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      Jimmy Buffett Was More Than Just “Margaritaville”

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      There was wistfulness behind party tunes like “Margaritaville.” Buffett helped listeners feel like they’d earned the good times just by holding on.Jimmy Buffett built a pop-culture empire on the daydream of “wastin’ away again in Margaritaville”: just hanging out on a tropical beach, drink in hand, a little wistful but utterly relaxed. The empire’s cornerstone was his 1977 hit “Margaritaville,” a catalog of minor mishaps — a misplaced saltshaker, a cut foot — that were all easily soothed with “that frozen concoction.”It’s a countryish song with south-of-the border touches like marimba and flutes, a style jovially summed up as “Gulf and Western.” It’s a resort-town fantasy of creature comforts close at hand and, of course, it’s a drinking song. Buffett leveraged it into a major brand for restaurants, resorts, clothing, food and drink, as well as a perpetual singalong on his robust touring circuit, where his devoted fans — the Parrot Heads — gathered eagerly in their Hawaiian shirts.Buffett cannily marketed his good-timey image; it made him a billionaire. He came up with wry song premises like the one behind “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” which starts as the lament of an attempted vegetarian who can’t resist carnivorous impulses. He brought jokey wordplay to his song and album titles and his band name, the Coral Reefers, and he summed up his career with the boxed-set title “Boats, Beaches, Bars and Ballads.” Country singers like Kenny Chesney, Alan Jackson and Zac Brown latched on to his seaside-and-booze themes and acknowledged his influence by sharing duets with him.But Buffett’s songwriting wasn’t all smiley and one-dimensional. “If we couldn’t laugh, we would all go insane,” he sang in “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes.” He wrote about characters with sadder-but-wiser back stories, like the 86-year-old who had lost his wife and son in wartime in “He Went to Paris,” the hapless robber in “The Great Filling Station Holdup” and the sometime smuggler in “A Pirate Looks at Forty,” who shrugs, “I feel like I’ve drowned, gonna head uptown.”As a conservationist Buffett also, humorously or humbly, contemplated the power and beauty of Nature in songs like “Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season”; its narrator writes a song as a storm moves in, but also worries, “I can’t run at this pace very long.” In “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On,” from his 2006 album “Take the Weather With You,” the singer looked back on what Hurricane Katrina had done to New Orleans.The backdrop to Buffett’s party tunes is often one of relief, not entitlement. He sings about mistakes, regrets, work, longing, nostalgia and, beginning decades ago, the inevitability of aging: “I can see the day when my hair’s full gray/And I finally disappear,” he sang on his 1983 song “One Particular Harbour,” a staple of his live sets.So the drinks and parties and vacations and boat trips, or finally being able to settle down in that place by the beach, became consolations for past troubles — even if those troubles were self-made. Buffett helped listeners feel like they’d earned the good times just by holding on long enough to enjoy them. The party was justified — reason enough to order another round. More

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      Jimmy Buffett, ‘Margaritaville’ Singer, Is Dead at 76

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      With songs like “Margaritaville” and “Fins,” he became a folk hero to fans known as Parrot Heads. He also became a millionaire hundreds of times over.Jimmy Buffett, the singer, songwriter, author, sailor and entrepreneur whose roguish brand of island escapism on hits like “Margaritaville” and “Fins” made him something of a latter-day folk hero, especially among his devoted following of so-called Parrot Heads, died on Friday. He was 76. His death was announced in a statement on his website. The statement did not say where he died or specify a cause. Peopled with pirates, smugglers, beach bums and barflies, Mr. Buffett’s genial, self-deprecating songs conjured a world of sun, saltwater and nonstop parties animated by the calypso country-rock of his limber Coral Reefer Band. His live shows abounded with singalong anthems and festive tropical iconography, making him a perennial draw on the summer concert circuit, where he built an ardent fan base akin to the Grateful Dead’s Dead Heads.Mr. Buffett found success primarily with albums. He enjoyed only a few years on the pop singles chart, with “Margaritaville,” his 1977 breakthrough hit and only single to reach the pop Top 10.