last night. How did you guess?

A bit of history. The first time we saw Jimmy in concert was at Madison Square Garden. I’d won the tickets in a newspaper contest. After that, we made it a habit to see his concert at Jones Beach every summer. We stopped going a few years ago, though, because the tailgating in the parking lot made it impossible for concert goers to park.

But now that I live in the same zip code as Jones Beach, we were able to get to the theater early enough to park reasonably close.

So early, in fact, that we had time to take a short walk on the boardwalk.

A note about Live Nation. They’re really good at providing information about the venue, if ticket holders bother to read it. There've been some changes at Jones Beach since the 2019 concert season.So I knew that there was no opening act and that the show would start promptly at 8 PM. I knew that if I wanted to bring any sort of bag into the theater, it would have to be clear plastic. There were no unpleasant surprises when we arrived at the theater.

It’s a great venue for a concert … most of the time.

The view from our seats.

We got there early enough to grab a cheeseburger before the show. We took our seats around 7:30. And I noticed that the weather was changing. It’s an outdoor venue, so if there’s thunder, lightning or other dangerous conditions, the performance must be delayed or canceled. But if it’s only rain …well, the stage is covered, so the performers stay dry, but the audience gets wet.

There was concern that the concert might have to be shortened, so they announced the show would begin about ten minutes early.

So we were waiting for the show, and I was watching seagulls take off and land from the stage roof. Hard to tell how many birds there were …

Until just before Jimmy took the stage. “Hot, Hot, Hot” began to play through the speakers … and about 50 seagulls took to the sky. It looked like something out of Hitchcock…

And then Jimmy and the band took the stage. Live music! A concert! Something we were all starved for.

The view of the stage.

But there were also the digital screens.

And then it started to rain …and it didn’t stop raining until the encore. At least we avoided a cancellation.

(Over at Citi Field, some 30 miles northwest of Jones Beach, it rained so hard that the Mets-Nationals game had to be suspended in the second inning. But I digress.)

You could tell how happy the band was to have a live audience. And Jimmy mentioned how the vaccine made this night possible.

He sang for almost 2 hours, I think. Here’s the Setlist. There were two songs the band had never performed live before, plus all the required hits.