ALL TOMORROW’S PARTIES: END OF AN ERA
GABRIEL SZATAN HEADS SOLO TO THE FINAL UK ATP WEEKENDER, AND CONSIDERS THE HISTORY AND FATE OF AN ALTERNATIVE MUSIC INSTITUTION
What drives someone to take an 11th hour call-up and embark upon a Hajj, totally alone, to a children’s holiday camp along with hoards of devout underground fanatics and ironically bearded, bespectacled men in cardigans in order to indulge in borrowed nostalgia for a location and tradition they had no active engagement with in the first place?
Top drawer live music? Sure, but I tend to see a lot of that anyway. Festival vybez? Well yes, although given the odds are stacked heavily in favour of the kind of biting climes that result in diamond-cutter nipples, it’s a far cry from sinking Tuborg under sunny skies while trying your utmost to ignore Haim. There is Tetley’s on tap though. How about community? Let’s go with that. The kind of community who scream “I MISS YOU” back at Slint through choked tears. Frankly, I’m one of them. Except without the beard, or the paunch (yet); but already, I digress.
All Tomorrow’s Parties represents a significant cornerstone of the past four-odd years of my life. While I obviously can’t lay claim to having grown up with the festival given that the forerunning Bowlie Weekender – helmed by Belle & Sebastian, hence the much-heralded idea of artist curation – took place when I was eight, the broadening of my musical horizons dovetail neatly since the turn of the decade. I caught Public Enemy performing It Takes A Nation Of Millions… at ATP’s flagship Don’t Look Back series in 2008, however it wasn’t until the following year I had the opportunity to attend one of the festivals proper. I wound up schlepping to Minehead on five separate weekends over a run of 27 months (four ATPs and the last Bloc before its implosion), which wasn’t too shabby.
Truthfully, I could spin an entire article out of doughy sentimentality alone: completing a miraculous five-point air hockey comeback while Lightning Bolt brutalised in the background on my first ever night at Butlins, before debating fantasy rosters with friends on the coach back (reforming ¡Forward, Russia! was a primary concern; very wise); watching a Jarvis Cocker doppleganger crowdsurf during a 4am chalet party after I whacked on Careless Whisper (wise); our seven-strong group all revising in the back of Oneohtrix Point Never for exams the following week (unwise); unerringly ceding to a Pizza Hut buffet in a hungover state before remembering the regret that would inevitably follow (super fucking unwise).
Equally, I’ve been fortunate enough to catch some extraordinary, extraordinarily rare shows, too: a Boredoms ensemble with nine guitarists and sixteen drummers; Jeff Mangum’s first babysteps into the light once more; Big Boi on a post-Sir Luscious hype, bounding through Outkast classics; My Bloody Valentine’s eviscerating sheets of Holocausticity … you get the picture.
It’s difficult to divorce personal experience and maintain total objectivity when delving into the backstory of All Tomorrow’s Parties. Speaking to a clutch of artists who’ve been instrumental in ATP’s development over the years, they all share an unusual eagerness to spill out one-off tales picked up along the way. Lee Ranaldo, whose Sonic Youth curated the inaugural American experiment in 2002 and tore through Daydream Nation in full multiple times in 2007 to cement Don’t Look Back as a commercial proposition, recalls a “totally off the hook” 2am rager in Mudhoney’s chalet that was so packed it caused “the deck outside to collapse” as “one of the best ever”; only rivalled, apparently, by Cat Power cooking for a “crowd of revellers” in the middle of the night. Mike Watt, who managed to perform eight times in total – including showcasing two self-penned operas and multiple times with George Hurley as a Minuteman – chalks up a tie between ducking out of a Red Hot Chili Peppers support date to play alongside J Mascis in a set that allegedly convinced the Ashton brothers to reform The Stooges, and seeing the reformed Godspeed You! Black Emperor “fucking hammered”. On the flipside, Benjamin Power of Fuck Buttons, who have released all three records to date with ATP Recordings, offers up his housemate “knocking a seagull off the roof of a chalet with a baguette at 5am. Not that I condone that kind of behaviour but man … what a shot.”
That communality is a key facet of what made ATP feel so vital, even a decade after its inception. It wasn’t just music presented on a distant platter to assorted strangers, with a clear division established between punter and performer. A far cry from “gigantic others … where the performers are ‘backstage’ and the audience is not”, Ranaldo draws a line between “the intimate size it tried to maintain as well as the onsite housing which allowed the audience and the performers to mingle in a very interesting way”; or, as Watt puts it, a reminder “of the old days, that kind of ethic – but with air hockey”. It went beyond merely like- minded people in a conducive environment, falling closer to the kind of open-armed camaraderie that is increasingly rare nowadays: “a truly special and unique experience”, says Power. All of which should hopefully explain, in an exceptionally long-winded manner, why I decided to head solo to Camber Sands for the last hurrah of its flagship festival wing.