“I blew out my flip-flop/Stepped on a pop-top/Cut my heel, had to cruise on back home,” he sang woozily to the song’s lilting Caribbean rhythms. “But there’s booze in the blender/And soon it will render/That frozen concoction that helps me hang on.”Mr. Buffett’s music was often described as “Gulf and western,” a nod to his fusion of laid-back twang and island-themed lyrics, as well as a play on the conglomerate name Gulf and Western, the former parent of Paramount Pictures, among other companies.His songs tended to be of two main types: wistful ballads like “Come Monday” and “A Pirate Looks at Forty,” and clever up-tempo numbers like “Cheeseburger in Paradise.” Some were both, like “Son of a Son of a Sailor,” a 1978 homage to Mr. Buffett’s seafaring grandfather, written with the producer Norbert Putnam.“I’m just a son of a son, son of a son/Son of a son of a sailor,” he sang. “The sea’s in my veins, my tradition remains/I’m just glad I don’t live in a trailer.”The Caribbean and the Gulf Coast were Mr. Buffett’s muses, and nowhere more so than Key West in Florida. He first visited the island at the urging of Jerry Jeff Walker, his sometime songwriting and drinking partner, after a gig fell through in Miami in the early ’70s.“When I found Key West and the Caribbean, I wasn’t really successful yet,” Mr. Buffett said in a 1989 interview with The Washington Post. “But I found a lifestyle, and I knew that whatever I did would have to work around my lifestyle.”Mr. Buffett had an affinity for sailing, and his songwriting was greatly influenced by his laid-back life in Key West.Gems/Redferns, via Getty ImagesThe locales provided Mr. Buffett with more than just a breezy, sailing life and grist for his songwriting. They were also the impetus for the creation of a tropical-themed business empire that included a restaurant franchise, a hotel chain and boutique tequila, T-shirt and footwear lines, all of which made him a millionaire hundreds of times over.“I’ve done a bit of smugglin’, and I’ve run my share of grass,” Mr. Buffett sang of his early days trafficking marijuana in the Florida Keys in “A Pirate Looks at Forty.”“I made enough money to buy Miami,” he went on, alluding to his subsequent entrepreneurial pursuits. “But I pissed it away so fast/Never meant to last/Never meant to last.”His claim to squandering his wealth notwithstanding, Mr. Buffett proved to be a shrewd manager of his considerable fortune; in 2023, Forbes estimated his net worth at $1 billion.“If Mr. Buffett is a pirate, to borrow one of his favorite images, it is hardly because of his days palling around with dope smugglers in the Caribbean,” the critic Anthony DeCurtis wrote in a 1999 essay for The New York Times. “He is a pirate in the way that Bill Gates and Donald Trump have styled themselves, as plundering rebels, visionary artists of the deal, not bound by the societal restrictions meant for smaller, more careful men.”(The comparison to Mr. Trump here is strictly economic; Mr. Buffett was a Democrat.)Mr. Buffett was also an accomplished author, one of only six writers, along with the likes of Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck and William Styron, to top both The Times’s fiction and nonfiction best-seller lists. By the time he wrote “Tales from Margaritaville” (1989), the first of his three No. 1 best sellers, he had abandoned the hedonistic lifestyle he had previously embraced.“I could wind up like a lot of my friends did, burned out or dead, or redirect the energy,” he told The Washington Post in 1989. “I’m not old, but I’m getting older. That period of my life is over. It was fun — all that hard drinking, hard drugging. No apologies.”