Americans are always up for a good party. For All
Tomorrow’s Parties on the other hand, the response has been
lukewarm.
ATP, a music festival to be held on board the Queen Mary in Long
Beach this weekend, is the latest in an effort to resurrect rock
festivals on American soil. Since Woodstock in the fabled summer of
’69, the U.S. festival tradition has been hit-and-miss at
best. Woodstock’s immediate follow-up, the Rolling
Stones’ Altamont, ended in tragedy, and attempts to revive
the Woodstock brand name have since turned to violence and rioting
at the much-maligned Woodstock ’99. Lollapalooza came and
went with the alternative rock boom, and a new edition was
cancelled this summer due to poor ticket sales. But certain annual
shows have had some longevity. The decidedly non-rock Newport Jazz
Festival will be celebrating its 50th anniversary this summer, and
in recent years, niche tours like the Ozzfest and the Warped Tour
have forged a name for themselves and found success with the metal
and punk genres, respectively.
Rock festivals have seen a re-emergence only in the last few
years, with the rise of Coachella and ATP. ATP is particularly
innovative, founded on the concept of artists curating the festival
by performing as the headliner and also picking through a wish list
of their favorite bands to join them on stage. The U.S. version of
a British festival of the same name, ATP Pacific began life at
UCLA.
“David Sefton, the director of Performing Arts at UCLA,
and I had worked together in the U.K. He was very keen on us
working together when he came out here. He invited us to look at
the campus. … It seemed like it might be a perfect place to do
ATP,” said Barry Hogan, concert promoter and co-founder of
ATP.
Sonic Youth curated the inaugural edition in 2002, and acts by
such performers as Television and Eddie Vedder were well-received.
Perhaps due to a post-9/11 rescheduling, ticket sales were slow and
space was limited in Royce Hall and Ackerman Grand Ballroom. So in
2003, the festival moved to the historic Queen Mary ship.
“The Queen Mary is a perfect place because it’s the
closest thing you’d get to a holiday camp where we do it in
England. It’s got the hotel on the ship and bands and fans
could stay on board for the whole weekend and enjoy it as the whole
event rather than just come down for the day,” said
Hogan.
The ATP event in England is held at Camber Sands, an isolated
holiday camp where three nights in a chalet are included in the
ticket price. Much of the fun of a weekend festival lies beyond
just seeing the bands perform. The communal atmosphere of staying
or camping out with a large group of people is a major draw, both
here and abroad.
“The whole idea of having to sit in traffic to get to the
show, find parking, not really drinking because you gotta get back
in the car after the show and do the whole traffic thing again
““ it’s not as appealing to people as camping would
be,” said Isaac Brock, singer/guitarist of Modest Mouse, this
year’s curator.
The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, a U.S. festival
held in Indio, California, is based on this principle. Coachella
features dozens of bands, as well as film screenings and art
galleries, over a two-day span in May. On-site camping was readily
available, and the festival sold out for the first time this year,
perhaps due to a strong line-up that included Radiohead’s
only U.S. tour date of the year, but also because of the draw of
the experience itself.
“You end up with people who are more into events than
shows themselves. They tend to go festivals more than they do just
your average live show,” said Brock.
Europe’s summer festival scene is the ultimate example of
this phenomenon. Long-running festivals like Reading and
Glastonbury draw crowds of up to 100,000, and in a country where
concerts are cheap and word of mouth spreads quickly, the festival
circuit is a destination more than a musical experience.
“It’s something they’ve perfected over the
years, they’ve just been doing it so long ““ they have
so many more festivals over there than they do here, legitimate
rock festivals,” said Hamilton Leithauser of the Walkmen, a
band from New York which recently completed a European tour that
finished with an afternoon performance at Glastonbury.
The Walkmen will be playing at ATP Pacific this year, along with
the Shins, who also completed a European tour during which adoring
audiences jumped up and down in front of the stage.
“It seems like there’s more enthusiasm about the
bands there,” said Marty Crandall, keyboardist of the
Shins.
ATP has tried to funnel this enthusiasm. What’s unique
about ATP, both here and abroad, is its status in between a big
festival people attend for the experience and a show people go to
to hear their favorite bands.
“The truth is ATP is like an anti-festival,” said
Hogan. “It’s smaller, it’s more personal. … The
key for this is to keep coming back with really innovative bills to
make people want to come to it as opposed to, “˜I’m
gonna go because there’s a big communal
vibe.'”
ATP U.K. is set up for only 3,000 people, while 5,000 will be a
reasonable turnout for ATP Pacific. The Queen Mary stage itself
only fits about 2,500 people, and audiences are divided only
between the main stage and the park next door, rather than the
numerous stages of larger festivals. The festival experience at ATP
is not one of wandering between stages in anticipation of a huge
band’s performance, but rather of staying on location. The
more intimate nature of the festival allows audiences to see and
expose themselves to a wide array of musicians instead of a few
major acts.
One of the difficulties of ATP Pacific has been spreading the
word that room and board are in fact available. Factoring in the
higher ticket prices and the cost of a camping permit, a two-day
ticket and a room on board the Queen Mary is roughly equivalent to
camping out at Coachella. The line-up is well worth the price of
admission: In addition to Modest Mouse, the Shins and the Walkmen,
notable artists will include the Flaming Lips and Lou Reed. Reed
himself wrote the song “All Tomorrow’s Parties”
which gave the festival its name, and audiences anticipate a rare
set of Lou’s Velvet Underground songs.
“That’s what makes it worth the money ““ bands
you wouldn’t ordinarily be able to see,” said Greg
Katz, a second-year undeclared student who attended ATP last
year.
Now firmly established at the Queen Mary, this year’s ATP
has sold better than last year’s, which had to be pushed back
several times until enough tickets were sold. While All
Tomorrow’s Parties may not be the heir to Woodstock,
it’s brought a new way of looking at festivals to the United
States.
“It’s like a mix tape,” said Hogan, “You
want to listen to it all the way through. You have the opportunity
of fast-forwarding, but that’s cheating.”