"Little Miss Magic" will bring sad tears to the eyes of those who love Jimmy Buffett for his immaturity. For in this track, it seems as if he has really gone around the grown-up bend. Voicing fatherly endearments to little Savannah Jane (not the sailboat) as well as reflections on his own aging, Buffett appears to have tied up at convention's dock:

I see a little more of me every day

I catch a little more mustache turning gray

Your mother is the only other woman for me

Little Miss Magic, what you gonna be?

BUT BEFORE the old fans bid their disappointed adieus to Mr. Buffett, they must tune in carefully to the one track on "Coconut Telegraph" which does not appear to have been written during a Geritol overdose. In a masterful study of life's doldrums and how to fight them, Buffett opens the second side with "The Weather Is Here, Wish You Were Beautiful." The song begins with chatter and shrieks from the Coral Reefer Band and sundry other studio personnel, culminating in Buffett himself hollering "Don't ever start a band!" This song will make the album worthwhile for all diehard funseekers with lines like "Hell, nobody's perfect/would you like to play/I feel together today" and:

Still time to start a new life in the palm trees

If it doesn't work out

There'll never be any doubt

That the pleasure was worth all the pain.

So inevitable developments have led Jimmy Buffett a little further along the path of growing up. But he has only grown up to a certain extent. Though his trail has become littered with diapers and Visa receipts, along with the artifacts of a carefree existence, the independence of mind that makes his music distinctive still hangs on. It hasn't yet wasted away in Margaritaville.