Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

There's something a little unnerving about being anywhere for hours if you have absolutely no option to leave. So boarding a rock 'n' roll party boat for a three-hour concert cruise might not be for everyone; if you wind up hating the music, getting into a fight with your friends, or feeling violently ill, there's literally no way out until the boat docks.

That element of captivity feels more like a release, though, if you set sail at sunset on the Hudson and the bands are Electric Six, who are out east touring from Michigan, and Les Sans Culottes, the very best faux French retro-rock band in all of Brooklyn. Especially if the boat is named "The Temptress" and has multiple bars and a dance floor (and even if its aroma calls to mind the perspiration of generations past).

More From ELLE

Electric Six's "Dick Valentine," the nicest front man who ever moved raving-drunk audience members to perform at-sea body-surfing, said that some people traveled hundreds of miles, some thousands of miles, to be at the show. Screams from the crowd indicated that perhaps it wasn't a joke.

As the sounds of "Gay Bar" poured over the sides of the boat as dancers clutched their twelfth beers of the night and we looked up at the Statue of Liberty, I wished the cruise were longer.

(See that wacky green and blue polyester shirt in the photo? I took that from my high school drama department's costume room in 1990. It took only 19 years for it to go to good use!)

Rocks Off concert cruises continue through October.

–Heather McCabe, Copy Chief

Members of Electric Six and Les Sans Culottes

What do you think?