IN THE MAGAZINE

FESTIVALS A TO Z

Photo by Rebecca Smeyne

ALL TOMORROW’S PARTIES

It would come as no surprise if ATP were in talks with NASA about ATP: The Moon. After all, the world is ending, and this private country club of fans, bands, and organizers will need to be saved. Plus, where else can you go after the “Fans Strike Back” theme? (More on that in a bit.)

The tradition of allowing bands to curate festivals traces its roots to Bowlie Weekender, a one-off festival organized and curated by Belle and Sebastian in 1999. ATP founder Barry Hogan had the foresight to understand that smaller, boutique festivals were exactly what the UK needed, since the Glastonbury and Reading festivals had long ago devolved into maximized oceans of vomit and violence.

He was right: Small (in comparison) boutique festivals have thrived in the UK and Europe, led by the still seemingly irreproachable All Tomorrow’s Parties. Interestingly enough, the artist-curated slant came about on a whim when Mogwai was asked to headline the first All Tomorrow’s Parties in 2000 and they in turn requested to curate the festival. Hogan agreed, and Mogwai booted several bands from the partially booked bill to make way for those they considered more savory. Since then, ATP has worn a badge of elitism with pride—one of the only sources of criticism aimed at the festival. Truthfully, Coachella’s track record could be an Amway convention next to ATP’s.

Mogwai, Tortoise, Slint, Autechre, Shellac, Stephen Malkmus, Sonic Youth, Vincent Gallo, the Mars Volta, Mudhoney, Dinosaur Jr., Portishead, Matt Groening, Modest Mouse, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and My Bloody Valentine, among others, have curated ATPs over the past nine years. The events usually include an evening curated by the ATP organization itself, and a trial shot at a fan-curated festival in 2007 proved successful, thus the more recent concentration on “The Fans Strike Back” them. The “Don’t Look Back” theme, when artists play a seminal album from their discography, has morphed into a more stand-alone festival situation, reaching the States when it constituted the first evening of 2007’s Pitchfork Fest, for instance. The “Fans Strike Back” theme allows ticket purchasers to form their own ATP, a populist gesture that could, but probably won’t, one day lead to disastrous or hilarious All Tomorrow’s Parties lineups. Certainly some rules are in place!

Two major ATP events are scheduled for 2009: The lineup of the UK ATP (two weekends, May 8-10 and May 15-17, and held at ATP’s on/off home, the Butlins holiday camp in Minehead, Somerset) will be split between artists chosen by ATP and those picked by anyone that pays for chalet accommodations. There has yet to be an ATP solely curated by the fans (or any one artist, for that matter), but the ATP-curated lineup so far includes Devo, Grails, Sleep (performing Holy Mountain and parts of Dopesmoker), Young Marble Giants (going with the only option available, Colossal Youth), the Jesus Lizard, and Anti-Pop Consortium. The fan-curated bill includes Electric Wizard, M83, and Beirut. The second weekend is curated by the Breeders and thus far includes Throwing Muses, Deerhunter, Bon Iver, Holy Fuck, Teenage Fanclub, Pit Er Pat, Gang of Four, and Shellac plus several others. Shellac will be the house band.

ATP will try to repeat the resounding success of last year’s New York festival by returning this September to Kutsher’s Country Club in Monticello, New York. Curated by the Flaming Lips, the “Don’t Look Back” night will feature the Dirty Three doing Ocean Songs and Suicide performing Suicide (shocker!). David Cross will invite some comedians, ATP has confirmed Panda Bear, Anti-Pop Consortium, Black Dice, and Animal Collective for their evening, and the Flaming Lips will headline Sunday night.

ATP will survive into the future behind a steady stream of accepted artists rising to prominence or returning from the dead to pilot the curating prop and plenty of fans to vote for their musical loves. As for the “Don’t Look Back” series, we may see a day when it fishes for importance with nightmare performances of Tin Machine albums by David Bowie, Lou Reed doing Mistrial, Bob Dylan begrudgingly plundering through the Band of the Hand soundtrack, and late-period albums phoned in by Ride, but that remains to be seen.


THE CMJ MUSIC MARATHON

New York City’s CMJ Music Marathon dates back to 1980, when music-festival success was still measured by how few trampling deaths or PCP spinouts occurred or how many comatose bikers failed to blow their toes off with unconcealed sawed-off shotguns as they nodded off to Jefferson Starship’s 2 AM set. Of course, from its conception up through the 80s and early 90s, CMJ had little in common with garden-variety music festivals in that it was primarily geared toward an industry element with a focus on developing artists that had emerged from the genuine underground, as well as varied origins that biz folk perceived to be the underground.

Depending on your stance or degree of interest, CMJ can be credited, or blamed, for tightening up the college-radio/college-rock circuit of the mid-80s, then, along with the British music press, helping to implode the posthardcore late 80s to make way for the grunge and alternative-rock major-label clusterfuck of the early 90s.

A cursory look at the CMJ historical timeline—if one is so inclined and can’t conceivably find any other form of entertainment on the internet—provides an almost three-decade survey of the ravenous music industry’s bottomless and often belated appetite for everything from flash-in-the-pan trends (you name it) to confusing anachronisms (Skid Row in 1995?) to on-the-way-out but seminal artists (Run-DMC in 1986, X in 1983).

In 1987, as the American posthardcore, third-wave hardcore, crossover thrash, college jangle, postpunk roots rock, and nascent indie- and alternative-rock circuits all threatened to garner more and more attention through CMJ’s own efforts, extraneous outlets like MTV’s newish 120 Minutes, and a more-or-less solidified touring circuit via proper clubs, the NYC event received its first viable competition/counterpart in Austin’s South by Southwest Music Conference.

Logic suggests that the multitude of industry-insider discussion panels, strict and confusing attendance policies that differ from venue to venue, and a bank-breaking price of admission combined to generate the perception that music-journalism, music-making, music-peddling, and music-marketing credentials would be required to enjoy SXSW and CMJ without months of donating plasma, a trust fund, or a successful worker’s-comp lawsuit. But both events gradually shifted into the SXSW and CMJ of today while maintaining much of the industry clutter that justified their existences in the first place.

“…for 5 days and nights, over 1,200 artists and 120,000 fans will take over more than 75 of the city’s greatest nightclubs and theaters.”

This promise (or threat, depending on your stance) appears halfway into the introductory statement on the official website for NYC’s 2009 CMJ Music and Film Marathon. For the time being, if you hope to be one of these 120,000 fans, a mere $325 will buy a “general badge” and the “general” conclusion that up to 48 hours of the five-day event will find you married to lines outside various venues. Preparations include an empty bladder (tough following the extra booze consumed to weather this very situation), a full stomach, and an anxiety level well below DefCon 4.

If you lack the stomach or have too much common sense for self-mutilation and don’t want to burden your family with suicide, there’s always plenty of panel discussions (with plenty of available seats) scheduled at CMJ. Successive attendance is a fantastic way to kill off your heart, mind, and soul in an incremental manner. There’s no better way to catch up on the next futilely dipshit moves the music industry plans to make in an effort to pull its ass from the fire.

CMJ is scheduled for October 20-24, provided the limping economy doesn’t fill the streets with blood or blanket the highway system with transient bandits in homicidally customized RVs. As of this writing, the lineup is unknown. Alternately the most notorious and accepted of pay-to-play situations, CMJ will rely on a confusing array of variables to determine the who, where, and when that make up each year’s schedule.

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