“I still have a very happy life,” he went on. “I just don’t do the things I used to do.”Mr. Buffett in 1991. “Margaritaville,” his blockbuster hit, rocketed him to fame in 1977.Tim Mosenfelder/ImageDirect, via Getty ImagesJames William Buffett was born on Dec. 25, 1946, in Pascagoula, Miss., one of three children of Mary Loraine (Peets) and James Delaney Buffett Jr. Both of his parents were longtime employees of the Alabama Drydock and Shipbuilding Company. His father was a manager of government contracts, and his mother, known simply as Peets, was an assistant director of industrial relations.Jimmy was raised Roman Catholic in Mobile, Ala., where he took up the trombone in elementary school, at St. Ignatius Catholic School. He went to high school at another Catholic institution in Mobile, the McGill Institute.In 1964 he enrolled in classes at Auburn University. He flunked out and later attended the University of Southern Mississippi and began performing in local nightclubs. He graduated with a degree in history in 1969, before moving to the French Quarter of New Orleans and playing in a cover band on Bourbon Street.In 1970 he moved to Nashville, hoping to make it as a country singer while working as a journalist for Billboard. (Mr. Buffett was credited with having broken the story about the disbanding of the pioneering bluegrass duo Flatt and Scruggs.) “Down to Earth,” his debut album, was released on Andy Williams’s Barnaby label that year. It sold 324 copies.Mr. Buffett’s second album for Barnaby, “High Cumberland Jubilee,” went unreleased until 1976, long after he had signed with ABC-Dunhill and recorded “A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean,” released in 1973 and featuring the debauched party anthem “Why Don’t We Get Drunk.”Mr. Buffett had a fondness for puns, as witnessed by “A White Sport Coat,” an album title inspired by the song “A White Sport Coat (and a Pink Carnation),” a 1957 pop-crossover hit for the country singer Marty Robbins. Another album was called “Last Mango in Paris.”The “Margaritaville” restaurant and hotel chains are part of the tropical-themed business empire that Mr. Buffett built.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesMr. Buffett’s 1974 release “Living and Dying in ¾ Time” included a version of the comedian Lord Buckley’s “God’s Own Drunk.” “Come Monday,” a lovelorn track from the record, became his first Top 40 hit.“A1A” (also from 1974) was named for the oceanfront highway that runs along Florida’s Atlantic coastline. The album was Mr. Buffett’s first to contain references to Key West and maritime life, but it was 1977’s platinum-selling “Changes in Attitudes, Changes in Latitudes,” with the blockbuster hit “Margaritaville,” that finally catapulted him to stardom. “Fins,” another major single, was released in 1979.A series of popular releases followed, culminating in 1985 with “Songs You Know By Heart,” a compilation of Mr. Buffett’s most beloved songs to date. The record became the best-selling album of his career.Mr. Buffett also opened the first of his many “Margaritaville” stores in 1985. That was the year that the former Eagles bassist Timothy B. Schmit, then a member of the Coral Reefer Band, coined the term Parrot Heads to describe Mr. Buffett’s staunch legion of fans, the bulk of whom were baby boomers.A supporter of conservationist causes, Mr. Buffett moved away from the Keys in the late ’70s because of the area’s increasing commercialization. He initially relocated to Aspen, Colo., before making his home on St. Barts in the Caribbean. He also had houses in Palm Beach, Fla., and Sag Harbor, on eastern Long Island.In addition to touring and recording, activities he pursued into the 2020s, Mr. Buffett wrote music for movies like “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and “Urban Cowboy.” He also appeared in movies and television shows, including “Rancho Deluxe,” “Jurassic World” and the “Hawaii Five-O” revival in the 2010s, where he starred as the helicopter pilot Frank Bama, a character from his best-selling 1992 novel, “Where Is Joe Merchant?”Mr. Buffett favored wordplay in the names of his songs and albums, like “Last Mango in Paris” and “Jamaica Mistaica,” a sendup song about an incident that involved Jamaican authorities mistakenly shooting at one of his planes.Aaron Richter for The New York Times An avid pilot, Mr. Buffett owned several aircraft and often flew himself to his shows. In 1994 he crashed one of his airplanes in waters near Nantucket, Mass., while taking off. He survived the accident, after swimming to safety, with only minor injuries.In 1996 another of Mr. Buffett’s planes, Hemisphere Dancer, was shot at by the Jamaican police, who suspected the craft was being used to smuggle marijuana. On board the airplane, which sustained little