Day 1 – “Where did we go/days when the rains came”

From JFK we drove North in a rain which had begun as we’d loaded our bags into the back of the rental car. At this point we had become crazed from lack of sleep and were having extreme difficulty in utilizing the parts of our brains that help you find places. The fact that the roads in the New England states make no sense to people raised on freeways, the grid system and adequate signage didn’t help either. Eventually, with the help of a purchased map, Internet directions, directions from 2 different smart phones and eventually a gas station attendant we made it to Monticello, New York, where our hotel was.

For the last two years All Tomorrow’s Parties has been held in the hotel and on the grounds of Kutsher’s, a once-famous resort from the “Borscht Belt” era which reached its peak during the mid-1960′s when Jewish families would come and spend summers at the various loosely connected resorts that the Catskills region was famous for. Nowadays it’s a downtrodden, practically abandoned relic echoing what was once an upscale-now-kitsch past. Attendees at All Tomorrow’s Parties had the option of staying in one of the old resort’s rooms, but they were expensive – although the performers stayed for free – or you could try to find a cheaper room in nearby Monticello.

The Econo Lodge we stayed at was run by an Indian guy who had pissed off his family in New York City and was banished to the hell-hole of Monticello. As we were checking in he seemed to imply that he could find us women if we had the money. This part of the story gets a little iffy though because about 15 minutes after checking in Capt. AKAK and I were sleeping soundly in the one queen-sized bed that our room had. This actually worked out well because by the end of the trip we found that our psyches had been completely interwoven – this can happen when people’s skulls are in the same region while dreaming or listening to loud music for extended periods of time.

Be careful, no lifeguard on duty at the Econo Lodge's pool.

By the time we woke up it was getting dark and the festival had already begun. We were hungry so we ate at a local diner before heading to Kutsher’s. The first of many miracles on the trip occurred at that diner – having something to do with the power emitted via Capt. AKAK’s beard – and a picture of Christ appeared on the table. Several of the employees were impressed, but that didn’t help our food get there any faster. For some reason the rest of the state of New York was weathering the Great Recession with a wink and a click of the heels save for Monticello, which had apparently become the dumping ground for people that couldn’t cut it anywhere else in the State. We theorized over our fifth glass of water that it had something to do with the close proximity to a WalMart, which seems to bring in its wake an assortment of the downtrodden.

Miracle at the dinner table.

After several bands had already played we were served our food, quickly ate it, then hurried over to Kutsher’s. But as with a lot of things while we missed the The Drones, The Fellies, and Dirty Three we seemed to arrive at exactly the right time. Without being aware of it at the time the next band on the bill would set the tone for the entire festival.

We were introduced to Suicide after braving a walk in the dark and the rain from the parking lot to the entrance of the venue, which was Kutsher’s lobby. Capt. AKAK picked up his photo pass from a pretty All Tomorrow’s Parties staff member who had flown out from L.A. and we headed to the Stardust Ballroom. This was where Stage 1, the main stage, was located. It had three tiers connected by ramps which were used at one time for tables where hotel guests would dine while taking in a show. Now they were empty and for people to stand, though the large one-time dancefloor near the stage is where most people would congregate during the weekend’s performances. Stage 2 was a smaller stage on the opposite side of the hotel in what looked like your standard large hotel dining room, although an oversize chandelier near the stage made it somewhat memorable by the soft light it cast over the crowd before a given band would begin its set.

2nd Stage at All Tomorrow's Parties 2009

As we walked into the Stardust Ballroom the sounds of Suicide were deafening. I knew nothing of the New York City duo so as we found our way to the front of the crowd through the darkness all I could react to was the old guy wearing reflective ski goggles at a giant keyboard accompanied by a man who was ostensibly singing and in between words smoking a cigarette. He reminded me of the old guys you sometimes see walking out of methadone clinics, all skin and bones but still able to hold a really good conversation. Like a Herbert Huncke but of the post-Vietnam world, all technology and street smarts, the inevitable step in Suicide‘s time past The Velvet Underground. However, this guy was now wearing a warm-up jacket, tennis shoes and a fleece beanie; image didn’t matter much anymore.

