Five of the most awesome band cameos in movies

JIMMY BUFFETT AND THE CORAL REEFER BAND – in Rancho Deluxe (1975)

Frank Perry’s Rancho Deluxe is an underrated gem of a neo-western set in Livingston, Montana. Very young actors Jeff Bridges and Sam Waterston are ultra-laid back as they look for ways to enliven their placid cowboy lives. They find rustling to be just the ticket.

Perry wanted a soundtrack that had one foot in traditional country/western but the other in the more modern outlaw rock sound that was threatening to overtake Nashville countrypolitan. His screenwriter on Rancho Deluxe, Thomas McGuane, lived in Key West, where young guy named Jimmy Buffett seemed to be exactly what Perry wanted.

Buffett did the soundtrack for the movie but he also got to make a cameo with his Coral Reefers. It is a fabulous scene where Bridges and fellow cowboy Harry Dean Stanton are playing Pong (all the rage back in 1975) in a local watering hole while discussing the whole rustling situation. Meanwhile, the rest of the bar is rocking along to Buffett and company rolling through “Livingston Saturday Night,” complete with even raunchier lyrics than the radio-friendly version. (I never recall hearing Jimmy sing “cause there’s a whorehouse on the edge of town for any cowboy ready to screw” on the radio.)

Perry cuts back and forth as Stanton proceeds to blackmail Bridges so he won’t rat him out, and Jimmy, hair hanging into his eyes and the rest of the band so cramped together they can barely move, keeps wailing away about all the fun you can have in Livingston. (BTW – screenwriter McGuane would marry Buffett’s sister Laurie a few years later. To the best of my knowledge, they remain together.)