It was immediately evident that I wasn’t the only one making the considerable investment to see it off, either. ATP-goers can be feasibly pegged as a homogenous lot, an inherently cynical tribe by nature, but goodhearted and appreciative too; the kind who will have pints clasped between their teeth primed for deafening applause well before any feedback-drenched coda. Here for the second, and final, End of an Era weekender, the crowd was more varied: from Amy, a chipper blonde 40-something on holiday from LA who spent a large proportion of the journey down proclaiming her love for Ontarian pummelers METZ, through to the two guys in front of me at check-in leafing through Venetian boarding passes to find their e-mail confirmation.
Given the run of play upon Friday arrival had traditionally been some variation of: collapse in a heap / drink VKs / watch whatever was on ATP’s specially curated TV channels, it was a novel twist to actually see whoever was up first. Within the first two hours of programming I’d taken in Gaelic folk tales via Les Collettes, New War’s sleazeball shimmy and the decaying post-rock breakdowns meted out by Thought Forms, none of whom I’d seen before. A recurring criticism levelled at ATP in recent years was their unadventurous booking policy (more on that later), with one record label likening it to ‘guessing the cover of Mojo’, and while there were groans of derision when Shellac were unveiled as 2012’s Nightmare Before Christmas curator (for a third time), it was impossible to have all bases covered. The joy lay in unearthing treasures.
When the big hitters did arrive on Friday night, they came thick and fast in noisy waves. The aforementioned Shellac were resplendent in matching tuxedo t-shirts, either complying with or poking fun at the suggested Sunday night dress code, tearing through their metallic clatter with gusto. That the Albini-speared trio have racked up a grand total of nine holiday camp appearances – not to mention appearing on ATP’s stage at the last six Primavera festivals consecutively – they could have been excused for phoning it in. Thankfully they didn’t, and given the blackhearted Prayer To God’s status as an ATP anthem – I’ve borne witness to a packed throng down the Queen Vic on site in Minehead howling along to its bitter refrain at closing time – a particularly meaty rendition laid waste to the crowd. Slint were equally effective: they played all of Spiderland and half of Tweez, so two thumbs up.
One of the lauded abilities of All Tomorrow’s Parties has always been their ability to not only deconstruct the battle lines between artist and fan, but also eradicate the preconceived notion of band status. Cult sludgazers Loop, who had lost not an iota of their mind-warping sear in the flesh, could well be the smallest ‘headliner’ any ATP weekender has ever rested upon, but the undercard was stacked. Generally speaking, tickets both home and abroad were traditionally sold on weighty reformations and the classic album trick: Godspeed, Pavement; The Feelies doing Crazy Rhythms, The Stooges doing Fun House, GZA doing Liquid Swords. But the sequencing doesn’t necessarily reflect that, instead attempting to construct a flowing narrative within the day. The lustrous, oceans-shimmering pulse of Michael Rother digging into his krauty catalogue at 2pm made perfect sense as a way to easy into Sunday’s celebrations, for example. True to form, though, ATP gave the grumblers something to grumble about. The schedule for the first weekend was hugely front-loaded, leaving a largely barren Sunday padded out by unfamiliar Spanish bands picked by cohorts Primavera, as well as a smattering of experimental acts. I mean, maybe given his socket-rupturing intensity, perhaps you could see The Haxan Cloak as a fitting end of the world send-off – at a tilt – but it was met by exasperation from the faithful.
Relations between the old heads and the oldest head have been strained for some time. Barry Hogan, who has manned operations from the off, and now runs the company with his wife Deborah Higgins, has assumed position as the de facto lightning rod for any criticism coming ATP’s way over the past 14 years. The backlash from some quarters (read: the internet) and alleged treachery from others was tackled by Hogan with surprising candour in End of an Era Part 1’s official souvenir booklet. Hogan used his soapbox to espouse the Drake school of thought, firing shots at all the motherfuckers who never loved him; or, in his actual words, “people we thought were peers and friends but who turned out to be a big cup of dickmilk and ultimately were the victims of their own doing and went out of business.” Ouch. The couple’s resolute approach to business hasn’t harmed standings with artists, mind. Power offers forth effusive praise, hailing them as “true visionaries” with “incredible ideas”. Watt’s sees his hard-earned perspective on the mechanisms of the industry – ground into him in the 80s when “nobody gave a shit about any of this” – mirrored in Hogan’s ethics, flatly stating “if you want big numbers and stuff, you need to go for the lowest common denominator. Barry never did that.” The greatest chord appears to have been struck with the notoriously cantankerous Albini, who was quoted in the second booklet’s liner notes as saying that ATP had “single-handedly changed the festival game”. However once the confidence began to recede amongst those willing to part with cash, it was a slippery slope.
