Ships and Dip V was really, really awesome!!!
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| From Ships and Dip V |
For those of you uninitiated, Ships and Dip V is the, rather inaccurately named, third cruise in the Ships and Dip series, created by the Barenaked Ladies band and the tour operator extraordinaire, Sixthman. It’s a floating musical festival, featuring BnL and their favorite musical groups as well as comedians and other entertainment. And, um, a naked photo.
(It’s okay, you can go google naked photo. Neither Natasha or I were in it this year or any other year, owing mostly to not being able to get our naked butts out of bed in time on the second day of the cruise. Oh yeah, and also because of creepy people like you who would go out and google it! But really, you probably don’t want to see it. At least not hi-rez. It’s not Playboy or anything. It’s at least partially people who unabashedly enjoy cruise buffets.)
But enough of that. Onto the music. BnL rocked as usual. Before the cruise, I worried, I’ll admit. It has not been the best year for BnL, with Steven arrested for drug possession. Ed crashed his plane. And, to my mind, the band just sounded kind of negative when they were on stage together during S&D III. Not exactly mad at each other, but not on the same frequency.
My fears were allayed from the moment I stepped up to the line where they take your boarding photo. Just past the photo area, was that Steven Page waiting to greet us? Looking snappy? In a suit? Clean-shaven (unlike the shaggy beard he sported last year). And looking amazingly trim? So much so I didn’t even recognize him at first. We walked up and shook his hand and said we were happy to see him. We kept running into him throughout the cruise and he just seemed really, really happy. And his performance onstage was amazing! So full of vitality! It made me very happy to see him so happy, considering all he had been through.
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| From Ships and Dip V |
The talent on the ship was amazing, and I’m going to talk more about that in later posts devoted to the artists we got to see. Natasha and I were really excited because Butterfly Boucher was on the ship; we saw her open for BnL a while ago and had been suggesting her for Ships and Dip for the last two cruises. She was awesome, and I was really excited on the very first night at the merch shop that her new CD was available. (Her CD was delayed for a long time due to legal hassles with the label she left.) She’s also very photogenic.
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| From Ships and Dip V |
You can check out the pics at my Picasaweb site, and I’ll have some YouTube video up shortly. I don’t have a tremendous amount of video, because I felt like I watched too much of the cruise through a viewfinder. But I still got some great performances from the event.
I can’t say enough about how much fun I had, so you’ll be hearing about it for a while. Thanks to BnL, Sixthman, and all the performers on the cruise for rocking us on the ocean!
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