Earplug nation (clockwise
from top left): The rapturous
flock at Kutsher’s Stardust
Ballroom; MBV’s Kevin
Shields; Les Savy Fav’s
Tim Harrington

The End of Music (Again!)
My Bloody Valentine and the All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival
decimate the Catskills BY CHARLES AARON

What does it mean if we get ourselves back to the garden, but instead of fluttering butterflies, there’s a harrowing, meditative roar that’s more like the crucible of childbirth than the comfort of the womb? What if, in addition to stardust—which, in this case, was painted on the blue walls of a circular ballroom where Borscht Belt comedians once sweatily yukked about Eve telling Adam that she had a headache—there’s a strobing assault that crumples your body and reduces your thoughts to unrecognizable debris? What if, instead of feeling golden, as Joni Mitchell mused in her eternally wishful Woodstock anthem, we feel utterly obliterated?

Obviously, those questions occurred well after the first U.S. show of My Bloody Valentine’s reunion tour, hosted by the U.K.-based All Tomorrow’s Parties festival. As nearly 3,000 bodies staggered out of the Stardust Ballroom at Kutsher’s Country Club (a shabby Catskills resort about ten miles from the original Woodstock site) around 2 A.M. on September 22, expression s ranged from significantly dazed to profoundly dumbstruck. And 17 years after

MBV’s last album, Loveless, redefined

rock music as a brutally sensual, existential bliss-out, it all felt terribly appropriate, especially with the world rapidly slipping into political and economic delirium.

Unlike the proliferating megafestivals—Glastonbury, Lollapalooza, Coachella, Bonnaroo, Virgin, Sasquatch!, Bumbershoot, Treasure Island, Outside Lands, or even Pitchfork—All Tomorrow’s Parties has eschewed bigness, massage-the-masses booking, and corporate sponsorship since its 1999 inception. Yet despite its self-professed “boutique” status, ATP has been more ambitious than all the other behemoth fests combined, opting for offbeat locations (like the Butlins holiday camp in England) and pioneering the influential “Don’t Look Back” concept (where an artist performs a beloved album in its entirety). By securing the most powerfully cryptic band of the past two decades as headliner (after Coachella tried and failed) and getting MBV visionary Kevin Shields to program Sunday’s lineup, ATP New York became the obsessive music nerd’s answer to Led Zeppelin’s London reunion last December. Or as one

waggish friend put it, “Led Zeppelin for pussies!”

The three-day weekend started quixotically for virtu-
ally everyone. Simply finding Kutsher’s or its decrepit
satellite hotel the Raleigh was a disorienting adventure.
(MapQuest directions took us over a tiny wooden
suspension bridge and down a dirt-and-gravel mountain
plunge.) And after locating our room—in the Raleigh’s
low-lit Sammy Davis Jr. Wing—the overly disinfected
aroma, suspicious carpet stains, and zero heat were a
jolt. But back at Kutsher’s HQ, the bustling atmosphere
amid the kitschy decay felt more comically endearing
than creepy. A beehived cosmetics maven hyped an
afternoon “makeup show.” Pale patrons sneaked in
and out of the postwar indoor pool. Band gear was piled
on the cracked shuffleboard deck. The mini golf course
and boccie ball courts gathered leaves, while the “Teena-
reena” clubhouse and ice rink (with rusted Zamboni)
were bolted shut. Rowboats drifted through the pond
scum out back. As attendees of varying ages wandered
and kibitzed and lounged on
endless puffy sofas and chairs,
you could see cool veneers
melting and grins forming.
This was gonna be a hoot.