Sunday, January 18, 2009

All Tomorrow's Parties




The famous English festival, ATP has finally come to Australia. It's the music lovers music festival, with the best bits of a festival and none of the shit bits. No lines for the toilets or bar, easy to get around, good time-tabling so you could see a bit of everyone, all that sort of stuff. I know I've previously said that as a punter I'm not really into festivals, but All Tomorrow's Parties was really amazing. It was so chilled. Our very own Uncle Nick and his Bad Seeds curated the inaugural ATP festival. It was pretty great.

It was a funny crowd, a little bit older, my friend Sophie astutely said that the crowd was a bit boutique and a bit full of the people who were the coolest of cool 10 years ago. Slightly aged and chilled out, but still stylin'. A few hipsters were representing. There were few old school sun-hating folk [which was hilar because it was on an island in the middle of Sydney harbour, on a perfectly cloudless super sunny day in broad daylight with very little shade. The sun-hating, long sleeved, legs covered folk really had to work hard to maintain that style. The rest of us just got burnt.] There was also a smattering of older older folk - like your parents perhaps and people who loyally follow the Sydney Festival and attend all their events - you could identify them by their packed lunches [cheeses, crackers etc], and they were carrying copies of the weekend papers which they'd crack out and read in-between songs!

The older folk obvs aren't that tuned in festival etiquette. They swarmed on the small amount of shade and seats and refused to share. Many were seen to carry their plastic chairs around from stage to stage with them. Some even went so far as to carry them right into the crowd, up close to the stage and sit. This was big during The Necks and you can maybe understand why, but during Uncle Nick's headline set it was a bit much. I mean, he was hardly singing lullabies. 


Anyway, all in all it was a great day. Dead Meadow were amazing. The Stabs were a great way to start the day. Sitting under a tree, watching the boats bobbing on the sparkling blue harbour and listening to Robert Forster was beautiful. Seeing the full Saints line up play, with the famous harbour bridge just off to the left was amazing, although it was a shame that they decided to bust out all their boring ballads! Of all the songs in their catalogue!! Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds were tight, a great way to end the night. I missed Fuck Buttons because I wanted to make sure those pesky old folk didn't rush the ferries I didn't want to wait for hours to get home. But James 'Blood' Ulmer was perhaps the highlight. He played in this quiet stage at the top of the island just as the sun started to set, spectacular.





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