We're smashing a bottle of champagne over this digital album to celebrate the maiden voyage of Whatevski Records - recorded live on The Slackers' eighth NYC booze cruise.

NYC Slackers fans look forward each year to this celebrated summer tradition - a midnight cruise that rocks from the dock to the Statue of Liberty and back. The crowd and the energy at this show made it one of the best in recent memory.

We're thankful to The Slackers for giving us permission to come aboard to make this recording. It's straight from the soundboard so you'll hear all the details you may have missed while lingering around the buffet or admiring the view of the city skyline from the poop deck. And if you weren't on the boat, you are now.

Enjoy these 25 rude and reckless sea shanties from Vic, Glen, Dave, Marcus, Jay, Ara & their special guests.

Recorded with a Sony PCM-D50 from a portable and waterproof "nautical-style" 2-channel exporting soundboard aboard The Temptress, a D-Class Booze Cruiser (Commissioned in 1983 by Governor Mario Cuomo.)

Lightly mastered to remove whale noises, boat-acoustic anomalies, sound-wave inebriation, hull squeaks and rudder burps.

Digital files are 256kbps VBR MP3s cut into 25 tracks with banter and crowd interaction attached to the end of the appropriate track.

Files bundled with PDF Liner Notes into a zip file around 210 MB in size. Word.

"The Slackers are part of an imaginary universe. It wasn't their fault, well not completely. The caterpillar told them not to eat the mushroom on the right. But they did and for 15 yrs now they've had to play Imaginary-Jamaican-Rock-and-Roll, and try to explain that to everyone who passes. One asks,"Are you a reggae band?...where are your dreadlocks then?" Another says,"YOU DONT SOUND LIKE PUNK-ROCK WITH HORNS AT ALL!!" One elderly gent says,"Why it sounds like a lot of music I used to like, but I don't think any of you boys look addicted to HEROIN!" Doomed to try and explain themselves to a world full of hungry club-promoters, style-police, genre-slaves and the generally confused, they wrote bio upon bio, hoping to snag someone...ANYONE!...who might understand...here is attempt #6,364..."

- Vic Ruggiero, The Slackers

The Slackers sound is Jamaican rock n roll. While they have been influenced, and even personally taught by Jamaican ska/reggae originators, like the Skatalites and the Upsetters (Original backing band for the Wailers), the band sees its music through an American lens. This band is equally appreciative of old blues, 60s soul, rock, and Rnb as it is of reggae, rocksteady, dub, and Ska. It is as if the Rolling Stones or the Yardbirds had grown up on Bob Marley as well as Muddy Waters. From their 1996 release, Better Late Than Never through to 2008 with Self Medication, the NYC-based band, the Slackers have established themselves as America's premiere interpreters and innovators of Jamaican music and a pretty good rock band to boot.

http://theslackers.com