"It's Auschwitz with good music," jokes Nick Cave at the start of "All Tomorrow's Parties," a 2009 documentary released to mark the 10th anniversary of the music festival of the same name. It's a tasteless description for an impeccably tasteful event, one that has become a bastion for left-of-center music and set the template for boutique festivals throughout the world.
All Tomorrow's Parties (ATP) began in 2000, following a format established the previous year by a jamboree organized by Scottish indie darlings Belle and Sebastian. Uncomfortable with the prevailing trends of large-scale music festivals, the group decided to hold the two-day Bowlie Weekender at an off-season holiday camp, picking the lineup themselves. Rather than sleep in tents, audience and performers alike stayed in "chalets" (actually more redolent of a 1950s public housing project), and the nonmusical distractions included waterslides and arcade games.
The event's promoter, Barry Hogan, asked to keep things running the following year, naming the newly anointed festival after a song by The Velvet Underground. There would be no corporate sponsors, and the lineups would be chosen by the performers. As Hogan put it in the documentary, "It's like making a mix tape for your friends, really. It's like taking your record collection and putting it on a stage."