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What can I say? I cannot remember when I've had so much fun. Easily the best
festival experience I've ever had, and the funny thing is... I almost didn't go. But PK and
Lisa generously said "c'mon, crash our cabin!" so a couple weeks before the cruise I decided to go.
I'm really glad I did. It was great to hang out with them and the whole Niven entourage and
we saw some really, really great music.
I brought my cute little Sony digital camera, so what you see here are some random pictures of stuff
that went on. But really, the pictures don't do it justice, nor for that matter will anything I write here.
But what a mighty time we had. The festival was described by some as "Burning Man at Sea" with a few jambands
thrown in. Never been to Burning Man so I really can't say how accurate a description that is. What I do
know was that the crowd was incredibly cool - these happy freaks knew how to party. There were a lot of amazing
costumes, and a crazy crowd-joy-energy like I have not experienced... well, since the good old Grateful Dead
days. That's really not a fair comparison, but I'm struggling to come up with a better frame of reference.
Imagine a boatload of really focused, intelligent, friendly people invading a cruise
ship for the sole purpose of proudly letting the freak flag fly. These people were here to have a good time,
and if it meant seizing control of an ocean liner for a few days, so be it.
I get the sense that working on a cruise ship can be really,
really boring, and it was fun watching the crew hanging out on the Lido deck or the various venues just watching
the insanity go down. A Samba band (might have been OB's Super Sonic Samba School) cruised around the ship
making a loud joyful noise everywhere they went, with bemused blackjack dealers and bartenders looking on.
Crazy costumes, a redecorated elevator, naked people in the jacuzzis, it just didn't end.
Most of the venues had Vegas-lounge type sound equipment, small, wimpy and for this cruise, unused. Instead,
nice, massive, loud concert stacks were brought in. Everywhere I went the sound was just great.
The ship's over-the-top decor sealed the deal, lending the proceedings a nice Vegas-y, porno vibe. In terms of
logistics, it was an ideal situation. All of the lounges/bars/venues are close together, so if you don't like
what you hear in one room, you didn't have to walk very far to find something else. And every few minutes a
cocktail waitress came by (any time of day or night)... and you could put it all on your cruise card.
When you're done, hit the late-night
buffet (mmm, Tater Tots!), chug some water, take a hot shower and crash out. If this isn't heaven, somebody
please tell me what is. Most of the acts played twice, so it was easy to see what you wanted. None of
the venues were ever hard to get into, even for the Flaming Lips, who headlined the whole thing and only
played one show on Saturday evening. Mad props to everyone behind this production. Everything ran like
clockwork. It really couldn't have been better.
Anyway, here are some pictures. You can just click on the first one and go through the slide show. At some
point my battery died and I forgot to bring the charger, so this is all I got. My camera also takes crappy
videos, and I downloaded an even crappier video editor to cobble together
this video which hopefully
conveys some sense of the insanity that went on.
Enjoy!
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