While the regulars had their minor bugbears – chiefly, a lack of progression and cyclical line-ups – the past couple of years saw shit sour dramatically. Economic conditions precluding a downturn in ticket sales hit promoters across the board, but rapidly snowballed into a rolling PR disaster for ATP. Supposedly fixed dates were shuffled around the calendar to try and salvage a worsening situation. Jeff Mangum’s return to the public domain, greeted like manna from heaven, was kicked three months down the line, resulting in fans losing large amounts of money on non-refundable travel. 2012 ran out an annus horribilis in every sense: cancellations and rescheduling, creditors heading to court for winding- up orders, The Stool Pigeon’s stark printed exposé of their finances, a painfully public feud with Butlins resulting in reverting to Pontins. It made for pretty grim reading.
Like many independent festivals, ATP rested on its ventures coming off successfully, which no longer appeared a bankable proposition. By Hogan’s own word, international events had been haemorrhaging money for some time – which explains why his statement in the final pamphlet bragging about offers to “take the festival to Iceland, Denmark, Turkey, Poland and South America … which, let’s be honest, is a lot more exciting than bloody Camber Sands” rankled in the extreme with the core fans. Reports of direly undersold events spearheaded by the reunited Afghan Whigs in New York (which had to be shifted from New Jersey due to an even bleaker financial outlook) and a TV On The Radio weekender at Camber Sands brought a very tangible fatalism onrushing and undoubtedly accelerated the process of ATP dramatically reducing its scope by sounding the death knell for the holiday camps.
As I perceive it, a parallel trend holds significant impact – through no real fault of its own, ATP lost its USP. Many people point to the festival’s mid- period as the true golden era: a perfect storm which allowed utilisation of the larger Butlins in Minehead as demand swelled considerably. The twinned Weekenders in May 2008, co-curated by Pitchfork and Explosions In The Sky respectively, boast an embarrassment of collective riches: Vampire Weekend, Bon Iver, Beach House, Hot Chip, Dirty Projectors, Caribou, The National, Deerhunter, Animal Collective amongst the cast. It goes without saying that the landscape has changed considerably in the interim half-decade. Not that these acts are too big as such – the latter four have all played curator since 2011 – but they’re no longer going to be padding out the bill.
As ATP’s pool of acts to cajole into reforming shrank, so too did corporate festivals begin pinching the very acts that had bought it market leadership. Case in point: when Grizzly Bear, footage of whom pied piping a besotted crowd onto a nearby beach closed out the sublime 2009 feature-length ATP film, can now second-headline Latitude Festival, it signals a pretty dramatic switch in alternative music’s wider appeal. Across the final weekend there were shades of that alternate reality still in existence, when the sheer euphoria triggered by Fuck Buttons’ world- beating Olympians or joyous pogo mania triggered by Superchunk’s one- two of Digging For Something and Slack Motherfucker recast them as parallel Chemical Brothers, or Blink 182; but the feeling was fleeting. In essence, ATP’s universe expanded until a point where it collapsed under the weight of its own influence.
That’s why, setting aside all external factors, All Tomorrow’s Parties will be such an immense loss. Although believing the end of “a fucking institution” to inherently be a shame, Watt ponders if “like Dr Who, it has to take a breather”, assured that the good work has been done and influence will spread. Ranaldo, remains pragmatic about the whole affair: “I think as with many things, it might have just run its course, or been trying to expand too far into other territories”, which, coupled with replicate facsimiles cropping up or co-opting the innovative approach, means “there is no longer a pressing need for the festival now.” He does add, finally, “I’m sad to see the holiday camp period come to a close – it was very special while it lasted.”
I’d wager the majority of diehards would agree with him; I certainly do. Two bittersweet moments stand out clearly amongst the final weekend’s haze. On Friday night, long-suffering press dude Jamie Summers played a DJ set in the after-hours pub to commemorate the close of six years with the festival – it ended with him sailing over people’s heads, from the booth right back to the bar, as Cyndi Lauper’s Time After Time melted into Do You Remember The First Time? (that keen sense of mixtape-compiling awareness never fades), bringing the memory of the crowdsurfing Jarvis-alike rushing back. And at 2am on Monday morning: House lights rose, revealing dozens of staff past and present gathered on stage. They, as the crowd, were in a peculiarly indie form of formalwear – pinbadges pockmarking velvet lapels, polka-dot gowns and the like. Finally, predictably, the chiming chords of The Velvet Underground’s namesake track began to ring out as Barry Hogan officially called time on 14 years of All Tomorrow’s Parties. It was a unique and brilliant way to run a festival, presenting music and art with no barriers, and in doing so encouraging a more tangibly human connection. It will be sorely missed.
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Words: Gabriel Szatan
All photos courtesy of shot2bits.com
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