damage, were U2’s Bono; Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records; and Mr. Buffett’s wife and two daughters. The Jamaican authorities later admitted the incident was a case of mistaken identity, inspiring Mr. Buffett to write “Jamaica Mistaica,” a droll sendup of the affair.Mr. Buffett is survived by his wife, Jane (Slagsvol) Buffett; two daughters, Savanah Jane Buffett and Sarah Buffett; a son, Cameron; two grandsons; and two sisters, Lucy and Laurie Buffett.In a 1979 interview with Rolling Stone, Mr. Buffett was asked about a previous remark in which he somewhat incongruously cited the wholesome choral director Mitch Miller and the marauding Gulf Coast pirate Jean Lafitte as two of his greatest inspirations.“Mitch Miller, for sure,” Mr. Buffett said, doubtless in acknowledgment of the way his own fans sang along with him at concerts. “In the old days: “Sing Along with Mitch?” Who didn’t?”“But Jean Lafitte was my hero as a romantic character,” he continued. “I’m not sure he was a musical influence. His lifestyle influenced me, most definitely, ’cause I’m the very opposite of Mitch Miller.”Aaron Boxerman More

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      Popcast (Deluxe) Mailbag: Selena Gomez, BTS and Doja Cat!

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, is comprised completely of viewer and listener questions, and includes segments on:The sub rosa pop superstardom of Selena Gomez, who has been proximate to many of the biggest ideas in pop over the past decade, but never quite at their centerThe phases of BTS’s American success, both before and after it began anticipating how its music would be received in this countryThe sudden rise of Renee Rapp, actress turned TikTok pot-stirrer turned would-be pop starThe persistence of Doja Cat, an unconventional pop star who seems immune to the frailties of ordinary pop stars, who aren’t allowed to deviate from their carefully crafted imagesThe idiosyncratic career choices of Earl Sweatshirt, who has rejected the conventions of rap stardom at every turn and instead continued to make advanced-placement hip-hop on his own termsSongs of the week, including “Making Noise for the Ones You Love,” a new song from the Chicago band Ratboys, and “Ticking,” a track from the new self-titled album by the country-folk singer Zach BryanSnacks of the weekConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      The Only Thing That Helps Me Be in the Moment

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      A writer struggled with being present. This Brazilian drum helped her pay attention.Earlier this year, Paul Simon’s “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” came on at a party I was at. I didn’t recognize the song at first; the room was crowded, and making out Simon’s strumming over multiple streams of chatter and conversation proved difficult. But then I heard it: a sharp noise, cutting through the track’s major chords in jagged intervals like a pair of blunt scissors. When I asked my friend what she thought the sound was, she paused, then guessed it might have been a duck. Another friend likened it to throat singing. They didn’t expect that the alien noise came from a type of drum — the cuíca.The cuíca is an odd instrument. It can buzz, hum, squeak and squawk; it can moan or creak; sometimes it even sounds like it’s weeping. If we’re being specific, cuícas are Brazilian friction drums, and although the word “friction” refers to the method used to play the instrument (musicians reach inside the drum to manipulate a wooden stick while their second hand applies pressure to the other side), the word also describes the abrasive effect it can have on listeners. Punching through songs as if it disagrees with how they’re supposed to sound, the cuíca is a key instrument in the bateria, the drumming wing of Rio de Janeiro’s samba ensembles during Carnival.I can’t remember the first time I heard it. Maybe it was in my grandmother’s living room in Brasília late one Christmas Eve, when, after a few drinks, my aunt Patrícia would put on Chico Buarque’s “Apesar de Você.” Or perhaps I heard it when I was still a baby, when my mom would play one of her favorite songs, “Carolina Carol Bela,” by Jorge Ben Jor and Toquinho. The particular moment hardly matters. The cuíca’s central role in most Brazilian music — from samba to Tropicália — means it has swathed me all my life. While I’ll