All Tomorrows Parties, NY

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008

To describe All Tomorrow’s Parties is in one sentence surely won’t do the event justice but here it goes: Last weekend myself, about 40 bands and few thousand other music lovers traveled about 2 hours outside New York to stay in a run down resort that was straight out of a David Lynch film. The ballrooms were converted to venues that featured performances by My Bloody Valentine, Built to Spill, Mogwai and Brian Jonestown Massacre to name a few. The entire resort was one from a bygone era where wealthy New Yorkers would get away for the summer, like Dirty Dancing, with accommodations including indoor mini-golf, a vegas style nightclub and a roller rink. My room was in the Sammy Davis wing and I’m pretty sure it hadn’t been slept in since the Carter administration. Check out the full story to see more about the show and other New York State shenanigans.

After the show was said and done a lot of people gave the best performance award to Shellac. Most Crowd Incorporating performance had to go to Les Savy Fav (pictured above crowd surfing on a ladder and post set on stage dance party) and most talked about band that was more small time then the others went to Wooden Shjips.

My Bloody Valentine was the big closing act and I was pretty bummed out because as much as I wanted to see them I’m no good with strobe lights and they’re performance was about 50% strobe and 50% mind numbing loudness so I had to listen from outside the main venue. Slightly dejected I took a seat against the wall and who slowly saunters over and sits next to me? Patti Smith herself, fit with boots and tie. We said a quick hello and I said “I’m no good with strobe” and she replied that the bass was too much for her. And there we sat in silence listening to My Bloody Valentine.

My other favorite unexpected moment came when I went to go see Bob Mould perform. Bob Mould is currently the front man of a band called Sugar and the former front man of Husker Du. I went to see him largely because of the Husker Du affiliation and I was so surprised that the last few songs of his set were all Husker Du’s big songs. It was so so so so sooo good his voice is incredible.

This was the scene in between performances. Steve Albini organized a few baseball games and there were boats you could take into the lake, an indoor pool, ski ball, ping pong and we brought our own scrabble along too.

The wall paper in the main lounge was pretty awesome and the creepiness of this painting was made creepier by the fact that it was mounted on a wall covered with royal blue carpeting.

So here I am flying home, bored somewhere over Nebraska taking a picture on my iphone of myself taking a picture with my laptop. We new enter the endless loop of Apple marketing. Okay, things are getting turbulent, gotta go.