by Andy Gately

And what costume shall the poor girl wear
To all tomorrow’s parties
For Thursday’s child is Sunday’s clown
For whom none will go mourning

These lines sung by Nico in the 1967 Velvet Underground song “All Tomorrow’s Parties” were inspired by Warhol’s Factory, where art was cranked out by a motley crew of Bohemians liberated from the pressures of suits and squares controlling every purse string. The U.K. music festival of the same name, which takes place in East Sussex, embraces the philosophy of prophetic 60s icons like Lou Reed, Jerry Garcia, Iggy Pop and Patti Smith – the latter two of whom feature in the film – in an ambitious homegrown event that for years has been succeeding in organizing shows which truly put the music above everything, including profit.

Formed in 1999 as an alternative to larger, more business-driven jamborees like Glastonbury and Reading, the ATP meme complex has since gone internationally viral, as evidenced by its expansion into the U.S. and Australia. And with good reason: each year, a band or scene king is invited to curate the fest, meaning hand-picking favorite acts to create it’s own dream lineup. Or, as the organizer puts it in the film, “It’s like the ultimate mix tape.” “You have to travel to the ends of the earth to find these bands,” one jubilant fan observes, “but here they’re all in one place.” ATP’s indie cred is beyond reproach; former and announced curators include Pavement, Mogwai, Vincent Gallo, Dinosaur Jr., The Dirty Three, Mike Patton, Matt Groening, The Melvins, The Breeders, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, The Flaming Lips, My Bloody Valentine… And the founders’ guiding ethos eschews corporate sponsors, with their culture-jacking ad campaign eyesores, and, in a nice democratizing touch, separate housing units for fans and artists. “It’s like Rock ‘n’ Roll High School,” notes a sublime Daniel Johnston, and all the accompanying party possibilities, spontaneous jam sessions, and hotel destruction you’d hope for are documented on screen.

At the risk of over-praise, the movie is something of a milestone, with its natural coupling of the evolution of the concert film with the evolution of the music festival. The transitional state film finds itself in is especially apparent in the documentary form, which has benefited from digital video in ways unique to the genre. This is on full display with the collage method favored here and in such films as the Beastie Boys’ Awesome, I Fuckin’ Shot That!, where fan video is a primary source of footage. And the ups and downs of such an approach are immediately evident within the first few minutes of ATP: grainy handheld crowd-sourced shots from a dozen different consumer-grade camcorders are juxtaposed, often violently, with well-lensed close-ups by the camera crew and stock footage thrown in for good measure, Filth & The Fury-style. The result is usually one of the following, rarely in between -

It can be a glorious mash-up of film stocks that achieves a kind of rough-hewn beauty and feeling of immediacy, “being there,” and capturing intimate details and perfect little moments which the blunt instruments of traditional live show coverage would have bulldozed right past. Witness the celebration of primal joy that is the Akron/Family performance in the film, where the transcendence of music and the communal power of the live show are reaffirmed through the building visual frenzy that rises towards a gospel church-like fever pitch, camera perspectives flitting 360 degrees around the huge dance party as chemicals dissolve the already-blurred boundaries between performer and audience, filmmaker and viewer, until by song’s climax the congregation reaches a critical mass of sonic bliss.

The other possible result is a dizzying pastiche of shaky-cam cinematography that makes Blair Witch look like a Hitchcock’s Rope by comparison and appears as if it were cut by a benzedrine-crazed Thurston Moore after cornering his shadow in the editing room and endeavored to “finish it” with a katana. Of course, such is to be expected when the only DP’s your budget calls for are armchair Kubricks going zoom-crazy on their mini-DV cam, art school dropouts with their grandma’s 8mm Bell & Howell up to the one eye that isn’t obscured by their asymmetrical haircut, and that guy on horse tranc’s who, in a moment of clarity, somehow remembered to hit “record” on his cell phone before withdrawing back into a K-hole.

Fortunately, the former example is more often the case with ATP, and Jonathan Caouette is most likely the one to thank here. His debut film Tarnation, where you can literally watch cinema save a human being’s life, was a digital tour-de-force that elevated the editor’s role over that of the director. Just as the emphasis shifted from the musician to the DJ in the 80s, and has now shifted to the remix artists, the editor has been crowned the new auteur. The very notion of a director is absurd in a film like ATP, where over 200 people shot the thing. But remix culture is key to ATP the festival and the film, and understanding why it is on the artistic forefront.





Belle & Sebastion, Slint, Grizzly Bear, Portishead, Animal Collective, Octopus Project, Saul Williams, and GZA all turn in memorable performances in the doc. See Grinderman debut “No Pussy Blues” to a rapt crowd. See Iggy Pop continue to defy age and jump around like a punk rock ape. Want to know which Daniel Johnston song guitarist Nick Zinner lifted the chord progression from to write Yeah Yeah Yeah’s staple “Maps”? Check out the film. You even get to see a rare total bomb session by alt comic David Cross, who then confronts one of his hecklers after the show. The resulting surreal and amusing conversation is not what you’d expect. Lesser-known acts like The Gossip and American bluesman Seasick Steve are shown doing what they, and the festival, do best: exposing like-minded crowds to rare sounds.

In the end, ATP is a fascinating social document that captures music and art in flux, with plenty of jagged edges and rouge pixels. The ubiquity of DV cameras has made this film possible, but now we must wait until both the quality of the cheap technology improves and people learn to use their equipment a little better, i.e. frame shots, adjust F-stops, use that scary ‘manual’ mode, etc. Sure, the “low-fi punk rock DIY” aesthetic is cool for a while, but you may find yourself missing old fashioned notions like dollys and cranes. Oh yeah, and “film.” Imagine the movie that will emerge from the logical conclusion of where we’re headed: every single person at a concert has a near-microscopic camera strapped to their forehead recording the entire gig in high definition, and it’s beamed into a God-like editor’s bay. But, is being everyone at once at a show actually better than a few well-composed, well-lit shots?

The debate is fun for academics to ponder over, but we must ultimately face the facts: gone are the days of The Last Waltz, and there’s no sense in mourning them – gotta roll with the new or get left behind, ’cause trying to stop the march of technology is a fool’s errand. If you wanna stay plugged in to the scene, you can’t afford to miss All Tomorrow’s Parties. It’s almost as good as being there…