never know where I first heard the drum, I keep going back to that sound, searching it out.I left Brazil when I was 1 and have spent most of my life outside the country. Though I now live in London, I’m still sensitive to sounds and smells that remind me of my birthplace. I would be lying if I said I like to listen to the cuíca for that reason, though. When I hear the cuíca, it doesn’t take me back to Brazil; it takes me somewhere else altogether.I struggle with being present, and often gravitate toward things that demand my attention in quick bursts: fountains, spicy food, the color orange, Leos. Cuícas fall into that category. They swallow me whole one moment, only to cough me back up the next. Hearing the sound feels like the aural equivalent of driving over a pothole. For a second or two, I jump in my seat. My stomach clenches. I lose track of space and time. Then, after a few measures, I’m back in the real world again, only now everything around me feels clearer and louder — and emptier, too. Sometimes I feel as though I may have misplaced something in the process. But when I rack my brain for what that might be, I can never figure out what I’m looking for.It can buzz, hum, squeak and squawk; it can moan or creak; sometimes it even sounds like it’s weeping.In some ways, the cuíca’s ability to transport listeners is part of its appeal. When Paul Simon was recording “Me and Julio” with the Brazilian jazz percussionist Airto Moreira, he said he wanted something that sounded “like a human voice” in the mix — a noise that would surprise and move people, making the song’s characters come alive. After Moreira played the cuíca for him, Simon knew he’d found what he needed. He wasn’t the only one who liked the way it sounded either: In 1972, the song charted in the U.S. for nine straight weeks.It’s a strange yet pleasant sensation, often making me think of the different processes that move sounds across space and instruments across continents. Pain and joy commingle in the history of the cuíca. Some historians believe that, like many percussion instruments in the region, enslaved Africans brought it to the Americas; it took root in Brazil in the form of samba. It’s believed that people originally used the drum to hunt lions, hoping that the animals would mistake the noise for another living being. After all, not many instruments sound like weeping or laughing, ducks or singing.The more I reflect on the uniqueness of the sound, the more I find myself reckoning with the complex history of migration — both forced and otherwise — that underpins it. It makes me think of how, in the Americas — where most of us are migrants or descendants of migrants — it’s hard to know exactly where or what “home” is. Sometimes it’s beans and bay leaves and strangers whose voices undulate when they talk. The cuíca, though, reminds me of my own history of movement. It complicates the idea of home.A few months ago, I was out at a bar when I heard the instrument again — this time in the form of Jorge Ben Jor’s “Taj Mahal.” Seated at the table with my friend, I couldn’t keep track of what we were talking about. That strange noise — laughing? gasping? weeping? — in the background commanded my attention. Once the song was over, I returned to the conversation in full. Secretly, though, I’d been carried to a different time and place entirely, and found myself wishing I could stay there a while longer. Carolina Abbott Galvão is a writer based in London. More

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      Patti LuPone Performs on Fire Island for Her Most Ardent Fans

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      Last weekend on Fire Island in New York, far from the bright lights of Broadway, Patti LuPone performed at the Ice Palace nightclub for some of her most adoring fans. These die-hards, sometimes called LuPonettes, included a man who had seen Ms. LuPone in the 1979 production of “Evita” and another who had a caricature of her tattooed on his back.Ben Rimalower, who arrived hours before doors opened, stood at the front of the line. “I first fell in love with Patti when I saw the ‘Evita’ commercial,” he said. “I’ve now seen her live hundreds of times, but never on Fire Island. Nowhere else will Patti get an audience that understands her like here.”Opened in the 1970s, the Ice Palace is an institution in Cherry Grove, a Fire Island hamlet known as a summer haven for New York’s gay community. In addition to its Friday night Underwear Party, its stage has hosted Chita Rivera, Liza Minnelli and Alan Cumming.