All Tomorrow's Parties

All Tomorrow's Parties had its origins in the Bowlie Weekender, curated by Belle & Sebastian at Camber Sands, East Sussex, England, in April 1999. The first ATP festival took place at the same venue a year later.
Named after the song "All Tomorrow's Parties" by The Velvet Underground, the festival exhibited a tendency towards post-rock, indie rock, avant-garde music, and underground hip hop, along with more traditional rock fare presented in smaller venues than typical stadium performances. 
It was at first a sponsorship-free festival where the organisers and artists stay in the same accommodation as the fans. It claimed to set itself apart from festivals like Reading or Glastonbury by staying intimate, non-corporate and fan-friendly. Another difference was the line-ups being chosen by significant bands or artists, resulting in unorthodox events which often combined acts of all sizes, eras, and genres.
(Read more at Wikipedia).
== Links To Peel ==
“The event at Camber Sands at the weekend, which was a place I'd never been to before, most agreeable beach: I mean, more sand than I think I've ever seen in my entire life before, and a place I shall return to at some stage. It was called All Tomorrow's Parties, and it featured loads of the bands we feature on these programmes. A lot of the stuff was actually recorded for my domestic programmes, but not alas the stuff on the sort of second stage, as it were, where much of the best action of the weekend occurred.”(John Peel, 16 April 2000 (BFBS)
Peel attended several ATP festivals at Camber Sands holiday camp in the early years of the new century, including the inaugural event in April 2000, finding the unique setting and adventurous music policy much to his taste, and recordings of ATP live performances became a regular feature of his spring R1 shows. After an abortive booking to appear himself in 2002, he finally played a DJ set at the festival on 27 March 2004, at an evening event curated by Tortoise, appearing with Cex, Kid606 and DJ Nasty G. 
One distinctive element of ATP was that the lineups were curated by leading bands or other artists. On his 08 April 2004 show, Peel suggested he'd given some preliminary thought to his own possible future selections, after Lightning Bolt played on the doorstep of his Camber Sands chalet at noon the previous month :
"If they ever ask me to curate All Tomorrow's Parties I'll certainly ask (Lightning Bolt) back again I think. I'd also insist that we had Twat Vibe on there, despite the fact that we've not been able to discover anything about them or track them down and they completely ignore all of our pathetic attempts at communicating with them."
The festival itself was named after a Velvet Underground track, with Nico on vocals, which Peel first played on his Perfumed Garden show of 08 August 1967. During his long radio career, the DJ also played cover versions of the song by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and June Tabor. 
The ATP label associated with the festival released the 2003 Magic Band album Back To The Front, which received generous airtime from Peel. After the DJ's death, the Shellac track "Watch Song" was played from the All Tomorrow's Parties 2.0 compilation on the 01 December 2004 (Rob Da Bank) show in the former Peel slot on R1. 
== Live / Other ==
===2000===
(curated by Mogwai, 07-09 April 2000, Pontins, Camber Sands, UK) 
;Live Sets
*11 April 2000: Clinic, Wire, Papa M, Bardo Pond, Sigur Ros, ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead
;Other
*06 April 2000: (JP: "I'm not going to give you the number of the chalet I'm going to be in (at All Tomorrow's Parties) because you'll all want to come and sleep with me. I know what you're like.")
*16 April 2000 (BFBS): ("Just come back from the weekender at Camber Sands, and a jolly good weekender it was too.")
*16 April 2000 (BFBS): (JP: One of the high points for me was the set by ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead: a bit of an unknown quantity when they came to the gig, really, but they left stars, I like to think.')
*16 April 2000 (BFBS): (JP: 'I think perhaps the biggest disappointment at Camber Sands, at least according to the people that I spoke to, was the performance by Sonic Youth, which I did hear in its entirety. They played one kind of identifiable tune (there's nothing that says they must do this, I do appreciate that), but most of the rest of their stuff was kind of, you know, noise, droning, stuff like that. Nothing wrong with that: I like a lot of droning, really, but at the same time it sounded like retro droning, not kind of Millennium droning at all.')
''
===2002===
(curated by Shellac, 19-21 April & 26-28 April 2002, Pontins, Camber Sands, UK) 
;Live Sets
*23 April 2002: Shellac, Shipping News
*24 April 2002: Nina Nastasia
*25 April 2002: Low, Wire, Smog, Rachels, Dianogah
;Other
*09 April 2002: At the end of the month, JP is due to DJ at the second weekend of the upcoming All Tomorrow’s Parties, curated that year by Steve Albini and Shellac.
*23 April 2002: There is a competition all week (one question per night) to win free entry for part two of the Shellac-curated All Tomorrow's Parties which was to take place over the next weekend, 26 - 28 April. (Today's answer was 'Uranus'.)
*30 April 2002: Apologizes to a listener who expected to see him DJ at All Tomorrow's Parties the previous Friday night. Says he “wasn't fully operational”. Plays Pink Floyd track after a cover in Low's All Tomorrow’s Party set, aired the previous Thursday.
===2003===
(curated by Autechre, 04-06 April 2003, Pontins, Camber Sands, UK) 
thumb|250px
;Live Sets
*10 April 2003: Venetian Snares
*29 April 2003: Magic Band
*13 May 2003: Aphex Twin
*27 May 2003: Autechre
===2004===
(curated by Mogwai/Tortoise/Shellac, 26-28 March 2004; and by Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks/Sonic Youth/Foundation, 02-04 Apr 2004, Pontins, Camber Sands, UK) 
;Live Sets
*30 March 2004: Envy, Mogwai, Part Chimp
*01 April 2004: Trans Am, Cat Power
*06 April 2004: Cex
*08 April 2004: Kid606
*17 April 2003: Surgeon
;Other
*08 April 2004: (JP: "If they ever ask me to curate All Tomorrow's Parties I'll certainly ask them (Lightning Bolt) back again I think.The duo played on the doorstep of Peel's chalet at noon during the All Tomorrow's Parties festival in 2004. I'd also insist that we had Twat Vibe on there, despite the fact that we've not been able to discover anything about them or track them down and they completely ignore all of our pathetic attempts at communicating with them.")
*08 April 2004: (JP, before playing Kid606 ATP set: "Now, friends, picture the scene. At All Tomorrow's Parties, clapped-out DJ seguing records to incurious audience, finishing his set with the Undertones. Up jumps Kid606, takes off Teenage Kicks and goes like this ...")
*29 April 2004: Talking to Camera Obscura about his upcoming Edinburgh appearance: "I did a gig in Liverpool a few weeks ago, which was fantastic. […] But then a week after that I did All Tomorrow's Parties and the people there just stood and looked at me.”
== Links ==
*Wikipedia
*Official site (via Wayback Machine)
*All Tomorrow’s Parties (documentary, via YouTube)
*All Tomorrow's Parties Diary 2004, Peel R1 homepage (via archive.org) (1, 2 3)
== See Also ==
*Gigography 2004 
== References ==
Category:Places
Category:Festivals