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Forty Things We Loved about All Tomorrow’s Parties
The country’s best music festival? Quite possibly.
Photo: Nadia Chaudhury
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We haven’t been to every festival in the country (Bumbershoot ’11!), but we bet it’s tough to find one as enjoyable and casual as All Tomorrow’s Parties. We’ve heard some amazing things about ATP in the past, about how the musicians just walk around Kutsher’s Country Club, which isn’t nearly as nice as it sounds, instead of surrounding themselves with security guards. For once, the rumors were right. As for Kutsher’s itself…well, yes, it is a country club, but don’t give it so much credit. The building looks like it hasn’t been renovated since the 1950s, minus the giant speakers around the stages, but that somehow adds to its charm (plus, the X-Files pinball game, circa season three, is awesome). Also, because of Kutsher’s and ATP’s founder, Barry Hogan, there were no commercial sponsors to be seen, and the food and water wasn’t terribly expensive.
Below are 40 more things Encore loved about ATP:
1. Only cost $10 for three days worth of parking. It’s $19 per game at Citi Field.
2. Before we even parked the car, we saw Jim Jarmusch chilling by the side of the room.
3. The fact that by Sunday evening, we saw Jarmusch so many times, it wasn’t even surprising anymore (okay, maybe it was, but only because he’s one of our favorite directors). Here’s a photo of us, BFFs forever:
4. The three tiers of the Stardust Ballroom, where most of the big name bands played. You had a great view of the stage no matter where you stood (or sat, if you swung your feet over the railing).
5. Mudhoney’s “Touch Me, I’m Sick” still sounding great.
6. Mudhoney playing “Halloween” with Thurston watching from the sidelines.
7. In the Ballroom, there is no backstage. If a musician wanted to watch another group, they were out in the crowd.
8. Iggy and the Stooges, still kicking ass after all these years:
9. Iggy running around on stage as well as he could in the 1970s.
10. The Stooges beginning with “Raw Power” instead of “Search and Destroy” for their Don’t Look Back performance.
11. Steve MacKay’s saxophone playing, especially during “Fun House.”
12. Thurston Moore’s grin while watching Iggy dance on the stage after the Stooges’ set.
13. The best collection of band shirts we’ve ever seen in one location. An incomplete list: My Bloody Valentine, the Clean, Jesus Lizard, the Meat Puppets, Guided by Voices, the Replacements, the Feelies, Run DMC, King Crimson, No Age, Minor Threat, the National and the Gun Club. And Goblin Cock. Can’t forget Goblin Cock.
14. How we expected everyone we saw walking through Kutsher’s to be famous—and how we were often right.
15. Kutsher’s lake:
16. The Q&A session with Jarmusch before Day Two:
17. The keyboardist in this photo. He seemingly played for hours at a time in Kutsher’s lobby and really wanted some “gals” to dance to his music. Here, he got lucky:
18. Shellac’s never-ending version of “End of Radio,” complete with lyrics borrowed from “Roadrunner” and a John Peel reference. Drummer Todd Trainer really knew how to play the snare drum:
19. Talented and Sexy Kim, Vol. 1:
20. Explosions in the Sky being just as amazing as we thought they’d thought be—and how they made us think of Friday Night Lights for their entire one hour set. Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose!
21. How it actually looked like an explosion on stage:
22. Talented and Sexy Kim, Vol. 2:
23. Sonic Youth’s varied set list, including “Eric’s Trip,” “Catholic Block” and “Shaking Hell”:
24. Turtles!
25. The Criterion film series in a quiet room upstairs, where we watched Gomorrah.
26. This joke: there’s a rusty playground at Kutsher’s, and after spinning the merry-go-round, someone said, “I’m going to noise rock record of that.” It was that kind of crowd.
27. The Greenhornes sounding like the MC5, without all the politics:
28. Fucked Up, punishing in the most enjoyable way possible.
29. Beer can smashing:
30. This photo:
31. The between sets music playing everything from the Smiths to Black Flag.
32. Jarmush watching Fucked Up’s set:
33. The constant supply of paper towels in the (relatively clean) bathrooms. Underrated component of any festival.
34. The security guards. As long as you weren’t destroying anything, they didn’t really care if you jumped on stage, moshed or even smoked indoors. Well, they probably did mind, but they usually looked away. Thank you, guys.
35. Encore‘s favorite all-girl punk band from Brooklyn, the Vivian Girls, played Stage 2:
36. If “Sister Ray”-era Velvet Underground and Suicide collaborated on the soundtrack for 2001: A Space Odyssey, that’s kind of what Wooden Shjips sounded like live. One of our favorite sets from the weekend:
37. We weren’t able to stay for Raekwon or Sun O))) and Boris, so our last act was Girls. Frontman Christopher Owens might look like early-90s Dave Matthews below, but instead of songs about ants marching and billies tripping, Girls played an enjoyable set of girl group style songs with lots of distortion.
38. This photo:
39. One thing we thought about on the way out: there was almost no talking from the crowd during the sets. Nothing’s worse than a slow song being interrupted by someone’s conversation behind you. No one gives a shit about your stock account, man. But this weekend, the audience kept quiet when they were supposed to. Also a stunning lack of cell phone usage during the sets too. Thank you, crowd.
40. Kutsher’s Country Club is only two hours away from New York. Just FYI for next year.