Peformance • Fans
enjoyed a weekend of music, dancing,
and other entertainment at the
Xingolati Groove Cruise. Pixie/Vision
Productions
Xingolati
Groove Cruise provides floating, fantastic
fun
By Daniel Linck Savino
Online Forty-Niner
Staff Writer
A 40-something year old hair colorist and mom from New Jersey, a standard-issue
Orange County frat boy and a dreadlocked Burning Man devotee do not often come
together. But on the Xingolati Groove Cruise, worlds united for a floating weekend
of music, dancing, performance art and exuberant revelry.
Though the concept of music and cruise ships is old, Xingolati is a new
and novel approach. Billed as a “blending of worlds,” the three-night
cruise to Ensenada was a unequivocated success. With 35 scheduled acts,
including the
Flaming Lips, Medeski Martin and Wood, Slightly Stoopid and G Love (with
Special Sauce), the sheer mass of music was enough to satisfy anybody.
The most famous feature was the weekend’s headliners, the Flaming Lips,
a group with a cult following and an extraordinary talent for the art of show,
the Lips’ proclivity for confetti, innovative rock music and fans with
outlandish costumes set the overtones of a hard-partying festival extraordinaire.
Excitement of the show aside, the more unique experience for the fans was the “Zaireeka” listening
party Sunday night.
“
Zaireeka,” the Lips’ experimental album, is a four-disc single
album designed to be played simultaneously on four CD players. Described by
lead singer Wayne Coyne as an album with far too many parts for one cohesive
disc, the creation was broken into four separate albums. Coordinating a four-player
listening party, while an excellent bonding experience, is not always easy.
The Queen Mary Lounge on the ship, “Paradise,” was packed by
fans within five minutes of opening, filling the room for a guided tour
through
the experience.
Many audience members came just for the Lips. Such one-band fans were not unique
to the Lips, though, with devotees of Perpetual Groove, Medeski Martin and Wood,
Olospo and other bands onboard. Xingolati had created an event with multiple
bands to be discovered and loved by these more focused fans.
One of these discoverable groups was the Mutaytor. Their appeal comes from a
vaudeville-like inclusivity. The music roves through Parliament Funkadelic-like
straight funk bass (by John Avila of Oingo Boingo) into rock electronica and
tribal drumming.
More than just music, though, Mutaytor puts on a complete act. Liability forbade
fire onboard, but a Mutaytor show normally features a fire spinner, dancers,
aerial acrobatics, hoop dancers and even a Chinese dragon. Such richness makes
them reminiscent of Cirque du Soleil.
Another unusual act is That 1 Guy. Mike Silverman, a jazz bass player with
two decades of experience, wins the prize for most creative instrument.
With an enormous
length of stainless steel called “the magic pipe,” he has taken
his bass to the plumber, then joined the tribal genre. To oversimplify, think
of
Blue Man Group.
These, as well as live looping and dubbing and lyrics that have a Ginsburg beat
flavor, create an intensely active sound that gets your inner caveman dancing.
That 1 Guy also has a knack for the showmanship and audience interaction
you can never find at a large venue. In the ship’s smaller venues, the performers
can actually talk to you instead of at you. Smaller flairs, like flicking an
imaginary cowbell in perfect synch with the percussive track, are invisible when
you’re in a larger venue.
It is this intimacy that makes Xingolati so unique. Band members, when not playing,
can be seen relaxing on the Lido deck, dancing at other shows or in the buffet
line. Fans had opportunities to meet the bands at a meet-and-greet session Sunday,
and could rub elbows around ship. In a testament to the spirit of the cruise,
obnoxiousness and pestering were absent, and the musicians seemed to be having
just as much fun as the attendees.
Bands aside, random bits of artistry added an exciting and unique flavor
to the weekend. Dan Rollman, billed as Snerko, is a 30-something year old
copywriter
from San Francisco with “taxi driver envy.”
He said, “[Snerko] is an interactive t-shirt art project. I talk
to [people] one on one, learn something about them, and then, almost like
a fortune teller,
give them something written on a t-shirt.”
He got his start at Burning Man several years back, giving away the t-shirts
as gifts. Though it’s done for free, Rollman’s love of the experience
makes it worthwhile.
“
It’s a fun way to meet an eclectic mix of people,” he said. “[I]
try and find some little truth inside them, reflect it to them, and give
it back to them in the form of a t-shirt.”
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