“Patti has played the greatest venues in the world, but for her to play here it’s about connecting with her most fervent fan base,” the club’s co-owner, Daniel Nardicio, said. “Her fans will scream and cry for her here.”Ms. LuPone, 74, put on two sold-out performances of “Songs from a Hat,” in which she sings tunes plucked at random. Accompanied on a white piano by her musical director, Joseph Thalken, she gave her all to staples like “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” and “Meadowlark.” When she did the Sondheim number “I Never Do Anything Twice,” she brandished a riding crop.In the edited interviews below, her fans reflected on why they can never get enough LuPone.Jack SwerdlinAccountantJames Emmerman for The New York TimesWhy do you love her? I’m a fellow Long Island girl, just like Patti. Her power as a performer is so unattainable that you can’t help but be in awe.When did you first see her live? It should have been when I was 12. I still hold a grudge against my family. My parents took my sister to see “Gypsy” for her Sweet 16, but they didn’t bring me because I was too small. My mom told me I have to get over it. I told her, “I will never get over it.”Quinto OttActorJames Emmerman for The New York TimesWhy do you love Patti? Because she’s an ally to us in a way others are not. Lots of celebrities are part of the battle, but she’s been with us a long time. For an artist like Patti to come out here and do a show for us at the Ice Palace, that says something about her allegiances.If you could spend a day with Patti, what would you do? I’d love to sit and have cocktails with her and Mandy Patinkin. Just to listen to the two of them talk. About anything.Austin TracyBartender and playwrightJames Emmerman for The New York TimesWhat’s the story behind your tattoo? Years ago, I decided I wanted to cover myself with the divas I love, and I’ve been adding Broadway legends to my back ever since. This Patti is from “The Baker’s Wife.” I’ve also got Liza Minnelli and Elaine Stritch.Daniel NardicioNightlife promoterJames Emmerman for The New York TimesHow did this show come about? We basically wooed her to come out here and eventually she said yes. Sure, we have the famous Underwear Party, but we also have greats like Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera here. Gay men have a deep relationship with these women, so they’re always appreciative to see them, and that’s why these women are willing to come out here and do these shows at the Ice Palace.Lynda MarcheseRetired astrophysicistJames Emmerman for The New York TimesWhen did you first see her live? I saw her do “Evita” years ago and I was mesmerized. I don’t even like musicals. I’m not like the guys here.What do you make of her performing here? This place started out as a sea shack for good times by the ocean. Everyone was doing poppers and having fun. But Cherry Grove has been changing. Lots of straight people from the city have been buying places here, changing our community’s culture.Josh PreteWhiskey salesmanJames Emmerman for The New York TimesAny song you’d like to hear? Anything from “Sunset Boulevard.” It holds a special place for LuPone fans because Patti was infamously fired from her role and replaced with Glenn Close. So hearing Patti sing anything from it would be special and rare.Ben RimalowerCabaret directorJames Emmerman for The New York TimesWhy do you love Patti? Her ferocity. Everyone throws that term around now but she’s the real thing. She’s a tiger. Patti would cut you. Whereas Minnelli is there to delight, Patti commands you and makes you afraid of what you might miss if you take your eyes off her for even one second.If you could spend a day with Patti, what would you do? I wish a reality television show camera followed her. I would watch it all day.Adam FeldmanTheater criticJames Emmerman for The New York TimesWhy do you love Patti? Because her voice is a unique musical instrument and she’s maintained it to an astonishing degree. When other stars do cabaret shows they can sound diminished, but not Patti. She’s also old-school in a way that Broadway doesn’t reward so much anymore. She plays by her own rules.Yvonne LaVialeRetired property managerJames Emmerman for The New York TimesAny tune you’d like to hear? “The Ladies Who Lunch.” There’s no one like Elaine Stritch, but Patti is the only one who can sing it with the same feel as Stritch.Michael Fisher and Gary SacksCherry Grove residentsJames Emmerman for The New York TimesYou’re longtime Cherry Grove residents. What do you make of Patti’s playing here?M.F.: The Ice Palace is where gay men used to come to discover their sexuality. It only makes sense for Patti to play here, to perform for her most devoted following.G.S.: We love Patti and it’s beautiful to see her come to our community. I hope she sings “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina.” Because when she sings that, I want to cry. More

