Bruise Cruise: 3 Days of Bad Food and Good Music

Turbo Fruits onboard the Carnival Imagination

There are certain things in life with which you cannot argue: a day is made of 24 hours, pigments determine skin color, All Things Must Pass is the greatest solo album from any Beatle, and Robbie Hilson and cruise ships go together like the English and good teeth.

If you’ve never experienced the surrealistic palace of excess that is the Carnival Imagination, I have news for you: it’s a floating celebration of kitsch serving up free soft-serve, expensive booze, FM reggaeton standards and, on this particular voyage, a f*cking Haight-worth of punk rock pilgrims attempting to recreate the Magical Mystery Tour 40 years after the fact and, um, on an over-priced cruiseliner.

Naturally, I came for the first and the last of these offerings. Love my chocolate/vanilla swirl. Doubly love my Ty Segall.

Because I didn’t have access to affordable free wifi (unless, of course, you consider $0.75 a minute “affordable”), I’m writing this piece of hipster nostalgia mostly from memories – many of which have been permanently seared on my cerebral cortex till the very end of time. So first, my qualms: the aforementioned dearth of time-sucking Internet options, the expensive booze (I was seriously under the impression that several hundred dollars for three days buys you more than a dessert bar, cold chicken and all-you-can-use pool towels – I want free beer, dammit!), and the soul-eroding feeling you get from sitting on a sun deck honing a dead-sexy tan when you should be doing things people besides models and retired investment bankers construe as constructive.

You’d probably never guess this from my incessant, rambling bloggings, but I’m incapable of relaxing.

well...

Now, the good - namely, San Fran freak-rockers Thee Oh Sees; San Fran sub-Stripes rockers The Ty Segall Band; Tennessee rockabilly punks Turbo Fruits; Miami’s Guy Harvey-rocking trio Jacuzzi Boys; hotter-on-stage girl-group Vivian Girls and; acclaimed, these-guys-can’t-be-old-enough-to-drink West Palm Beach quintet Surfer Blood.

The invention of the obviously-genius Jonas Stein, whose band Turbo Fruits comes on like an amphetamized sequel to the Velvet Underground as played by a Replacements tribute band, the first annual Bruise Cruise attempted to collide two diametrical opposites in the expanses of a 70,000-ton floating chariot doubling as the embodiment of all things capitalist Americana.

Punk rock, meet Tommy Bahama.

The product, a three-day rock festival for 400 people taking place in the Xanadu-named vicinities inhabited by 2000 other people just looking to drink, burn and get laid, can only be described as “f*cking bizarre”. Still, like I said, the music was great – especially if you’re into lo-fi guitar aesthetics at ear-bleed volumes (which, duh, I am). Here’s a quick run down of the aforementioned acts:

Thee Oh Sees: Imagine a psychedelic version of the Ramones, except with more visceral primitivity, more groove, a bassist straight out of Oi! skinhead England, a brunette vixen on keys, and the vocal stylings of a yipping three-year-old. Yep… They’re a mighty force live and also the brainchild of one John Dwyer, a guy whose name reminds me we’re gonna kick Georgia Tech’s ass next year.

The Ty Segall Band: to say Ty Segall is awesome is a compliment to awesome. I’ve heard few things in my life more bare-bones or primally rocking than a quartet of archaic garage revivalists wailing the sh*t out of their four respective instruments. Segall, the axe-wielding gunslinger at the helm, plays like he’s trying to rewrite the blueprint to rock ‘n roll. His songs are simple, hard, fun, fast and – above all – loud as f*ck. This is three-chord music as it emerged from the primordial ooze.

Turbo Fruits: Jonas Stein sings like Lou Reed if a stroke had knocked out the nerve endings in the VU pioneer’s face and vocal chords. You can’t understand him (at all) when he’s not singing, which just makes his drunken slur of a holler all the more of a glorious curiosity. He’s got three people behind him – a second guitarist who looks like one of the GEICO cavemen, a bassist who takes his style cues from Paul Weller’s Jam, and a time-keeping mass of hair behind the kit. I was enthralled. Obviously.

Jacuzzi Boys: I’m pretty sure my sister’s BFF Kourtnie knows these three young gentlemen intimately, which – in itself – is compliment enough. J-Boys basically play the same tunes as Ty Segall – distorted garage music with riffs aplenty and an innate sense of groove. The drummer was the only black Bruiser. The singer held the bathroom door for me. I’m a fan.

Surfer Blood: The band’s drummer TJ asked my friend and I to come drink with him after I told him he shouldn’t feel bad only 20 people turned out to his show. I kinda meant it. I kinda didn’t. The band sucked live – out of tune, sloppy, aloof, drunk and unprepared. Still, penning “Floating Vibes” buys you at least one lackluster gig on a boat filled with Barry Manilow impersonators, bad sushi and rigged slot machines. No harm, no foul.

Vivian Girls: Akin to Bay Area babes The Hot Toddies, only with a slightly skewed doo-wop to punk quotient. They lean more Joey Ramone than Phil Spector and, honestly, look way hotter strapped with Fenders than their plain alt-Jane off-stage personas would suggest. I’m especially partial to the bassist, who you might find starring in a counter-culture remake of Pippi Longstocking.

I’m sure other things happened besides rock, but I have neither the time nor the stamina of memory to recount them. My mom beeped and waved at Ty Segall when she saw him also departing the sea port in a California-tagged Land Cruiser. I was mortified. I think he was intrigued at the prospect of this newfound cougar.

LAY OFF OF MY MOM, TY SEGALL (but let’s still be friends).

- Robbie