Stewart Lee All Tomorrow's Parties, Part 4: Saturday (continued) - featuring festival highlight performance

This is fourth episode of my exhaustive account of my visit to the last ever ATP festival in Prestatyn, which was curated by Stewart Lee. You probably don't need to read previous instalments, but if you want to you can see them here, here, & here.

On Saturday evening I saw The Heads on Stage 1, sitting at the back because I was a bit puppy tired. The Heads rock hard and were enjoyably full on. I followed them by a trip back to the chalet. On the way I met a man who was being bitten by his girlfriend. We discussed whether this meant he would turn into his girlfriend and would then go round biting other people, so that everyone present would end up being a version of her.

Then I saw The Ex, who are an ATP staple: I first became aware of them at a Camber Sands festival and have seen them at ATPs on a great many occasions. Perhaps this engendered a certain laziness on my part that meant that I arrived down late for their performance on Stage 1, missing all but the last couple of songs. They're still great though. The Young Lad has settled into his role as replacement for the original singer and the band continue to give the impression of enjoying what they do. In fact their general positivity reminded me that the bad vibes of Friday had by now largely dissipated. That said, they finished by saying that they looked forward to seeing anyone who was going to the Manchester ATP, as they were also playing that; this may have been the ATP equivalent of the guy in a horror film who says, "Just nipping down to the cellar, I'll be right back".

I was planning to see The Fall but they were taking forever to setup. This may not have been their fault as such, as the programme this evening had gone a bit strange thanks to John Cale's late cancelation. But I could not wait so instead I went off to catch The BellRays. They are the band sometimes described as being what you would get if classic Tina Turner found herself fronting the MC5. And they are indeed a powerfully voiced black woman fronting a load of white guys playing music transitioning from late psych to hard rock. An appealing thing about them is that they are all quite old, possibly even older than me, yet they're all still going for it like motherfuckers. Catch them if they come to your town.

And that was almost that. We regrouped in the chalet (or in a chalet) for a bit of relaxation. There was still one more thing in the programme for that night, the enigmatically named Charlotte Church's Late Night Pop Dungeon. It was generally assumed that this would be the Welsh singer DJing some pop records: potentially fun. But when we drifted back to it we discovered that it was something else entirely, for this was none other than Ms Church playing with a full band on Stage 2.

For the benefit of foreign readers, Charlotte Church came to prominence as a child performer of lovely songs that showed off her considerable vocal talents. As she has grown up she has pushed against the musical straitjacket of her youth and started trying to explore pop and art-pop directions. In her Late Night Pop Dungeon she sang a good few pop classics and a few songs she has had hits with herself. A stroke of genius was throwing in versions of 'Hometown Unicorn' by popular Welsh band Super Furry Animals and 'Holland, 1945' by Neutral Milk Hotel. This could be dismissed as indie tokenism but readers of a interviews with Ms Church will be aware of her liking for these bands. The actual highlight for me though was her cover of 'Don't Let Go' by En Vogue, with 'Last Night A DJ Saved My Life' running a close second.

There can be something a bit terrifying about adult former child stars. In the case of Ms Church I think we see the upside, someone of youthful years who nevertheless has the polished stage presence of an experienced performer. Her set was a highlight of the weekend and one of the greatest ATP performances I have ever encountered.

That should have been the end of the day for me but I had certain responsibilities to fulfil. Friends were arriving late on Saturday from Dublin for complicated reasons. They were not going to be in my chalet but as a responsible adult I was tasked with making sure their chalet-mates remembered they were coming. So I had to bring one to the camp's entrance so that she could bring in the new arrivals. Then we had a party in their chalet which went on into the small hours. Eventually I had to make my way back home, though on the way I met some confused people who couldn't find their chalet. I had a map with me but it turned out their chalet wasn't on the map. They left me and may be wandering around Pontins Prestatyn to this very day.

Come back tomorrow for more folk horror ATP action.

More astonishing ATP pictures

The Nightmare Before Christmas 2011

And I went to Christmas ATP – or the Nightmare Before Christmas, as they like to call it. This was the one curated by Battles, Les Savy Fav, and Caribou. I was staying in a chalet full of anarchists. And my beloved. And the ladyfriend of one of the anarchists.

