When we were asked to perform on the first ever Weezer Cruise, I thought it was a joke. There have been many moments in my career where I’ve thought a situation has been too good to be true, but playing on a carnival cruise ship sailing between Miami and Mexico with Weezer, Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh, Ozma, Gene Ween, Wavves, The Antlers and more, had to take the biscuit.
This was the first time I had heard of a music cruise, but apparently they’ve been increasing in popularity since the 90s. Nowadays there seems to be a cruise to cater to all music fans; from jazz cruises to EDM cruises, there was even a Belle & Sebastian cruise around the Mediterranean last year. My initial thought was that I was bound to have endless face to face contact with some of my biggest idols, notably one of my favourite guitarists of all time, J Mascis from Dinosaur Jr.
We flew into Miami in January 2012 to begin what would be a long few months of touring around the world, starting with the Weezer Cruise. We all gasped as we approached the port and the giant carnival cruise ship slowly loomed into view. I had never been on cruise ship like this before. We laboured our guitars and pedalboards onto the boat, with fellow cruisers shouting ‘Hey Yuck!’ and ‘Looking forward to seeing you play!’ The four-day lucid dream was about to begin.
We were welcomed aboard by an enthusiastic staff member. No money was to change hands on the cruise ship, instead they took our bank details and gave us all special cruise credit cards, the aim of which was most likely to allow people to lose track of how much money they were spending, which in my case proved extremely effective.
I was very surprised to find out that I would have my own room, with a porthole! Up to that point, I usually found myself sharing a bed with one of my band members or our sound guy, Lewis Lovely, who was joining us for this trip. Unfortunately, Jonny and Lewis were stuck sharing a room together, but they didn’t seem to mind.
I switched on the TV to see a Weezer-themed safety video. As I was unpacking, a voice emanated into my room from a speaker in the ceiling: ‘Attention shipmates — we are about to set sail. Please join us on the deck for a special concert from Weezer.’ We walked up to the main deck, where all the passengers were congregated. Suddenly, a loud cheer erupted from the crowd — Weezer took to the stage, featuring Rivers Cuomo wearing a bright orange life vest and sailors’ hat. The acoustic plucking of ‘My Name Is Jonas’ rang out, along with a loud, dissonant foghorn. We were off. As they reached Buddy Holly, Rivers climbed to the top of the water slide adjacent to the stage, and proceeded to walk down it in time to the song. The sun was setting behind us, and we were tearing through the deep blue ocean, Miami getting smaller and smaller in the distance. This wasn’t the only surreal moment I would experience over the next few days, but watching Weezer perform The Blue Album, an album I had listened to from start to finish possibly thousands of times, on a cruise ship with my best friends, was certainly the most memorable.
Other than the array of legendary 90s rock bands, the other main attraction was the food. There was a 24-hour buffet, all inclusive. Overeating at all mealtimes was inevitable, as were late night drunk snacks, of which there were many. Drinking served as something of an anchor (pun intended), to drag myself back down to reality when what I was experiencing became too unreal and other-worldly.
We were booked to play two shows on the cruise; one on the second day, and one on the final day. The rest of the time was ours. I spent most of my second day sunbathing on the deck, drinking cocktails and occasionally watching bands. Coincidentally, an old friend of mine was on board along with some of his friends, so we all hung out together. Our shared experience was so sacred that we even moved in together once we got back to London.
I got myself together at about 6pm and got ready for our show. We were playing in a small bar that held around 150 people. The sea was particularly rocky that night, which didn’t make it very easy to step on my guitar pedals. I was beginning to feel a little bit seasick, which the amount I had been drinking that day may have also contributed to. I announced this onstage, and a friendly shipmate came through with some seasickness tablets.
The show didn’t go particularly well, but under the circumstances I didn’t really care. As soon as we finished our final song, I headed straight to the main theatre to see Dinosaur Jr. This venue was significantly bigger than ours, and the large speaker stacks were swaying back and forth with the movement of the waves. The sound was intense. It was by far the loudest thing I had seen to date (this was before I had seen My Bloody Valentine). I had seen Dinosaur Jr. a few times before, but it seemed they were working with a new sound guy who was determined to make them sound louder than they had ever been before. It was a little bit too much. After a period of time I couldn’t pick out melodies or rhythms, it all began to combine into a scribbly mess of white noise and distortion. I went to bed that night with my ears ringing.