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      Florence Welch Says She Had Emergency Surgery

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      Florence Welch, the front woman of the band, apologized to fans for canceling her recent shows after undergoing what she said was lifesaving surgery.Florence Welch, the front woman of the English indie rock band Florence + the Machine, announced on Instagram that she had undergone emergency surgery, which is why she had canceled some of her recent shows.“I had to have emergency surgery for reasons I don’t really feel strong enough to go into yet, but it saved my life,” Welch wrote.“I’m so sorry that I had to cancel the last couple of shows,” she added.The singer said she plans to return to the stage for the Meo Kalorama festival in Lisbon, Portugal, where she is slated to perform on Sept. 1, and close out her Dance Fever tour in Malaga, Spain, on Sept. 2.The Dance Fever Tour was initially postponed in November, when an X-ray revealed that she had been dancing on a broken foot, Welch said on Instagram at the time.“It is not in my nature to postpone a show, and certainly not a U.K. tour, but I’m in pain and as dancers know, dancing on an injury is not a good idea,” she wrote in November.In her most recent Instagram post, she assured fans that her feet were fine but said that upon her return to the stage she might not be jumping around as much, adding, “you can do that for me.”“Suffice to say I wish the songs were less accurate in their predictions,” she wrote. “But creativity is a way of coping, mythology is a way of making sense. And the dark fairy tale of Dance Fever, with all its strange prophecies, will provide me with much-needed strength and catharsis right now.”The band is most known for its hit “Dog Days Are Over,” which peaked at 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2010, and “Shake it Out,” which peaked at 72 in 2012. More

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      Queer History Was Made in ’90s Clubs. These Fliers Captured It.

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      “Getting In,” a new book from David Kennerley, collects the edgy advertisements for parties at clubs like the Palladium and records a culture forged from defiance.In the new book “Getting In,” the journalist David Kennerley takes an electric visual stroll through New York’s 1990s gay club scene. Not with photos, exactly, but through fliers — more than 200 of them — featuring polychromatic drag queens and come-hither hunks who enticed him to dance to Frankie Knuckles and Junior Vasquez remixes at popular nightclubs like Twilo and the Palladium, and parties like Jackie 60 and Lick It!“People threw the fliers on the ground,” Kennerley, 63, said in a recent interview at a Midtown cafe. “I thought, why would you throw this out? It’s going to be a memento.”Kennerley assembled the book from his collection of over 1,200 fliers that he acquired from several sources — promoters outside clubs, now-closed gay shops and bars, club mailing lists — all before social media. A self-described “bit of a hoarder,” Kennerley considers the book an act of queer music history preservation.