It’s not your standard venue for a rock festival, but those who have been to an All Tomorrow’s Parties leave with a whole new view on holiday camps.
I spent this weekend with three old and very good friends at the Portishead-curated All Tomorrow’s Parties. What a weekend.
Within hours of being out from under the guiding (some might say restraining) hands of our better halves, and upon discovering that Russell Brand had named named his first venture into the world of literature “My Booky Wook”, we were compiling a list of “people who can feck off”. Great to be back with some like-minded cynics.
The festival clips are being uploaded as-I-write onto YouTube, and I’m sure that will carry on for a few more days yet. My current favourite, embedded here, shows what went on in the smoker’s shelter for several hours on Saturday night.
Our top three acts of the weekend were Thurston Moore, Portishead and Chrome Hoof.
We were surprised about Thurston, I have to say. After Sonic Youth’s show this time last year (which was also top-notch), we had expected him to show up and give us an hour and a half of loud feedback, just to even things out a bit. He played it straight down the line, and we were bowled over by how good he and his band were.
Portishead, playing for the first time in ten years, were as stunning as you would expect them to be. A big comeback from them next year.
Chrome Hoof can be hard to describe, but I’ll try: it’s kind of Death Metal Disco Psychadelic Funk played by silver wizards with Shirley Bassey on vocals.
Sorry to say (Andrew) that Sparklehorse wasn’t up to much again. I’ve seen him do a much better show. And Jerry Sadowitz (who doesn’t want to be reviewed, but I don’t care) disappointed 5000 people by switching to play at the smallest venue possible, thus allowing only about 400 people to see his show. I don’t think there are any clips of him having a tug on stage, but I think this image is now permanently available in the mind of one of my work colleagues.
Poem of the weekend goes to John Cooper Clarke, who had us reciting hire car all the way home in our, well, hire car. Sounds a bit like Jimmy Saville, but what a hell of a guy.
Honourable mentions also to Black Mountain, Jah Shaka, Aphex Twin and Kling Klang. Anyone else who was pretty good – apologies, I probably wasn’t there.
Whilst wandering past a noticeboard, I noticed (that’s the point of noticeboards surely?) that “The Catford Scum” were there. Google says that “Catford scum does not match any documents”, but I’d be delighted to find out who the Catford scum are, and perhaps even meet them someday.
We’ve come back wondering, after a little too much flavoured vodka and pickled eggs, if it’s possible to have black pepper poisoning?
(Edited slightly on 4 Feb 08, to remove my ill-thought out potty-mouthing. I don’t want this site to have an adult content label slapped on it, thank you very much.)