As always there was some great TV on. One programme we liked was Garth Marenghi's Dark Place. This is a 1980s hospital drama written by and starring the well-known horror writer Garth Marenghi. He plays a doctor in a hospital, which then starts being taken over by all kinds of occult phenomena. I would not recommend it to the easily terrified.

More suitable for a general audience was a documentary we caught on Donk, the popular musical phenomenon in the north of England. This featured a floppy fringed southern softie going up north to explore the world of Donk, meeting such people as the chaps who created the 'Put A Donk On It' tune. This kind of thing writes itself, really.

The last few minutes of Zardozlooked completely bananas. But I started wondering whether it might just be that this film is bananas in a good way. It was also filmed in the Wicklow mountains, so it all looked oddly familiar. Men running around in mankinis – it is not unusual up there. Future investigation (of the film) may be required.

The best thing I saw was in the ATP cinema, the film Deutschland in Herbst*. This was made after the so-called German Autumn of 1977, which saw a leading German industrialist abducted and murdered by the RAF, the highjacking of a Lufthansa jet to Mogadishu and the rescuing of the hostages by German commandos, and the suicide of the original core of the RAF in Stammheim prison**. A number of different directors worked on it and the film features a combination of reused news footage and newly filmed scenes relevant to the subject at hand. One of the more entertaining of the new sequences was by famous crazy director Rainer Maria Fassbinder, which largely featured him and his fancyman Armin. Fassbinder determined to disprove the generalisation that homosexuals all have great dress sense and know how to look after themselves. He spent a lot of time arguing with Armin, also not the world's most handsome man, so much so that I wondered why they stayed together. Then we had some scenes of them wandering around in the nip, and it became very clear what exactly Armin was bringing to the table.

There was a lot more to the film – stuff about Germany at an odd point of its history – but that kind of stuck in my mind.

Oh yeah, music. There was some of that. The big star for us was the Syrian dabke sensation Omar Souleyman. Everyone went completely mental for him and so we had one of the best ATP times ever. He is a fascinating showman – adept at working a crowd yet lacking in the kind of fist in the air histrionics that western rockers would go with. If anything, he is surprisingly static, working the crowd with the slightest of gestures.


Nisennenmondai were an interesting Japanese three piece. All women, I think, but they had a man called DJ Catoman with them to sell merchandise and then to DJ later in Crazy Horse. He was playing early 1980s cheese and I was enjoying it so much that my beloved had to almost drag me away to see Urban Resistance, who were surprisingly funky and entertaining with their occasional Kraftwerk nods.

Of the headliners I sadly managed to miss Les Savy Fav through being tired (not *tired*). But I did see the early afternoon performances from Battles (chunka chunka chunka) and Caribou. Both were great. Battles are like what happens when hipsters get it right, while Caribou are still an intriguing mix of styles best appreciated live, especially given the visual spectacle provided by their two drummers.

Sunday at ATP turned into Jazz Sunday, which was nice. On the bill we had The Ex playing with Ethiopian sensation Getatchew Mekuria, with some other brass players assisting the Negus in bringing us the jazz. The young lad the Ex have as their new lead singer seems to have really grown into the role, finding his feet and coming out from the shadow of the old guy he replaced. He jumps around the stage like a little tot moppet and then plays brass on the songs that do not require vocals. The new bass player with the Ex is also delightful, having the kind of face that suggests a man who has lived life.

We also liked old jazzer Pharaoh Sanders (sadly not joined by anyone playing on their organ, or someone running their fingers over a pink oboe, etc. etc. God I am so mature), but the real jazz action for me was with the Sun Ra Arkestra. I had somewhat forgotten how great they are and drifted along to them with a slight sense of "yeah whatever", only to blown away by their space jazz action. I like it.

I cannot remember anything else I saw and time constraints mean that I am unable to tell you about the CD-R swap or the fascinating literary periodicals being sold at the event.

*Germany in Autumn, for those less attuned to the ways of our fiscally prudent overlords.

** But was it suicide? blah blah etc

see also

Darkplace image source

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