“We weren’t all snapping pictures at clubs back then, so we don’t have much of a visual record,” he said. “These provide some sort of visual evidence of what went on.”Kennerley and other ’90s club veterans recently shared memories of some of the fliers, and the era. These are edited excerpts from the conversations.via David KennerleyDivas Fight AIDS, Palladium (1992)LADY BUNNY, D.J. and CLUB KID Back in the ’80s and ’90s, we felt we needed to come together as a community to fight AIDS. The fear of AIDS made us party with greater abandon. For an entire generation of gay men, especially those connected to the club world, we weren’t saving money. We assumed the odds were against us. Loleatta Holloway and Lonnie Gordon — that’s quite a lineup in terms of what songs packed dance floors.MICHAEL MUSTO, NIGHTLIFE CHRONICLER We learned the power of graphic art from ACT UP and Queer Nation. They knew how to use slogans and imagery to get a point across. Promoters used that know-how to sell their parties.DAVID KENNERLEY It feels like she’s a superhero in a way. That’s what people needed to be then because of the stigma and persecution.via David KennerleyPurgatory, Sound Factory Bar (1992)KENNERLEY At first glance it would be muscle boys in short shorts. It is, but someone Photoshopped on the heads of Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Notice it was about getting out to vote. This one has credits of Jon McEwan and Jason McCarthy, the photographer and the promoter. They did one of George Bush spanking Dan Quayle, too.MARK ALLEN, GO-GO BOY and MODEL This was taken during a session where I was photographed with Richard, this kid from Venezuela, whose body was Al Gore. Mine was Bill Clinton. And Jon goes, I want to photograph you in cutoff shorts, the kind that were popular on Fire Island then. It sounded like something Spy would do in the ’80s. They took three shots and we went on to the next thing.You saw T-shirts of this image on cards. It was a good example about how something could go viral before the internet. I didn’t mind being anonymous. I thought it was art.SUSAN MORABITO, D.J. I don’t remember that particular party but I remember the flier.via David KennerleyThe Saint at Large, Tunnel (1992)MORABITO Back then, fliers inspired conversation and controversy sometimes. When the Saint at Large party used to send them in the mail, you couldn’t wait to get it. You’d get on the phone with your friends and talk about it.KENNERLEY Marky Mark had a song called “Good Vibrations” that went to No. 1. He was the Calvin Klein model for a while, and he would pull down his trousers and show off his tighty whities.The promise of the poster is, he’s going to show off his muscular physique. I paid a lot of money to go that night but I was very disappointed. He got onstage and he strutted around in a dark hoodie. Before you knew it, the song was over. I was like, wait, what about dropping the pants? I guess you could say it was misleading advertising.via David KennerleyCopacabana (1992)CHIP DUCKETT, PUBLICIST and PRODUCER Susanne [Bartsch, the club promoter and hostess] has a deep love of all things party. Inside Copa it was this perfect mix. There’s a baroness over here, a real one. Here’s a hooker and here’s a fashion model and it’s really gay but it’s also not gay. I don’t think Studio 54 did it in the same way. She’s still hosting parties every week.In those days I printed 50,000 fliers a month. Some guys in Queens who ran a club opened a printing company called Nightlife Printing. They did fliers for everybody. When I think of the amount of paper that got delivered to my office …Pork, The Lure (1994)KENNERLEY The Lure was leather and Levi’s oriented and they had a dress code. The party on Wednesday was geared toward the younger crowd, to get them involved in the scene. They also had B.D.S.M. shows on occasion. It got racy.MUSTO The way people forged a sense of communal identity was by going out. It was vital to have niche parties, where you had an exact type of gay, like twinks or bears. Now everybody has sex via Grindr, so that if you walk into a gay bar there is zero sexual urgency in the air.via David Kennerley‘Big’ Opening Night Party, Roxy (1996)ALLEN This was me, taken by the photographer Hans Fahrmeyer. I made some money on that one. It was on greetings cards and posters. I remember being in a cab and somebody had plastered on scaffolding 50 or 100 of the posters. I saw it for a few seconds. I thought, this is the closest I’ll ever get to my picture being in Times Square. I went back a week later and it was gone. That captured the fleetingness of the whole scene.LADY BUNNY This was a time when record companies would send D.J.s records to see what was a hit with our crowd. Gays has such good taste in dance music with zero promotion and a cover that didn’t even have the artist’s picture on it!ALLEN I thought it would lead to something incredible. It didn’t. But now it makes me think of my youth and the passage of time and how important the memories are. More