The following day, the cruise ship stopped off at the Mexican island of Cozumel. I woke up extremely hungover, with a dull headache. There were various activities on offer for our day in Cozumel; swimming with dolphins, snorkelling, touring the Mayan ruins, etc. For some unknown reason, I chose transparent bottom kayaking, which is exactly what it sounds like. Unfortunately for me, I had no way of anticipating how bad my hangover would be, and as it happens kayaking is possibly the least effective hangover cure imaginable.
We headed back to the ship in the late afternoon, past some souvenir and jewellery shops in the port. ‘Hey, how are you doing?’ A well-dressed man from one of the shops called out as I passed. ‘We’re having a raffle for a $300 sapphire necklace, would you like to enter?’ Sure, why the hell not. A crowd gathered round to hear the results of the raffle. The man picked out a piece of paper. ‘Max Bloom?’ Sure, I had won the $300 sapphire necklace. Why wouldn’t I win the necklace? In a lucid dream, anything is possible. Everything I had experienced up until that point was closer to a dream than reality, so winning the necklace really hadn’t come as much of a surprise. What was I going to do with a $300 sapphire necklace? I guess that was one less present to buy.
It was our final day of the cruise, and our final show. I woke up to find a yellow sheet of paper had been passed under the door of my room, with the signature Weezer ‘W’ on the letterhead. It read: ‘We were hoping that we could take a group photo tomorrow and at least have a chance to say hi to everyone.’ At last! My big chance to have some face time with Weezer and Dinosaur Jr.
Our show was on the main deck, the same deck where Weezer played their first show. Our show was in the early afternoon, which I always find a bit weird. Playing shows when its light outside feels inherently wrong, like driving on the right side of the road or playing a left-handed guitar. It was also extremely windy that day — the elements hadn’t really been in our favour during this trip. This show was better than the first one, but still quite challenging to play in the intense wind. I decided against walking down the waterslide like Rivers Cuomo did on the first day.
After the show, we headed to a private lounge/bar area for our group photo. It was an intensely awkward atmosphere. Members of Weezer were dotted around the room, going up to people at random and saying things like ‘so weird, huh?!’ Yes Brian Bell, it is weird that I’m meeting you on this cruise ship after listening to your guitar playing for most of my adult life. Suddenly, out the corner of my eye, I saw a 90s grunge version of Jesus Christ shuffling into the room. It was J Mascis. I had a brief encounter with J before our show supporting Dinosaur Jr. and Built To Spill at Shepherds Bush Empire a couple of years before, but I was too nervous to hold a lasting conversation. Instead I just asked ‘what guitar are you playing tonight?’ to which he responded: ‘same as usual.’ Stupid question really. J Mascis has a reputation for not being one of the most gifted conversationalists. I decided to have another go.
‘Hey J, did you have a good time on the cruise?’ I asked nervously.
‘Yeah… it’s been… ok… I guess…’
‘I really enjoyed your show a couple nights ago.’
‘…’
‘Um… yeah. So… they have really good ice cream here. Have you tried it?’
‘Oh really? What kind of ice cream do they have?’
What followed was a fifteen-minute conversation about ice cream. I have heard that if you get J onto a topic he’s passionate about, he’ll be quite talkative. As it happened, that day he was passionate about ice cream. To be honest, if he was passionate about the manufacture of military planes, I would’ve happily listened to him talk about military planes for hours. Just being in his presence was enough for me.
We had one more show before heading off on the rest of our travels, and that was supporting Dinosaur Jr. at Miami Grand Central the day after the cruise. I spoke a little bit more to J backstage, and also had friendly conversations with Lou and Murph — Murph took great pleasure in imitating my accent. I stationed myself in the cave of J’s three Marshall Stacks, and also managed to take a good look at his guitar pedals. After years of listening to Dinosaur Jr. records and trying to imitate his guitar sound, it felt strange to be inspecting his guitar pedals and standing where he would be standing later that evening.
The show was loud. Louder than their show on the cruise, but more enjoyable for being on solid ground. A limited amount of screen-printed posters were made for the show, depicting several grotesque flies hatching from their eggs, the words ‘Dinosaur Jr.’ in big letters across the top, and ‘with Yuck’ sitting just underneath. The promoter gave us all posters, and I managed to get Lou to sign my one before they left.
We had a lot of touring ahead of us after that point. We more or less immediately headed to Australia for three weeks to play Laneway Festival, which would be another incredible journey with numerous highs and lows. We did a lot of touring as a band and I had a lot of memorable experiences, but whenever I look at the poster from that show in Miami which now sits framed on my wall, I will always look back and fondly remember: I once spoke to J Mascis for fifteen minutes about ice cream.