Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Dear Mr. Buffett,
Throughout the years, your vacation-spirited soft rock music has inspired baby-boomers to leave it all behind and just relax - whether on their back deck on a shady weekend afternoon after a morning's worth of house/yard-work or at a lakehouse somewhere when people are grilling out or when doing anything in Florida. They find it so inspiring, in fact, that you've been able to re-release, re-package, and re-sell many songs from your catalog in countless forms throughout the years.
It is exactly one of these sort of re-releases that I'm requesting from you. You see, Mr. Buffett, we're in hard financial times. Gas prices are soaring and partially due to that, the economy is once again starting to slow down. People aren't buying as much, traveling as much, or indulging in as much leisure as they once did, say, back in the 90's. And the largest segment of our population, the baby-boomers, tend to be your target audience. That is to say: you have the power to once again reach them and talk them into (mildly) throwing their caution to the wind. For a few moments, they can forget about social security, the down-turned markets, soaring gas prices, their retirement funds, the war, downsizing, and the finale of Everybody Loves Raymond, and remember the good times - simply through your timeless music.
I predict this new attitude will lead not only to an increase in travel and tourism, but also an increase in spending - including, and stemming from, the purchase of your CD. Now, this album doesn't need to be a straight-ahead greatest hits album. I feel you've already covered that well with 1985's Songs You Know By Heart, 1998's All The Great Hits, 1999's Jimmy Buffett Live: Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and 2003's Meet Me In Margaritaville: The Ultimate Collection, as well as more extensively in 1992's career-spanning retrospective boxed set Bars, Boats, Beaches, and Ballads.
No, what I'm thinking here is more of a re-imagining type project with the greatest-hits material. You could get all the CMT-ers who joined you on 2004's License To Chill to help re-record all your biggest hits. Can you hear Travis Tritt on "Pencil-Thin Mustache", cause I can! You could call it Cheeseburger in Nashville or something like that. And if you hurry, you can have it available for 4th quarter of this year. Those Christmas sales would be through the roof! Do you know what that would mean for our predicted economic growth in 2006? It would be phenomenal.
One sidenote, please don't include anything that might frighten away the less-intense Parrotheads. Just stick to the "break-the-rules-but-not-real-ones" sorta attitude and it's a sure-fire hit for you, and for us. We all win. And don't worry, Thompson's dead; he won't see.
Yours in vacationing without even caring,
-The Mail Clerk
P.S. Please don't mistake this for any sort of call for a return to the literary world. Just stick to the re-packing of your tunes. Godspeed, Mr. Buffett.
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