This Is Not A Photo Opportunity

All Tomorrow’s Parties – The Nightmare Before Xmas 2009 – Part 1

Amazingly not only have more than six months passed since the December 2009 10 days of ATP bonanza but Minehead has also played host to another couple of amazing looking ATP festivals, with Matt Groening curating the first weekend and Pavement the second.  As usual, there were some amazing bands on both of bills and it’s increasingly depressing that ATP didn’t come back to Australia in 2010 and possibly/probably won’t come back in the foreseeable future, if ever.  And in the meantime we’ll be inflicted by a continuous succession of music festivals where the line-ups are dominated by whatever is on Triple J’s increasingly limited playlist.

Minehead is only about 50 miles from where I come from in the UK and not only was it possible to get a bus there, the last stop was at Butlins’ front gate.  Although it’s so close to home, it was actually the first time I’ve ever been there; the spectre of Butlins and being a ‘seaside’ town on the Bristol Channel always made it a the butt of jokes, a sentiment going back to at least my early teenage years.  But whilst Butlins dominates the town, and particularly the sky line from the sea front, the town itself didn’t seem too bad and the bus trip through mid-Devon was glorious.

The most obvious differences between ATP Mt Buller and ATP Minehead is the location; whereas the Mt Buller location added to the whole event, particularly the backdrop to the second stage, Minehead, another West Country ‘seaside town they forgot to close down’ detracts from all the good bits of ATP, even more so when it’s in the middle of winter.  The Pavilion Stage is a large, soulless void – Part Millennium Dome, part suburban mall – complete with amusement arcade and food outlets, whose culinary output is a fair match for Minehead in December, whilst the Centre Stage has the air, decor and odour of somewhere where they hold darts tournaments.  Reds Bar, the third and smallest of the stages is a smaller version of the Centre Stage; Crazy Horse, where the quiz and bingo are held, and where most of the In Between Days action takes place, is a Western Theme bar.  Make of that what you will.  On the upside, all of the bars serve cider.  In Pints.  Australia please take note.

Having arrived just before lunchtime I end up having a few hours wait as my chalet-mates for the weekend were still driving down from London.  I’ve booked the whole festival very late on and through adverts on Drowned In Sound and Facebook from people with spare tickets, ending up staying with a different group of people for each of the three parts of ATP that take place in December; The Nightmare Before Xmas weekend, the In Between Days mid-week four-day festival and the 10 Years of ATP weekend.  The first thing that happens after they arrive is sorting out the wristbands for my bloody valentine.  The band have decided to play on the smaller 2,000 person capacity Centre Stage rather than the much larger Pavilion Stage and play on each night of the festival so that everyone gets a chance to see them.  This means choosing a night to see them and queuing up for an appropriate coloured wristband for that night.  Waiting in the line it’s clear that everyone has decided to see them on the Friday night, probably as everyone wants to go and see Lightning Bolt on the Saturday night and leave Sunday free for the ‘TBC’ act (who end up being Lightning Bolt again) on the Reds Stage.  Luckily we’ve timed it perfectly and although there are still a few Friday night wristbands when we get to the front of the queue the allocation is almost exhausted.

Chalet found, bags dropped off, it’s time for the music to start, with Wounded Knees on the Centre Stage being the first band of the weekend and the first band in my ten day ATP extravaganza.  They sound a bit like an acoustic (i.e. quieter) shoegaze band, and it’s no surprise to find out afterwards that singer/guitarist Jimi Shields is the younger brother of MBV’s Kevin Shields.  And you only thought that things like this happened in Brisbane?

My first Josh T. Pearson experience is a let down.  His guitar and vocals are accompanied by a drums but the combination doesn’t work, with the drums overpowering everything else and not playing to his greatest strengths, which are the quieter, longer, soulful, narratives – a more country Nick Cave if you will.  His second set of the week (on the Tuesday of In Between Days – which will get blogged about one day), when it’s just him, his guitar and a bunch of new songs was spellbinding and a much better measure of what he can do.  Why he chooses to use a drummer for his set, I don’t know, but at both the weekend ATPs it seems like some of the bands – Primal Scream and The Drones as a couple of examples – are determined to play the loudest, fastest and hardest songs in their repertoire, maybe trying to compete with what else is on show over the weekends, maybe trying to appeal to fans of noise, instead of playing some of the songs that they might have expected to play if you were seeing them away from ATP.  One final note about Josh T Pearson is that he’s everywhere over the weekend; but then it’s hard to miss a really tall guy with a huge, bushy beard in a cowboy hat and a long fur coat in a small seaside holiday resort in Somerset.

Thankfully, the Pavilion Stage is used sparingly over the weekend; two bands on the Friday, four on Saturday and four planned for Sunday, although stage and time changes mean only three end up playing on the final day.  De La Soul are the first band on Friday and manage to make everyone feel really old within seconds of starting their set by telling everyone that they’re touring to celebrate 20 years of 3 Feet High & Rising. It’s probably been not a lot less than that since I last listened to their début album and I also get the feeling that I’m not the only person in that boat; there’s a very obvious air of nostalgia.   They’ve obviously been booked and scheduled to get the party started and they manage to do this with aplomb, even though they still drag out all the old hip hop clichés, dividing the crowd into halves and doing the whole call and response/my side is louder than yours shtick.

As well as it being a soulless void with debatable sound, photographing from the photo pit isn’t as good as would have been expected as instead of having speakers on the front of the stage for the benefit of the front rows, in their greater wisdom they’ve decided to place three speaker stands in the pit.  As well as providing obstacles in the pit to navigate on top of all the photographers in there, they also significantly reduce the view from in front of the stage and means that the photographers end up occupying even less space than they would have if the photo pit had been clearer.

Primal Scream are the second and final band using the largest stage on Day 1.  From the very front row they sound and look amazing, although watching them from further back after the first three songs they don’t have the same impact and the sound got lost in the huge space.  They’ve made the decision to focus on the harder and more Krautrock influenced songs for the majority of their 90 minutes, with their Stones influenced and Screamadelica era songs limited to the obvious singles.  Having missed them last time they played in Brisbane, the reviews were less than flattering, with a disinterested Bobby Gillespie much of the problem by all accounts.  Tonight it’s a completely different Gillespie on show and he barely stops moving or pauses for breath during their set.  Funnily enough, whilst in reception earlier in the day, whilst waiting for my chalet-mates for the weekend to arrive, one of the first people I saw was Bobby Gillespie.  He was looking very chipper considering it was before lunchtime (and I never realised how tiny he is) and asked reception where the toilets were.  I’m not saying that there’s a correlation between the toilets and the energetic performance tonight.  Or maybe I am.  In terms of photographing the band I more or less ignore them to try and get a a really good photo of Bobby Gillespie, as I already have an idea in my mind of what I want to get; a good close up of him clapping.  However, I don’t really get what I want thanks to the combination of less than ideal lighting and the fact that he doesn’t stay still for 1 second during those first three songs.  Towards the end of their set I decide to head over to the Reds stage to see a bit of Television Personalities and it’s in these last 20 minutes that they decide to vary their set and play more from the older/classic/less Krautrock/more dancey albums; it’s something they probably should have done throughout their 90 minutes.

Going to see a bit of Television Personalities is more about checking out a band I don’t really know (other than their name) but probably should.  From memory I think they were ok but not knowing any of their songs is an obvious hindrance.  My memory of any music they play is lost to the easier to remember first impressions of Red’s photo pit, with the barriers pushed so far in at the front of the stage that you have to sit down on the seat on the back of the barrier and are stuck in the one position for the three songs, with there being no room to move around.

[As I see my bloody valentine three times over the weekend, I’ll cover their Friday night set in a separate post along with thoughts on the following two nights’ performances]

Final band of the Friday is Buzzcocks, who play for an hour between 12.45am and 1.45am, a very uncharacteristic time slot for a UK music festival where midnight is usually the end of the night.  Having missed them both times they’ve recently played in Brisbane, this is the first time I’ve ever seen them.  They’ve undoubtedly got the songs – tonight is very much a greatest hit set – and although they were a punk band based on their songs more than their image or their attitude, it’s hard to watch tonight thanks to Steve Diggle.  He’s obviously been playing too much Guitar Hero or decided that he wants to really be playing in Guns n’ Roses as he struts around the stage, pulling out all the rock moves, playing his guitar vertically as if in Star Power mode.  It’s just a bit cringeworthy and really detracts from the songs they play.

More photos from ATP Nightmare Before Xmas 2009 are on Flickr.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 20th, 2010 at 9:17 pm. It is filed under Music Photography and tagged with 2009, All Tomorrow's Parties, ATP, Butlins, Buzzcocks, De La Soul, Josh T Pearson, Justin Edwards, Mess+Noise, Minehead, my bloody valentine, Nightmare Before Xmas, Primal Scream, Sony a700, TV Personalities, Wounded Knees. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.