Suicide - Martin Rev and Alan Vega

The subs were working extremely hard passing the sound of the drum machine that the guy on the keyboards – Martin Rev, I would learn later – was blasting into them. Actually, that might have had more to do with the sound engineers and what seemed like an overall policy of the All Tomorrow’s Parties organizers: deafen or at least seriously damage anyone’s hearing standing within fifty yards of the PA speakers. Their website even warned, “Your hearing can be damaged if you do not wear hearing protection.” They weren’t kidding. I had to use earplugs (“Hearos” from Guitar Center, highly recommended) but Capt. AKAK chose to forsake any hearing protection and admitted after the 3-day festival to suffering for it but it also being a requirement to truly enjoy the music. This is not the place for the discussion but I tend to agree with him in principle – for some bands I had to take them out to really be able to hear any detailed sound – but for the most part I wasn’t willing to go any more deaf than I already am.

Despite not knowing much about Suicide‘s music or history I could get into the primitive electronic feel of it and the idiosyncratic almost spoken word vocals of the singer, Alan Vega. But what was the most striking thing was the enveloping nature of the sound – you couldn’t escape it except through removing yourself from the environment. There was no ignoring what was going on, it was so fucking loud it forced you to pay attention. The sound ripped through your nervous system, rattled your skeleton, latched onto your soul and didn’t so much cradle it as pin it down. It was like a violent spirituality and it would become the theme of the weekend: beautiful, blissed-out, ecstatic yet seedy and always hinting at darkness.

Panda Bear

After Suicide we wandered around for a moment and then waited for Panda Bear to begin his set. Most musicians would set up and tear down their own equipment during the 3-day festival which gave the audience time to see the minutiae that musicians deal with in making their music – plugging in cables, asking a stage hand for an extension cord, or figuring out how to deal with a broken piece of gear. I was familiar with Panda Bear from his albums so I was surprised to see him performing his songs solo with drum machines and samplers. It’s a lot to keep working properly – at least with instruments you can improvise if something goes wrong.

Which for me brings up an unavoidable point which is it’s difficult to talk about the musical experience of someone performing what amounts to an already known outcome. It’s a different experience, but it’s not necessarily live music. You can get just as into it but in a different way that definitely feels detached or more atmospheric as opposed to musical. The fact that he had a screen showing video behind him underlined this point; it was like we were watching him perform a soundtrack to a movie – a movie that had already been shot and we knew the outcome to. There are no value judgments in this – Panda Bear and later Animal Collective were just as exciting and in the case of Animal Collective made you want to dance just as much as anyone else, but at times it felt like technicians were playing for you as opposed to musicians. The musicianship involved had occurred during the original recording process.

After Panda Bear we stumbled into the Criterion Cinema room on the 2nd floor above the lobby to watch a movie until the next act began. We walked into the room as the final scene in Gimme Shelter was playing where Mick Jagger is in the editing room with Albert Maysles watching the Hell’s Angel repeatedly stab the black guy in the green suit. Events like this would occur throughout the weekend that amounted to an echo effect between the past and the present. It was like standing in the Grand Canyon of Rock ‘n Roll culture and being able to hear the howls and hand claps of history echo through time. We were standing on one side of those echos and Mick Jagger and Altamont and the end of idealism were on the other.

Iron & Wine

As if we needed to underline this point as the credits began to roll we headed back over to Stage 1 to see if Iron and Wine were any good. As soon as Sam Beam started his set and stopped a few bars into the first song, his song that was featured in a Skittles commercial, and admonished the audience to sing along we quickly left. No one had the heart to tell the guy that this was not his environment because he did not possess the polarity that was required by the spiritual vortex that had unwittingly been unleashed through the combination of bands, the venue, and the current cultural and historical milieu: in short, he didn’t imply that anything was on the line. Anything at his performance you were going to have to manufacture – you couldn’t sit back and let the music construct the bright, twisting mandala.

After that we were tired so we went to see David Cross tell jokes. He was funny in a way that would take too long to describe and isn’t really worth it. Suffice it to say, if you fool him twenty times, then that’s someone’s fault, he couldn’t really remember. By this time we had lapsed back into a near-coma state because of lack of sleep and our early morning experiences with Mr. Wang so instead of hanging out for the rest of the evening – the bars at Kutsher’s had DJ’s and were open until 4am or so – we stumbled out into the cold evening rain and made our way back to our queen-sized bed at the Econo Lodge.

Stay tuned for Part 3 – Day 2 “The Ghost of Patrick Swayze”

David Spade...er, Cross, sorry.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 1st, 2009 at 7:00 pm and is filed under Concerts, TSS Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.