Desperation Samba (Halloween In Tijuana)

by Jimmy Buffett and Will Jennings

from the album Last Mango in Paris

Amazon.com Widgets

Lyrics

Halloween in Tijuana
Full moon in my eyes
I wonder how in the hell I got here
Without a disguise

Should I take this last step
Or turn myself around
Or follow my intuition into that border town

Yo quiero a bailar en Mexico
Do the desperation samba con nos amigos
Yo quiero a bailar en Mexico
Do the desperation samba con nos amigos

Pretty girls they beckon
From their rooms above
Skeletons are dancing
In the name of love

Don’t know where I’m going
Don’t like where I’ve been
There may be no exit
But hell I’m going in

Yo quiero a bailar en Mexico
Do the desperation samba con nos amigos
Yo quiero a bailer en Mexico
Do the desperation samba con nos amigos

Hear the people singing the same old haunting tune
I drink because I know it’s me against the moon

Yo quiero a bailar en Mexico
Do the desperation samba con nos amigos

Jimmy’s Note:

I wound up in Mexico one day, passing through Tijuana on my way to Rosarito Beach. I was passing through the bizarre streets of this border town listening to the radio from San Diego when the DJ mentioned that it was Halloween. I looked around and realized that none of these people needed a costume.

This song brings to mind two things. First, an image of Robert Mitchum standing in the doorway of a bar in Tijuana, and second, a line by Thomas McGuane, my brother-in-law, from his book, PANAMA, “The night wrote a check the morning couldn’t cash.”