Slightly Stoopid Plays to Save the Oceans

By: Nicole La Hoz

Equipped with mellow, grooving flows, Slightly Stoopid knows how to command. Its 2008 release, Slightly Not Stoned Enough to Eat Breakfast Yet Stoopid, fuses fast, punk riffs with cool, melodic reggae beats, leaving fingers itching to hit repeat. But when the band performs for the Save My Oceans tour March 27 at Flavet Field, Slightly Stoopid wants students to come out for a greater cause: protecting our oceans.

The cause is one that affects its surfing lifestyle and all of Earth’s inhabitants. Participant Media and Disneynature created the tour to educate students on how to protect three-quarters of the Earth. The tour goes from campus to campus encouraging students to take a pledge to help protect the oceans. Reps have been in the Plaza of the Americas since Wednesday reaching out to students, asking them to pledge to change small lifestyle habits to reduce plastic use. Save My Oceans leads up to the release of the movie "Oceans" on April 22. Students who take the pledge will receive free access to a pre-screening of "Oceans" on April 7 at the Reitz Union Cinema.

Today’s free show, which begins at 5:30pm, is a collaboration of sounds and organizations, as UF's Student Government Productions, the Save My Oceans Tour and IRHA team up to bring the blues, punk and reggae tunes of G Love & Special Sauce and Slightly Stoopid.

Check out our interview with Slightly Stoopid drummer, RyMo and Participant Media director Youtchi von Lintel below.

RyMo, Slightly Stoopid drummer:
Well since this is about the Save My Oceans tour, how did the band get involved with it? We got a phone call from the people from Save My Oceans, and we put it all together. It worked out that we were available. We’ve also been long-time friends with G Love [& Special Sauce]. I think it came together like any other show comes together for us. It starts with a phone call and when we’re available. It’s also a cause that’s close to home for us since all of us are coastal people. We all surf a lot and live that lifestyle. It’s definitely something we want to be a part of.

So it’s an outdoor concert and Florida weather is sometimes absolutely horrible. How do you guys prepare for unpredictable things like that? We’re pretty used to it because we tour so much, so anytime we’re going into a new climate and something that’s different we try to go accordingly. We’ll tour a lot and go to ski towns. We’ve done Canada in late winter or early spring – it’s definitely cold. It affects the way you perform but once you go and the lights warm up the stage, it’s not too bad.

Are you guys working on anything new? Aside from this tour, what can we expect in the next coming months? Yes and no. We’re so used to being on the road literally seven months out of the year. We’re definitely not used to being off so much, but yeah, we enjoy being on the road. We’re all getting so antsy. I don’t know what to do with myself. We’ve been off [the road] for the last couple of months, so we’ve been able to start recording and preparing for some new albums. As of now, we just released two albums back-to-back. We decided to take it easy and work on some really great music. We’re going to probably play a couple new songs at the show. We’re just on the mode of getting prepared for the next phase, creating another album. In the short term, not really.

What can we expect from your show today? We’ll be doing our typical thing: some new, some old, some ancient stuff and mix the bag up a little bit. New and brand new, so we’ll be doing that and we’re psyched. It should be fun.

Youtchi von Lintel, Participant Media director:
How was all this presented to UF? We approached UF with a concept of being part of our social action tour and connected with Gators Going Green to make this happen on the UF campus. In addition. We were also identifying schools that were part of the Oceans movement and UF was one of them. We thought it would be a great place to educate students in Florida about the issue of pollution and conserving our oceans that exist all around them.

Where did the ideas to have an art and concert installation come from? Art affects all of us in different aspects of our lives, and it’s a great way to start conversation, dialog and curiosity, which is what we hope to accomplish with this visual display. The main initiate for the tour is plastic pollution and how it is ruining our oceans. We feel like many students have alternatives available to them besides using plastic, and this art installation is another way to get the message out. As for the concert, we feel that it is a great opportunity to get people together to raise awareness about our cause through another creative outlet. The concert also creates a word of mouth effect that gets more and more people involved.

What background information can you give me? For all other information you can go to the Save My Oceans site. The main initiate for the tour is to get the word out about plastic pollution and one of the way is taking the pledge online. By taking the pledge you are stating that you choose to use reusable bottles and bags rather than plastic ones. We would also love to have as many Facebook fans as possible so they can get updates and information about the tour.

Watch the "Oceans" trailer: