A Conversation With Barry Hogan, All Tomorrow’s Parties founder

In late 2009, my girlfriend and I went to England for three weeks. All Tomorrow’s Parties was the main reason. It’s an independently-operated festival that celebrated its 10th anniversary with a weekend-long concert series held at Butlins holiday camp, in the town of Minehead near England’s west coast. We stayed on-site for 10 days all up - including the Nightmare Before Christmas weekend curated by My Bloody Valentine, the ‘in between days‘ series of weeknight shows, and the 10 Years Of ATP weekend - and saw a ridiculous amount of good music. Which was the intended outcome.

While on-site, I interviewed ATP founder Barry Hogan [pictured right] for a Rolling Stone story. [I also reviewed Dirty Three playing 'Horse Stories' to around 100 people, for Mess+Noise.] Late on the Sunday night of the 10 Years event - after sacrificing my barrier spot for The Mars Volta - we sat down in the production office to discuss the festival’s history and his motivations for creating what has become an internationally successful event.

Andrew: Barry, broadly speaking, what do you think has contributed to ATP’s success as a festival?

Barry: When ATP started 10 years ago, there weren’t any alternative festivals. It was only big corporate festivals and I think a lot of people who are into bands like Low, Will Oldham, and so on, the only place you could see them was at Reading Festival and that sort of thing, and they’d be kind of sandwiched in with piles of shit like Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine and fuckin’ Chumbawumba. It just felt like you paid whatever it was at the time, £80-90 to go for the day, but you’d have to wait all day to see something [worthwhile].

I just thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could design something where you could have constant bands, all day long, you’re wanting to go and see things, like killing yourself that you’re missing something because something else is on that the same time,” and just do it in a more intimate environment. Glastonbury, for example, was one of the reasons why we wanted to hold it here in the [Butlins] holiday camp, because of the conditions there. I think the toilets in Guantanamo Bay are probably healthier than there. Glastonbury is an abomination. It’s like the way it’s designed is for too many people in too small a space, and I thought, “this isn’t fun”. But here, people have got their own apartments, their own space. Going back to your question; what’s contributed to it, is we’ve designed it so we want to treat people like we want to be treated, and we want people to be into really good music, have a good time, enjoy themselves, and feel like they got value for money.

I feel that because we’ve been true to the concept of keeping it sponsorship-free, and also keeping the idea of the curator and being sort of focused on that, I think that’s definitely one of the reasons why it’s remained as strong as it has over the years. We’ve just got a loyal fan base that continually comes back. It’s good.

Is it difficult to stay true to the concept, to keep focused?

It is if the curator doesn’t go mental with trying to suggest stupid bands. The thing is; it’s hard; it gets harder as you go on, to kind of get curators to make you kind of fresh each time. I think because it’s a different curator each time, in a way, it’s a different person’s interpretation of a mixtape. If you get similar artists doing it, then you’re going to get the same sort of bands. We’re always striving to look for new and different ways to present it, to get different curators. It does get harder as you go on, but we’ve been pretty fortunate to be able to present some great things over the last 10 years.

Did you expect to reach your 10th birthday?

No. I’ve been waiting for the call to get a real job for quite a while now. When we did Bowlie Weekender with Belle & Sebastian [in 1999], they called it the first annual Bowlie Weekender and the idea was to do it year in, and year out. I don’t know why but they felt they wanted to keep the event unique and I said with their blessing, could I continue it and rename it, All Tomorrow’s Parties. I never thought it would go this long.

I think we’ve been fortunate that it is still strong and people still want to go to it, but I think we spend so much time laboring over things like artwork design, the programs to present, and the lineup and where bands play. We’re conscious of what the fans want, as well. We’re trying to make people happy so that they keep coming back. So far, I think we’re doing a good job.

I saw in an interview you said, “The way forward for festivals is to keep it boutique.”

Yeah, totally. You get some festivals like Bestival and they have the audacity to call themselves boutique when they started at 10,000 [capacity]. That’s not boutique for starters, and also I don’t understand why Rob Da Bank puts “Curated by” on each event. If it’s the same person doing it, surely, isn’t he the festival booker and that’s his job? You don’t need to wear a badge and put it on the top of the poster.

You’re talking about British festivals here, which I’m not too familiar with…

Oh, sorry – okay. Talking about boutique festivals, there’s one here called Bestival. It’s run by a [BBC] Radio 1 DJ called Rob Da Bank. The thing is, a lot of these festivals start at 3,000-4,000 capacity and then they start expanding. Because it’s only one event, they get bigger and bigger. Most of them have gone from 5,000 up to 45,000 or 50,000. It loses its intimacy and it loses track of where it started and why it started.

I think with us, it’s that we are keeping it sort of personal to people. It’s not overcrowded and you can walk around between stages and see lots of really great bands. I’d rather do more ATPs and keep it small, than do one big one and do it once a year because I just feel like it will lose its charm.

So the events here at Butlins are capped?

Yeah, the place only holds just over 6,000 so we sell 5,500 and the rest is made up of guests and production. It’s capped because that’s the legal capacity.

I see. As I mentioned earlier, I also went to the Mount Buller event [the first Australian ATP event, curated by Nick Cave (pictured left) & The Bad Seeds].

Barry: That was really great. There was some view up there, wasn’t it?

Yeah. And I went to the Riverstage one in Brisbane, which is where I live, as well as one of the Brisbane Powerhouse shows.

Okay. Those were good events, Buller especially. In hindsight I think I would love to have just done Buller. Those other events that we did… They were All Tomorrow’s Parties in the mindset but they weren’t like the All Tomorrow’s Parties because it wasn’t like a residential thing where people stayed, hanging out like they did at Buller. They were good, but I think it was a bit misrepresented in a way.

Now that you mention it, it’s quite odd that you did those Sydney and Brisbane events because like you mentioned, there was no accommodation. Do you put on many of those here in Britain?

No, to be honest; we’ve talked about doing a sister event called ‘I’ll Be Your Mirror’, which is the b-side to The Velvet Undergrounds single ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’. The idea is that it’s like a sister event to ATP. It has the concept of the curator and stuff, but it doesn’t have the holiday camp. The idea of it is that it’s not trying to compete with ATP, it’s kind of designed for people to see great music but at a lower price because they don’t have to pay for their accommodation. There are a lot of people that would love to come to this but can’t necessarily afford it. It’s not that we’re too expensive; we’re providing value for money, but it’s a rising cost because Butlins is not a cheap place to hire.

I can imagine. As well as the festival aspect of ATP, it’s also a label. Again, what factors do you think have contributed to the success of ATP as a brand?

Someone said to me the other day, “oh, Fuck Buttons must be doing really well because the festival is doing well”. It’s not like that. There are a lot of records that we put out, and they’re releases that don’t necessarily sell a great deal. They’re great records, but the festival helps in the way that we can showcase the bands as another outlet for people to discover them. But bands like Fuck Buttons have done really well because they’ve made great records. Whether it’s on ATP or another label, I don’t think it makes any difference.

We’ve got a brand, not in the sense of Coca Cola or McDonalds, but I think a kind of brand of quality. I wanted it to be where you used to buy Sub Pop singles and you didn’t know some of the bands but you bought them because – I’m not saying you, here - but when Sub Pop was in its Nirvana and Mudhoney heyday - not that it doesn’t put great records out now - but there was a period when Sub Pop was releasing something you’d buy it because it’s like “Fuck, it’s on Sub Pop.”

Or Def Jam [Recordings] There were all those great early hip hop records like LL Cool J and Public Enemy, and Beastie Boys, and Run DMC. You knew that Def Jam and Sub Pop put out great things so you kind of bought into that. I feel like ATP is getting a bit like that in a way that people are sort of willing to take a chance because they know we’re not going to put out Coldplay or Miley Cyrus records.

You like ripping on Coldplay.

There are worse bands than Coldplay. [laughs] They’ve got a couple of good songs. I don’t think they’re for me.

Neither me. An aspect of the festival that I really liked, and I’m sure you do too, is the discovery aspect. As you say, it’s associated with quality. You walk into a room and at least respect a band, if not find it really damn good and want to go and buy all their shit.

Yeah. The reason we say it’s like a mix tape is you know, if you’ve got a friend and - I don’t know if you’ve ever had friends who give you mixtapes - but you put it on and you’re like, “Jesus, what’s this? This is great.” You have to look up the track list and you go, “This is amazing” but because you’re here at the festival and you’ve bought your ticket for the weekend, you can go in and out of rooms; there’s going to be something on you’ve never heard of, or you’ve been curious to know what it’s about.

It forces you to go and check stuff out, and it opens you up to loads of stuff. I think bands like Deerhoof, their success in Europe has benefited from playing at ATP. They said this themselves; they’ve been playing at an event and people have never heard of them before just a few years ago, and then they’ll see them and go, “My God, they’re great.” They’ll want to keep going back and seeing them. They’ve discovered it in that mixtape fashion, where it’s like a pleasant surprise.

I saw in an interview that you mentioned Kevin Shields [of My Bloody Valentine, pictured right] is fond of ATP because you kind of sidestep the whole music industry game.

Kevin’s been very supportive of us, and I think it would be fair to say we’ve done things in a different way. It’s good having a curator because it means we have to pick the bands the curator wants instead of agents, magazines, and labels all going, “You must put this band on because they’re the hot new thing”. It bypasses all that and we’ve just done things on our own terms.

To have a festival with no sponsorship, there is another promoter who asked me about doing an event in a holiday camp, and he said, “How the fuck do you do it without sponsorship?” We know how to do it because we’ve fine-tuned it over the years. We know how much it costs, how much we spend on bands, and it does make money but probably not the sort of money that some of the people out there think it does. Anything we have done goes back into the business.

I just feel like I want to keep doing this sort of thing until we lose interest in it. When we do lose interest, I think that’s the time to stop and end it on a high rather than fizzle out. The music industry is changing constantly, and I think it would be fair to say we never really played the games that a lot of people do. I’m not into that, so we just do our own thing, really. I guess we have sidestepped a lot of it, which is good.

You began as a promoter at Dingwalls [in Camden], and you got tired of having to play the game. Did you find it difficult to step outside of that and say, “Fuck it, I’ll do my own thing”?

Yeah, it was really hard because in those days, if a band like Tortoise came along, it was once every 6 months or something and it was a real big deal. Nowadays, if you open up Time Out in London or anything else, it’s like there are 100 bands on par with Tortoise that are playing constantly. There wasn’t really an outlet for that type of music I wanted to work with.

I found it was really hard because you would take punts on shows and the attendance would be down. You’d lose money and then it would be ages before another band that was worth doing comes through. It was difficult and also, it was tempting to try and go outside of that and start playing the game, but we rode out the rough times and kept it true to the original thing.

I’m supposing a big part of that is having the connections you made through ATP, such as Sonic Youth and the credibility that having guys like that playing in your festival lends you as a promoter.

That’s definitely helped, but the thing with us is that the roster of bands that we do outside of the festival are all bands that we actually like. I’ve been offered some bands that are huge and I’m like “I can’t do that.” I got begged to do Snow Patrol in 2003, and I remember their agent at the time was like, “I really want you to do it. They’re going to be great. They’re going to be massive.” I was like, “There is no way they’re going to be massive,” but the thing is; I didn’t know they changed their sound from sounding like Sebadoh to Coldplay. I think it’s good that we haven’t sold out in that way.

How do you go about goal setting for ATP? When you began, did you imagine 5 years down the track, 10 years down the track?

No, I have to be honest with you; every time I do the next one, I’m thinking about how it has to be better than the last one. We have to finally think of a curator that no one else is going for, and I want each one to be better than the last one. Some of them are fantastic and some aren’t as good as the others and it can be a bit disappointing, but I think we’re always striving.

Someone said to me today, “Do you think you’ll get to 20 years?” I’m like, “I don’t know, maybe.” I don’t know if I can think that far ahead, but as I said to you; I want to keep doing this as long as it’s still fresh and exciting, and the minute it stops being that, that’s the time to pull the plug.

When’s the next Australian ATP event planned?

That’s a good question. I don’t know the answer to that. To be honest with you; I really loved the Mt. Buller event [pictured left]. It was really special, really great. The lineup that was up there and that setting, especially that second stage where you could see all the mountains behind it, through the stage. That was amazing, but it was just the spirit of people that were up there because I think a lot of people have gone to things like Big Day Out and Homebake and that. Those things are good for what they’re designed for. They seem like a breath of fresh air for a lot of people. That’s how ATP was when it started in England 10 years ago. People were like, “Fuck, great, we can go see 20 bands all at one weekend instead of having to wait all day for someone to come on at Reading, or something like that.”

ATP Australia – would it happen again? Yeah, we’d like to think so. We’re taking a step back because we’ve just got some venue issues and stuff. Once we resolve them we’d definitely like to pursue Buller again if we could.

Everyone I spoke to at Buller was just having a great time. Everything I read about it afterwards was extremely positive. Do you ever receive bad reports about ATP?

Yeah, for example I know some people came last weekend. We had My Bloody Valentine curating. Some people thought it was great but some felt the people there, the atmosphere wasn’t like it was at this one. I think each one changes by the crowd. There seemed to be quite a lot of middle-aged men last weekend, but there are lots of young girls at this one, which is always definitely more encouraging.

We do get some people who don’t think it’s – they’re not into it, but I think ATP – it’s what you make of it as well. You can be into the media but you’ve got to go there with a right mindset. You have to go there and want to enjoy yourself and let go and jump away from your job for 3 days and just embrace all the music and film, and the art, and hanging out with friends. It can be a really great thing to go to. Someone said to me, “Would you go to it yourself if you weren’t putting it on?” I’m like, “Yeah, I probably would.”

Probably?

Yeah, well I would, of course I would. I would. Sorry!

You mentioned events like Glastonbury and Reading and so forth, when comparing ATP. When was the last time you went to Reading and Glastonbury? Do you ever go to those events just to remind yourself?

I don’t compare ourselves. I use that as a reason why I started this. I went to Glastonbury in 2002. I will never go back to that thing. I just don’t understand how people could enjoy being there with too many people, too short of a space of time, and I’ve seen people – we were talking to Keith Cameron just now from Mojo. He was saying he saw someone get their head kicked in, in broad daylight there. There is a horrible vibe there, really.

It’s been a while since I’ve been to those; too busy running this. That was the only thing you could go to if you wanted to go see some of the bands. If the Pixies were over [playing shows], if you couldn’t see them in shows you went and saw them in Reading or Glastonbury and it was kind of like that was where you could see some of the rare bands you wanted to check out. It was more a case of using that as an example of where you would see that music and why we started this.

You mentioned that self control is important when booking bands, or when the curator asks to book bands. I’m taking it since the capacity is capped here, so is the budget for booking bands?

Yeah.

Is it difficult to manage?

If you gave me a wish list and you put AC/DC, Leonard Cohen, and Motorhead on there, then if you took one of those bands, it would just wipe out the budget. You need to kind of tailor the lineup to the size of the event. It’s always good to have a couple of big names and stuff, but I think the real beauty of ATP is having all those kind of midrange bands, the sort of ones that would fill up Center Stage and have – it’s better to have more of those midrange than all big hitters.

There have been a couple of events where we’ve had some really big names, and then it’s all been small bands, and it hasn’t felt balanced. You get lots of people at one show and then it’s kind of half empty at other ones. With the curators, I have to kind of say as much as we’d love to have Neil Young, as much as we’d love to have Bob Dylan, it’s probably unrealistic that we could afford it. We just kind of need to guide them, really. I try to give everyone as much freedom as possible. I’m just hoping no one puts Blur on their list. [laughs]

Is your favourite ATP still the Dirty Three-curated one?

Yes, definitely.

Do you thank [Dirty Three frontman, pictured right] Warren Ellis often for that?

All the time. He’s just been so amazing to work with over the years, so supportive. There are other curators as well. There are so many of them I think of that was as well, but their whole take on it and the way they approached it and the actual weekend itself was just magical; it really was. I just was walking around and everyone was having the time of their life. I also thought that ATP that Nick Cave did in Mt. Buller was one of my favorite ones as well. Definitely, that was a highlight.

This one might be difficult to answer, but when you think of the average ATP fan or concertgoer, what image do you have in mind?

Someone who is into music, who probably is the sort of person that when they buy records, they want to know where the band recorded it, what studio, and stuff like that. Someone said to me, “record nerd” but I think it’s people who actually give a shit about music. They don’t buy their CDs or vinyl in supermarkets, which seems to be one of the few places you can buy music these days like that. Most of the record shops are closing.

So you’d say it’s for the more discerning music enthusiast?

Definitely. It’s for people who went to see bands that blew their mind and wanted to even start a band or get into music, where music is really special to them and they listen to it all the time, checking out new stuff and they’ve got memories of old things. I think ATP appeals to them because it crosses a lot of those things, really.

Do you try to avoid associating ATP with indie rock, in particular?

I guess I’m an indie kid at heart. I guess we’ve been described as an indie festival, but indie is a bit of a weird term these days. You get some people who are on indie labels but they have the mindset of a corporate sort of thing. We have had a lot of indie guitar stuff over the course of time, but the curators we pick, it’s the music they’re into. Each one is different.

For example, that Mike Patton one we did with The Melvins, that was pretty eclectic because it had Taraf de Haidouks and then you had White Noise and Stockhausen and those sort of things, but you also had Mastodon and The Melvins. It was very different. I guess most of the best music around is coming from indie labels. That’s why we focus on it really, but we get criticized for having too many American bands. Someone said that but I just think a lot of the bands that come right out of England aren’t very good. There are some good ones, but on the whole, I think a lot of the best stuff around has been coming out of the States for a while.

What’s your favorite ATP festival moment, ever, stepping outside of the office and just walking around, watching the bands?

There are way too many to remember…

I know you’re a big fan of Lightning Bolt [pictured left].

I remember the first time that Lightning Bolt came and played ATP. There were a lot of people that didn’t know who they were and then when they played on the floor and the actual great thing was seeing the reaction on peoples’ faces. They were like, “What the fuck is this?” That was really good. There are so many.

I think some of the best things I’ve seen, music wise, is Sleep performed ‘Holy Mountain’ earlier this year. The Boredoms did ‘Boardrum’ in New York. That’s some of the best things I’ve ever seen at the festival but I think highlights for me are things like Slint, because ‘Spiderland’ is probably one of my favorite records of all time. Getting to see them perform that live was… I had to move a few mountains to get those guys back together.

I was saying to David Pajo today that when I met them, Slint had never been in a room together, the 4 of them, for 13 years. I’m a huge Slint fan and I said to them – we went to Britt [Walford]’s house for this meeting. I was so excited I was there and I said to them, “Can I go to the toilet?” They were like, “Yeah” and I was in there – I didn’t actually need to go to the toilet. I was in behind the toilet door going like this, “Yes!!!” just freaking out. I told David today and he’s like, “Really?” and I’m like “Yeah!” [laughs]

It meant the world to me. As I’ve said to some people, it’s like – the way [music magazine] Mojo think about The Beatles, I think about Slint. It was really special to see that and to see them perform because they were someone I always wanted to see and never thought I would because they weren’t together. That always sticks in my mind as a real special thing. I feel proud that we’ve done them, really.

The same kind of thing with My Bloody Valentine, too. You were kind of one of the forces behind them getting back together.

Yeah, they hadn’t been together for 16 years and the thing is; a lot of people have made them offers over the years, but it’s like trying to lift an old truck from a swamp, trying to get it back into motion. It was possible but it needed help. I think we were able to present them the setup they needed to do it. Kevin was really kind to trust us to do that. We did it. The shows were fantastic and it worked really well.

I just think we look at things in a different way. Some people promote like, “You’ll make this much money,” but you need to sort of show the artist what they’re going to get from it, not just the money. It’s got to be the actual performance and what benefit they get from it too. I think that’s important and that gets overlooked by some people. That’s probably why we’ve got to work with so many great artists over the years because of our attention to detail. We put care into it.

I saw them all three nights, last weekend. I’m so glad I did. It was one of the most amazing things I’ve seen.

Had you seen them before?

No. It was cool to see ‘You Made Me Realise‘ three times. [Notably, because the band end the song with a 15ish minute noise jam known as the 'holocaust section'. It's fucking intense.]

Did you have ear plugs in?

Of course.

I was going to say when the first show they did for us was a warm-up show at the ICA. I don’t know how they felt about the show. I don’t think they were too into it, but the first time seeing those tracks being played live for a long time was like, “Whoa, this is going to be a joke.” When they went into a bigger room like the Round House and had the full PA, it was like a jet plane taking off.

Last question - what’s next for ATP? How do you go about planning for the next couple of years?

I’m in the process, I’m still booking Pavement, which is next year, and [The Simpsons creator] Matt Groening in May. Then I’m pursuing two curators for Christmas next year. I can’t say who they are just yet, but once I get them in place I’ve kind of got an idea of – we’ve had at least talks and I’ve got an idea of who they would want. I think it will surprise people because if both of them come off it will be things that people won’t be expecting. Again, we want to make is special because it’s the 10th year and we want to do the year-long celebrations and stuff.

I just thought of another question. You had the ATP film for the 10th anniversary, which I saw in my chalet the other day. Any plans for a book?

There has been talk of it. We were talking about maybe doing a kind of book, incorporating the artwork and stuff. Yeah, we’ve been approached by people to do it, so you never know… “You bought the t-shirt, you watched the film, now read the book!”

I’m sure there’s a market for it. ATP fans are pretty hardcore.

They are, but the thing is they’re not stupid. I couldn’t just put on a crap lineup because then people won’t come. It needs to be quality and people actually sit on the fence saying, “I’m thinking of going to this one but if they announce a couple of more bands” and then they do, but my favorite thing is watching kids on message boards, and I’ll be looking at various things because it’s always good to see what people are up to or saying. They’re always like, “Why the fuck did they get them to curate? They’re going to pick a load of shit!” and I remember when they did that with Mars Volta and Explosions In The Sky and then the same people 6 months later were going, “This is the best lineup ever. I’m totally going.” During all this time it was like, have patience. You need to see it unravel itself and I think it’s kind of good doing that because we know what’s coming and seeing the reaction from people is good.

Do you also monitor the feedback and attendee reviews afterwards?

We do, we take things on board. If someone says I had a really shit time in this venue because of something like the lights might be wrong or the PA was in the wrong place, we don’t ignore that sort of thing. We take it on board and try and make each one better than the last one, like a new and improved formula each time we do it.

There are a few people here that haven’t been here since 2007 and the Pavilion Stage, which is the big room, we didn’t have those drapes down the side, and we didn’t have the star cloth. They make a massive difference to that room. We also changed the PA in the Center Stage where you were for My Bloody Valentine. Just lighting configurations and things like that but it’s all – we use feedback and we exploit it and make put it to use in a beneficial sense so that each time someone comes back they go, “Oh, this is fixed up.”

Better and better.

Yeah, if you rest on your laurels and go, “Oh yeah, we’ve got this great thing now and got the curator in, that’s it. You’ll fucking like it or lump it” then it won’t last another 10 years. Whether I’m still doing it in 10 years is another thing but I only want to keep doing it until I lose the fire inside me that started it. There are times when it goes out, but this weekend has definitely been a great one for us, just so many bands – they’re all old curators and people who have recorded for us, but also friends. Every time you walk around it’s like, “Hey, how are you doing?” The spirit here has been really good.

You went to last weekend. I didn’t feel that same atmosphere last weekend as I did at this one. Again, it’s like a different mix tape and a different interpretation. It was quite abrasive last weekend, the music and stuff. It was all that heavy guitar stuff. It was good, and it worked really well, but I think this one seemed to be a bit more eclectic.

Thanks for your time, Barry.

This interview was conducted for a story on behalf of Rolling Stone Australia, pictured left. Read that story here.

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Rolling Stone story: All Tomorrow’s Parties Turns Ten

Here’s a story for Rolling Stone that I wrote while in England for the 10th anniversary of the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival, which was headlined by The Mars Volta, Explosions In The Sky, Modest Mouse, Battles and like a hundred other awesome bands.

I was there for the Nightmare Before Xmas festival curated by My Bloody Valentine the weekend before, too, and throughout the week for the In Between Days nightly shows. The entire experience was brilliant, but seeing Dirty Three play their album Horse Stories to around a hundred people on a Tuesday night was just something else.

This story includes an interview with ATP founder Barry Hogan. Check back for the full transcript of our conversation in a couple of days. Click the image to the right to take a closer look; article text is included below.

All Tomorrow’s Parties Turns Ten

“The ultimate mixtape” as Thurston Moore described it, celebrates a decade.

Indoor stages. Hour-long sets. Secure, comfortable accommodation. Rock trivia. Performers who favour watching bands with the crowd, instead of hanging backstage. An overwhelmingly positive, respectful community vibe.

