Photos: Bruise Cruise Kick-off Parties

By Beached Miami | February 9th, 2012 | No Comments

Thursday night at The Stage was the second of two land-bound parties preceding the Bruise Cruise, a three-day “tropical rock’n'roll vacation” aboard the Carnival Imagination that launches Friday from the Port of Miami and returns Monday morning with stops in Nassau and the Bahamas along the way. The lineup Thursday night was Miami-based Jacuzzi Boys, The Soft Pack, King Khan and The Shrines, Thee Oh Sees, and Fucked Up. Here are our photos from the show.

King Khan. He played most of the show wearing nothing but a headdress and a pair of tight, sequin-adorned briefs.

Damian Abraham, lead screamer of Fucked Up, is a mad man. His vocals sound like melody run through a garbage disposal and his all-embracing energy is both warm and terrifying. No back-of-the-house foot-tapper is safe when Abraham has the mic. Stripped down to his underwear, body hair matted with sweat, he will find you and very likely toss you over his shoulders for a helicopter ride.

No joke.

The pit.

Fucked Up bassist Sandy Miranda. Fucked Up rocks harder than any band we’ve covered on Beached since our Sept. ’10 launch, and Miranda is a big reason why. Besides holding it down on bass, she and guitarist Ben Cook balance out Abraham’s vocals as backup singers, laying down pretty harmonies that barely emerge from the aural explosion but, in many cases, allow Fucked Up to transcend the abrasive hardcore sound.

As alluded to in an earlier caption, Abraham’s stage presence is a paradox, both cordial and aggressive. Like the boulder in Indiana Jones, he seems to barreling after you and, if you merely want to watch from a safe distance, it can be unnerving to see him suddenly appear (he’s nimble for a large man) three feet away from you, a mass of sweaty, hairy man-bear stripped down to his skivvies. But what becomes quickly obvious in watching Abraham is that he loves you, genuinely, and he sincerely wants to commune with his crowd …

… and he does that better than almost anyone we’ve ever seen.

It rained almost all night on Thursday, so however many hundreds of people were in attendance had to cram into The Stage without the back patio for spillover. It was muggy, but we survived. In fact, the lack of elbowroom concentrated the energy in a way that works well at a rock show, at which, often, spaciousness is a buzz-kill.