If you've lived under a rock for the last four months, you may have missed that new Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross gave the naming rights to Dolphin Stadium to Jimmy Buffett's Landshark Lager in exchange for Buffettt rewriting his song "Fins" into the team's fight song. This is part of a new strategy to make the team "hipper" and fill in the empty upper deck and club seats that number in the thousands even on so-called "sell outs" like this past Monday night.
As B.A, Baracas would say on the "A-Team": "This means pain!"
"Fins" would be an innocuous background song if you heard it once or twice a game. But heard over a dozen times in one game it transforms from lame watered-down blues rock into the devil's music. The Jerry Lee Lewis bar room piano pound on the high keys after each chorus is a knife that stabs you in the ear drums. Even worse, the song's lyrics are about SHARKS - NOT DOLPHINS!!! This becomes clearer with each successive blast over the PA. If Ross wanted to buy the Miami Sharks, they play in Oliver Stone's film Any Given Sunday.
And just in case we didn't get enough of "Fins" during the game, Buffett and his band came out on the field and lipsynched "Fins" during halftime.
Why?
This is what Ross told the Herald back in May:
''Jimmy really represents South Florida … that Florida culture, lifestyle. Who better represents that?"
Mr Ross, last time I checked, Buffettt was milking Key West's image - not Miami's. The magic city's streets reflect a multicultural polyglot- White, Black and Brown -- and the Dolphins are one of the few things we all like. Why must you mess with that? Why are you making us groan when our beloved team scores?!
Our streets are not filled with lily-white,hawaiian shirted, ex-fratboy "parrotheads" who eat up the lukewarm corporate light rock Buffett makes. The "parrotheads" are primarily 50-somethings who can remember when "Cheeseburger in Paradise" was a radio hit instead of a greasy spoon for mallrats. They already go to the games. If it's "hip" you want -- you are barking up the wrong tree. Buffett's "parrotheads" are closer to "Hip Replacement."
To be fair, the hellish music enviornment wasn't only Buffett's fault. The Landshark Jumbotron on Monday Night had several spotlights on so-called "Miami Music." Among the non-miami acts erroneously mentioned:
1. Will Smith -- From Philadelphia, home of the Philadelphia Eagles
2. LMFAO - From LA, Former home of the LA Rams and LA Raiders.
3. The 69 Boyz - From Jacksonville, home of the Jacksonville Jaguars.
4. Bee Gees - From Australia, home of Australian Rules Football.
Dear Dolphin's promo staff: here's a shortlist of actual South Florida acts that went ignored during the game: Sam & Dave, New Found Glory, NRBQ, 2 Live Crew, Betty Wright, Little Beaver, Dashboard Confessional, The Mavericks, Marilyn Manson, Expose, Lattimore, and Against All Authority.
If you need a researcher, you can contact Miami music historian Jeff Lemlich over at Limestone Records
I'm sure he'd be willing to help out, even if he is much more of a baseball fan.