These factors might not have figured into your last experience at a major Australian festival, but it’s reality for those who attend All Tomorrow’s Parties (ATP), which celebrated its tenth birthday in mid-December 2009.

Built upon a core ethos of respecting the concertgoer, All Tomorrow’s Parties (ATP) festivals are held in unique locales across a weekend. Bands are asked to choose the acts they’d like to see, which has resulted in artists like My Bloody Valentine, The Flaming Lips and Dirty Three curating for the pleasure of their open-minded fans. Like a balanced mixtape from a worldly friend, you’re likely to find a handful of bands you’ve never heard, but who you’ll soon love.

ATP’s UK home is the 6,000-capacity Butlins holiday camp in Minehead, Somerset. The 10 Years Of ATP line-up included an array of ATP friends, associates and past curators, including The Mars Volta, Explosions In The Sky and Modest Mouse. Between bands, founder Barry Hogan reflected on how ATP has evolved from a weekend festival to a label and a community of passionate music fans in its own right.

According to Hogan, the average ATP concertgoer is “the sort of person who, when they buy records, want to know the name of the producer and the studio where it was recorded. Not exactly record nerds, but people who actually give a shit about music. They don’t buy CDs in supermarkets, which seems to be one of the few places you can buy music these days.”

The artist-chosen festival line-ups allows Hogan and his team to sidestep hype and work on their own terms. “It’s good having a curator,” Hogan says, “because it means we’re working within their tastes and desires, instead of agents, magazines, and labels all going, “You must put this band on because they’re the hot new thing.”

Hogan worked on the Belle and Sebastian-curated Bowlie Weekender in 1999. ATP - named after a 1966 Velvet Underground song - is based on Bowlie’s artist-as-curator concept. The festival ventured to Australia in January 2009, featuring a centrepiece weekend event at the off-season Mount Buller Ski Resort; day shows in Brisbane and Sydney followed. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds were the inaugural Australian curators.

Hogan’s offshoot ATP Recordings label has released music by dozens of indie artists, like British electronic/noise duo Fuck Buttons and Australian rock act The Drones. “We put out a lot of records that don’t necessarily sell a great deal, but ATP fans are generally willing to take a chance with our artists because they know we’re not going to put out Coldplay or Miley Cyrus records.”

Memorable moments for the ATP founder? “I remember the first time that (Rhode Island experimental noise duo) Lightning Bolt played. Most people didn’t know their music or that they played on the floor; the great thing was seeing the reaction on peoples’ faces: “What the fuck is this?!”. And I’ll never forget the day Sonic Youth confirmed to headline our first event, curated by Mogwai. The minute they came on board, sales soared, and we never looked back.”

Filed under Published Writing | Tags: 10-years, All Tomorrow's Parties, anniversary, atp, barry-hogan, decade, england, Interview, minehead, mogwai, Published Writing, Review, rolling stone, sonic-youth, Writing | Comment (1)

A Conversation With Craig Mathieson, Australian music journalist

I wrote recently that Craig Mathieson wears the crown of Australian rock journalism. Allow me to elaborate. He’s recently released Playlisted: Everything You Need To Know About Australian Music Right Now, his third music-related book, and his byline has regularly appeared in Rolling Stone, Juice, Mess+Noise, and Fairfax news publications. He’s even got a Wikipedia entry.

Craig, at this point in your career, which writers do you view as your contemporaries?

My contemporaries are simply the good writers, those who have a voice and critical faculties. In terms of age that group is all over the place. Most are younger ; I named Shaun Prescott, Tim Finney and Emmy Hennings as talented examples on my blog. A few are older - I’m 38 years old. And I’m still flummoxed that someone decided to knock up a Wikipedia entry for me.

You stand as an example that it’s possible to earn a decent living as a full-time freelance music journalist in this country. Am I right, or do you have another job on the side to supplement your writing?

I’ve freelanced full-time for twenty years, but it’s been divided between music and film. In the music scene I’m a veteran, in film I’m still something of a kid. My career to date comes in two parts: 1989 to 1999, which was very music-orientated, mainly in Sydney; burn out and a corporate sojourn at Sony Music during 2000 and the first half of 2001; back to Melbourne and dividing my time between film and music ever since.

