DVD REVIEWS
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DVD REVIEWS |
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All Tomorrow’s Parties
16.11.09 @www.vanguard-online.co.uk
It’s been ten years since the first All Tomorrow’s Parties event took place, a take-over of a holiday camp, named for the coyotes of cool, The Velvet Underground, that has since become an indie brand. Warp have made a film documenting the passage of time that is as fragmented and episodic as you’d expect from an arty label, an arty band and a load of indie hipsters. Along the way, it’s a smorgasbord of music, interviews, noise, images and random strangeness. The film opens with old variety shows morphing into footage of modern bands, like Battles. We see the Butlins red-coats, happy families and the post-war dream before we are shown bearded hipsters getting pissed and listening to shockwaves of sound. We see the fey nonsense of Belle And Sebastian (founders of the idea) contrasted with a typically electrifying Nick Cave doing No Pussy Blues with Grinderman, then it’s onto a Jerry Garcia TV clip where the figurehead of peace and love talks about his dream of a festival with no headliners. And ATP is the inheritor of that dream, rarely having some grand closer like Glastonbury and the like do. There’s lots of split-screen and sound-collages. Contributions come from Slint, Animal Collective, Micah P. Hinson and lots of other cult figures, mostly without full songs. We get film of crowds, crazies and soundbites from passers by and curators (each festival has a different, cult curator). Jams and outside performances give a feel of the organism that springs up when musicians have freedom whilst being herded together. Patti Smith gives an opinionated TV interview before turning up over the end credits with Rock And Roll Nigger, to show it’s about the spirit, not the generation. A few other more famous folks turn up, like Iggy Pop, Portishead, Sonic Youth and Seasick Steve, before it’s onto some more tedious bands – Daniel Johnson and The Boredoms. John Cooper Clarke straddles the old school variety and hip indie sensibility gap. A glimpse of the legend that is Damo Suzuki makes me happy and a dizzying sense of people rushing from place to place, from sound to sound is building, like the end of a long day. Some TV footage of Sun Ra, the psychedelic Duke Ellington, precedes a vision of the morning after. Dawn breaks and we see the debris and chaos as drunk fools arse around before marching, singing, to the sea like a Polyphonic Spree. It’s a big mish-mash of a movie, capturing the organic nature and randomness of a gathering of enthusiasts. As a picture of a “scene”, it’s one that doubles as something archaeologists can study and an advert for a unique set of events, outside the horrible circuit of big name festivals. www.atpfestival.com |
