Day 2, Saturday – “The Ghost of Patrick Swayze”

The video below was shot by Capt. AKAK and George Pants:

Dirty Dancing was first mentioned by the trip’s catalyst, Yang Wang. While spending time with him in the JFK baggage claim he had mentioned that Kutsher’s was where the movie was shot. I think my Mom and two sisters watched Dirty Dancing several hundred times, actually wearing out the VHS tape we’d used to record it off cable, but for some reason I could remember no details of the plot except for the fact that Patrick Swayze was in it. Actually, I think I remember more from the MAD Magazine spoof on it, Dorky Dancing, than I do any part of the movie – I had a bad MAD Magazine habit and spent most of my allowance on it. In the 3rd grade I copied a poem from one issue and turned it in as my own work. The teacher, Mrs. Young, was incredulous but could prove nothing.

Without having anything to compare it to in the daylight Kutsher’s appears to be the exact place where they shot the film: there’s the pond, large dining rooms, the hotel, cabins, pathways, lawns and it’s all surrounded by woods. Several people in the town of Monticello told us that the movie wasn’t actually shot at Kutsher’s but at another, similar, nearby resort. Why all this discussion of a pop-culture relic? Ever since we had disembarked from the plane Carl Jung’s notion of synchronicity had been enveloping us in long chains of cause and effect. The rest of the weekend and subsequent road trip around New England would eventually look like a Mandelbrot Set after punching all the data into one of Capt. AKAK’s spreadsheets while being bored on the flight home to Long Beach. Dirty Dancing was just the beginning.

We didn’t know it at the time but Patrick Swayze would be dead by Monday, the day after the last day of the festival. This would prove to be the event that upon reading it through the clouded newspaper rack window at a gas station near Cooperstown, NY would begin a series of realizations that mirrored what had provoked Ansel Adams to write to his friend Cedric Wright in 1937: “A strange thing happened to me today. I saw a big thundercloud move down over Half Dome, and it was so big and clear and brilliant that it made me see many things that were drifting around inside of me. For the first time I know what love is; what friends are; and what art should be.” Patrick Swayze was an odd way to come the realization, but all things everywhere are connected by tiny invisible threads, and music is sometimes the only way to catalyze that experience. Patrick Swayze just happened to be the tipping point.

The 2nd day of All Tomorrow’s Parties, 2009, began on Saturday at 1:30pm with Sufjan Stevens performing Seven Swans in its entirety. Sufjan and his band were all wearing tie-dye t-shirts that he claimed were purchased at the Kutsher’s gift shop. I didn’t doubt this as the previous night when Capt. AKAK and I stopped in for a cup of coffee one of the two old ladies that worked there mentioned the Grateful Dead and there were tie-dye shirts available. Despite the kindness of the two old women the coffee was horrid. An apparently underpaid EMT stopped in at the same time and tried to get a free cup of coffee off of them, but struck out. Apparently the 9/11 card has lost its cachet.

Like Sam Beam of Iron and Wine, Sufjan Stevens is a gifted songwriter and musician; by all definitions of the concept it would be hard to say otherwise. He and his band’s positioning on the bill made sense as the mellow rhythmic build-up of his songs and the overarching spiritual/Biblical messages were a functional theoretical groundwork for the rest of the day’s coming tidal wave of sound, language and image. During his set Sufjan asked us to be ready for our maker, to sacrifice our body and mind, so I took his advice and practiced for the next two days.

There are apparently no encores at an ATP festival so when a band finished a set, that was it, which actually made for a better concert-going experience; you didn’t have to sit around and wonder if the band was going to come back or not. When they said, “this is our last song,” they meant it. After Sufjan Stevens we walked around the grounds of Kutsher’s for awhile as it had stopped raining that morning and the sun had come out. On the other side of the lake from the hotel was an assortment of antique playground equipment – rusty and extremely dangerous – so naturally we gravitated toward it.

Several young hipster kids and a few new-age raver kids were playing on the equipment and it wasn’t until afterward, when Capt. AKAK and I were examining our photos from the trip, that I realized we were taking pictures of several people that we would meet the following day. The web of interconnectedness was being woven – and for some reason it had to do with psychedelic drugs, cocaine and giraffes.

Back inside Kutsher’s we witnessed Grouper, for me one of the best experiences of the weekend and music that I’ve listened to quasi-religiously since and become enamored of. Atmospheric, lovely, frightening, extremely analog, distorted and melodic, it’s an odd expression of beauty. You can hear the set here: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Grouper/Grouper_Live_at_ATP-NY_2009_on_WFMU/. Actually, you can hear many of the weekend’s performances, including Akron/Family at http://freemusicarchive.org/curator/WFMU/All_Tomorrows_Parties_NY_2009_on_WFMU. Apparently, Nick Cave played with the Dirty Three on Friday night. That was while we were waiting for our fucking food in the fucking diner in fucking Monticello. Fuck. (see previous post)

From there we ventured to the 2nd stage, in anticipation of another solo act, Atlas Sound. Bradford Cox had trouble with coordinating his sampler and various other pedals with his guitar playing, but it really didn’t matter. The tone for the show had been set already – the audience wanted to hang out with the artists, the stages allowed everyone to get really close and security was at a thankful minimum – so a little bit of technical difficulty wasn’t an issue. The Atlas Sound set felt a lot like hanging out with a friend who’s playing some music at your party – one of the songs he performed was written spontaneously while playing in a pizza restaurant during a friend’s birthday party.

