Rewriting the "Florida Man" song for Blue Oyster Cult [first BOC album in 19 years]

Palm Beach Post ^ | 10/13/2020 | Frank Cerabino

[simpson96]

I wish the band members of Blue Oyster Cult would have consulted with me before settling on the lyrics to their new song, “Florida Man.”

Florida Man is my sweet spot. I’ve been writing about Florida men and women since the mid-1980s. I have material. I could have helped.

Don’t fear the rewrite, guys.

But instead, the 72-year-old guitarist, Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser, plowed ahead without me.

Roeser lives in Maryland, but he spent more than a decade living in New Port Richey, so he figured he could come up with a song called “Florida Man.”

“The whole country is on to Florida Man,” Roeser told The Sarasota Herald-Tribune. “The idea of that song is that there’s a reason why the Florida Man exists.”

The song, which is part of the “The Symbol Remains” — the band’s first studio album in 19 years — imagines that Floridians have been permanently cursed by the Seminoles as payback for the tribe’s mistreatment at the hands of the conquistadors.

The song ends with this warning:

“Don’t you laugh, it could be you /

The Seminole curse always comes true /

You can jeer but you don’t understand /

That any fragile soul can be the Florida Man”

OK, geriatric rockers. I’m fine with your theory of the case. We’re all cursed here in Florida to be a pathetic bunch of losers due to some ancient spell.

As if getting financially scalped in tribe-owned casinos isn’t punishment enough.

[Salamander]

You have NO idea how desperately I have been waiting for a new BOC album.

Bummer is, since the 90s, they’ve gone “big time” again and my days of sitting on Buck’s Marshall stack in some seedy WV roadhouse and being in the front row at county fairs is over.

The closest they come now is the Ram’s Head in Annapolis.

Glad for their second wind, bummed for my in-your-face access.