Yesterday, word got around that the organizers of the indie music festival All Tomorrow's Parties have decided to move their three-day rock concert from the Kutshers resort in Monticello to a new venue on the Jersey Shore.
The festival's organizers tried to pin the blame for the move on Kutshers, telling the New York Times on Tuesday that the old resort had become too decrepit to host them.
But today, Adam Bosch of the Times Herald-Record published a leaked email sent from an ATP official to Kutshers that shows there was another reason for the festival to abandon the Catskills for Jersey. Apparently, ATP is in about a million dollars of debt, some of it owed to Kutshers itself: Read more
Monticello just lost one of its coolest attractions -- the indie-rock festival All Tomorrow's Parties, which was held at Kutshers Country Club for the past three years. This year, the festival's organizers told the New York Times on Tuesday, ATP will be held in Asbury Park, New Jersey.
This is a huge blow for the Borscht Belt. Just last summer, a new investor attempted to revive Kutshers with an infusion of new cash and some much-needed improvements to the crumbling infrastructure. ATP was one of the biggest events of the resort's season -- last September, the festival attracted 2,300 people.
Although the once-a-year hipster-fest All Tomorrow's Parties ended on Sunday, videos from our correspondent to the event, Boston music writer Barry Thompson, are still trickling in. Above is Iggy and The Stooges playing "I Wanna be your Dog." Below, a few more live-video treats.
Just in case you missed something from our full-court-press coverage of the festival, here's a round-up of all everything ATP we published this week:
Barry Thompson, a Boston-based music writer, has been filingdispatches from the music festival All Tomorrow's Parties throughout the weekend. Above, the band whose name the New York Times refuses to print plays "Twice Born." (Warning: We printed it, and several other expletives, below. Seeing as we're not the New York Times.)
I probably shouldn’t have likened Liberty to a shantytown a while back -- no Depression-era slums would have a Taco Bell, a Subway, and a Burger King conveniently located on the main drag. Nor would there be a coffee shop called “The Zombean,” which is totally where I would’ve had breakfast yesterday, except that it doesn’t open until noon. Is this not a questionable business practice? Don’t people usually buy lots of coffee in the morning? Read more
It’s kind of hard to report on how locals deal with all the kooky rock ‘n roller ATP people if I keep leaving my motel at 1 p.m. and vacating Kutsher's at 2 a.m. The people who booked a room at Kutsher's itself could conceivably spend their entire three days here without leaving the premises. The main bit of local color I picked up on Saturday is that Kutsher’s internet capacity can’t handle 200 people all trying to check their Facebooks at once.
With notable exceptions, Saturday’s acts mostly fell under the modern/experimental umbrella, which is a very wide umbrella, and comes in handy should it ever happen to rain boredom instead of water. Read more
Barry Thompson is a damn flatlander and a music writer from Boston. He shot this video of Iggy and the Stooges performing “Shake Appeal” at Kutsher's yesterday. He'll be filing dispatches from the music festival All Tomorrow's Parties throughout the weekend.
Blame it on my coddled, urbanized realm of experience, but Liberty looks a shantytown. I had a hard time imagining that a few miles away from this anywhere-America setting for a Stephen King novel, Iggy and the Stooges would be performing later in the evening.
Several neighborhood school buses have been enlisted to shuttle the ATP crowd from their hotels to Kutsher's Country Club and back. During my first ride over, the driver was obviously contending with a personal crisis. The fuzz, she told me, had just nabbed her son with a negligible quantity of marijuana. Aside from that ordeal, she’s happy to help ensure the ATP goers’ safety, and described the sudden influx of out-of-town weirdos as a “down to earth” and “respectable“ bunch. Though unfamiliar with any of the bands playing this weekend, she cites Led Zep, the Stones, Hendrix, and Kraftwerk as personal faves. Which is sort of like somebody saying, “My favorite foods are cake, candy, milkshakes, and celery.”
After a gruff but helpful security dude directed me to the press check-in at Kutsher's, Mudhoney blew my face completely off my skull. During the half hour I needed to put my face-meats back in proper order, I settled in to partake of some excellent people-watching. This Catskills country club was crawling with every variety of 20- to 40-something-year-old archetype one could expect to see at a rock concert. It was clear from the crowd that ATP mixes up bands that were trendy 20 years ago with bands that became trendy within the last five.
We're all here for the music, but there's plenty more to do besides watch live bands. Kutsher’s indoor pool and arcade were open for business, and there was also some unsubstantiated talk of “luxury showers” for anyone who didn’t feel like cleaning off at their motels. Delightfully bizarre painted portraits by Tim Biskup and Eric White attracted curiosity from several.
I gave up trying to reassemble my face once I realized that the Stooges were just going to melt it off again anyway. As they plowed through their classic Raw Power and a couple of songs from Fun House, it was pretty remarkable seeing a 157-year-old vampire shadow box, spastically slither, almost knock an amp over, entice a quarter of the room to dance on stage, and bound in and out of the crowd with more uproarious fury than most people half his age could possibly conjure. Read more
For music and pop-culture geeks of a certain persuasion, it's the high point of the year, a Cupid's arrow aimed straight at the heart of a small but ecstatically devoted demographic. And even if you're not, say, an experimental-synth-folk fetishist, we defy you not to enjoy the surreal experience of rubbing elbows with half the bands ever recorded by Steve Albini in the resort that inspired "Dirty Dancing." ATP is to moldering Borscht Belt grandeur as Woodstock is to mud. Read more
All Tomorrow's Parties will return to Kutsher's Country Club, Monticello for the third ATP New York festival over Labor Day weekend, running from Friday 3rd September – Sunday 5th September. Jim Jarmusch, well known for his fantastic collaborations and documentaries with musicians will be the guest curator on Sunday 5th. The line-up is now almost fully complete, with weekend and day tickets on sale now. See below for full info...
As previously announced, Friday 3rdSeptember features these performances as part of our Don't Look Back day:
IGGY & THE STOOGES performing Raw Power SLEEP performing Holy Mountain MUDHONEY performing Superfuzz Bigmuff + Early Singles THE SCIENTISTS performing Blood Red River (first ever U.S. Show) Read more