Somewhere at this point we ate food and ran into Akron/Family arriving and getting ready to unload their van. Hugs and handshakes were exchanged where appropriate. After food we watched Sleepy Sun, which wasn’t my thing but I’m sure that someone somewhere likes them. The crowd definitely seemed into what they were doing but by the same token I don’t think I’ve ever seen a critical crowd at any show that I’ve ever been to. We’ve all been raised since pre-school to be very nice and polite, which is probably in the end a good thing, although sometimes denying the inner Bill Hicks can have serious consequences.

What Sleepy Sun and many of the other bands, particularly the following day, had in common was a certain fashion sense and cultural reference, whether intentional or not, to the mid to late sixties and early seventies. This could just be a reference to certain “Hippiester” tendencies that the crowd in particular showed (see our article on Edward Sharpe for a more detailed discussion) but it was there and worth commenting on nonetheless. The next day would find an all-day jam psychedelic jam session with Oneida; complete with Joshua Light Show-esque liquid projections through old public school overhead projectors. There is no criticism intended in this – it was fucking cool. But there is something behind it, perhaps a nostalgia for an imagined “better time” or perhaps it’s simply fashion. My theory is that there’s an ideal world in everyone’s mind and for some reason in a segment of today’s 20-somethings that imagined world has become attached to that era, or perhaps not, but it’s not for this review to answer.

Speaking of hippies Akron/Family was next and played extremely well. I haven’t heard them live many times but each time I do they seem to have improved dramatically as a band. From the audience’s perspective the sound was relatively muddy and it wasn’t easy to hear the detail of each instrument, but despite that small annoyance the show went great. Akron/Family has a very dedicated fan base. Many of the people that I spoke with during the weekend when asked, “Who are you most looking forward to seeing?” replied, “Akron.”

After A/F we ventured back to Stage 1 to see the next four bands: Autolux, Shellac, Deer Hunter and Animal Collective. Animal Collective wasn’t scheduled to finish their set until 1:45am. This review will go on for goddamn ever if I attempt to write about all four remaining bands. Suffice it to say that Autolux was predictably Autolux. If you’ve seen them once you’ve probably got it figured out. Not that they’re not completely fucking cool in an extreme version of how L.A. is really its own universe on par with Paris or New York but in a very dirty, broken, end of the road sort of way.

Steve Albini made Shellac’s guitars and amplifiers. Capt. AKAK and I were impressed by this but then he came out with his waist-strap guitar strap and we realized this guy was just a fucking weird dude. If you’ve ever listened to Big Black albums you realize that there’s a lot to Steve Albini that you’ll never be able to figure out. I’m convinced he’s a total right wing nut-cum punk/industrial/electronic icon. Again, no value judgments, just an odd combination (and for you people wondering about the use of the word “cum” in that sentence it’s not what you think).

Deer Hunter played just fine but they seem to be suited for a smaller crowd and a smaller venue. For some reason I imagine them playing in some small Northern California town like Weed or Yreka on a mild summer night in a pizza parlor for the local teenagers. A minor-league baseball game probably just finished and all the kids came over to the show afterwards. Their songs have that feel of small-scale, homemade music that is still beautiful and good, just not made for large-scale events. I recommend buying their latest EP “Rainwater Cassette Exchange”. There are some very pretty songs on there. During the show Bradford Cox said something to the effect of, “We’re not going to be playing live again for a long time,” the ultimate meaning of which was left open to interpretation.

Animal Collective taught the lesson that there is still new territory in music, you just have to be willing to sound strange until people catch on, or catch up. Yelps, electronics, electric guitars, heavy non-traditional beats, vocal harmonies, all were present in their live show which made you want to dance really bad. There were people dressed up as animals, one kid had a giraffe mask, and everyone was dancing. I remember feeling like I too needed to move to Portugal (where the ATP festival program said that Panda Bear lived despite being raised in Baltimore).

Immediately before this Capt. AKAK and I had sat through about twenty minutes of For All Mankind, the 1989 documentary on the Apollo missions. Of the experience of being on the moon one of the astronauts interviewed said, “I suppose I was supposed to feel alien, alone. Instead I felt like I belonged there, like someone was reaching out to me and saying, welcome. I felt completely at home, at peace.” Animal Collective had a similar presence. Sonicly an alien landscape, once you hang out with the music for awhile it becomes a normal thing, and your eyes shift toward future, unknown horizons.

After this we headed to the bar where DJ’s were playing more music. We danced for a while, I think, it had been a long day at that point, and then headed back to the hotel room around 3am for sleep.

If your brain is still working stay tuned for Part 4 – Day 3 “Capt. AKAK Transcends Time and Space”.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 11:38 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.