The way film and music writers/critics are considered is chalk and cheese. Everyone has a film critic, but the idea of a music critic – as opposed to the music writer who might pen the odd review – being on staff is anathema. I was the film critic for The Bulletin, the ACP-owned news weekly, from 2002 until it closed in January of 2008, and that was an absolute pleasure.

Having two disciplines to write about has also made me a stronger critic – it gets you thinking about the work you’re appraising in different ways.

Do you think it’s still possible for freelance writers to earn a decent living in 2009?

I’m sure it would still be possible today for freelance writers to swim upstream as it were, but there’s the question of what they’re striving for? There are very few secure full-time jobs at the end of the rainbow and not everyone is comfortable doing the freelance shuffle, because there’s not a safety net present.

Though you mostly focus on how the musicians profiled in Playlisted sound and appear, I noticed the occasional comment about demographics and marketability. Is the marketing/promotion side of the industry of particular interest to you?

It does interest me, because it impacts on how music is perceived and sometimes, to the artist’s detriment, it can be the defining element of someone’s career, as opposed to the actual music they produce.

Before playlisted.com.au, a blog created when Playlisted was released, you’d not blogged elsewhere. Why?

I didn’t have the time or the inclination. I knock out a fair few words every week and I’m focused on maintaining a decent standard of living for my family – marriage/mortgage/offspring tends to refocus a lot of younger freelancers and move them onwards; I have a stubborn streak. Even now, doing the blog for Playlisted, I’m sporadic at best.

Aside from Mess+Noise, you seem to write exclusively for print. Aside from the fact that its publications pay better, what do you enjoy about writing for print?

As a freelancer, you can’t underestimate how important “pay better” is, but aside from that I’m attracted to the audience size, which is pretty sizable when you file for The Age or the Sydney Morning Herald. I’m also a traditionalist, in that almost every day of my life since the age of 12 I’ve read one of those two Fairfax titles, so to be a part of them now is very satisfying.

Which are you favourite music blogs, both Australian and otherwise?

Mainly the online voices of writers whose work I already enjoy, be it Simon Reynolds or Anwyn Crawford. I don’t have much time for the blogs that are focused on being first – first review, first streaming – with something. “First-ism” grows dull quickly.

You wrote most of Playlisted in the summer of 2008. How much editing and revision was required between then and its November publication?

There was a sturdy editing process, then proofing, for a solid period between April and June. I’m not the cleanest writer and I’ve never been much of a sub myself, so I’m sure it needed work (“needs more,” I’m sure someone will snort). But after that it entered a kind of publishing limbo until November, when finished copies appeared and the whole release/promotion rigmarole kicked off.

When writing, are you much of a procrastinator?

It can take me a while to start, but once I do I tend to find a groove very easily and I work quickly, until finishing, after that. It’s rare that I junk a draft – most pieces come together reasonably smoothly.

As for procrastinating at the start, unless I’m under extreme deadline pressure then I actually try to take the time to enjoy it. Sometimes it’s worth letting your mind wander a little, you might have a far better lede than that intricate one you’ve been obsessively plotting just come to you.

Finally, what’s thrilling your ears lately?

I’ve been compiling end of year lists for various publications, so this week’s scope has been a little wider than an ordinary week, but in terms of recent releases I’m enjoying Fuck Buttons, Whitley, Denim Owl and Rihanna.

I genuinely like pop music and I write about commercial releases quite frequently – to me that’s part of a critic’s job, to try and take everything in and see what may or may connect the mainstream and the alternative scenes. I get frustrated that some younger critics are almost specialists, they can become completely niche-orientated. I’d love to read them taking on something completely outside the aesthetic they’re drawn to.

Thanks Craig. I highly recommend Playlisted; buy a copy here. Keep an eye on Craig’s blog here.

Filed under Conversations | Tags: anwyn-crawford, australia, craig-mathieson, emmy-hennings, fairfax, freelancing, Interview, Juice, magazine, mess-and-noise, Music, music-journalism, playlisted, procrastination, rolling stone, shaun-prescott, simon-reynolds, tim-finney, Writing | Comments (3)

A Conversation With Simon Noynay, illustrator

Melbourne-based Simon Noynay [pictured below right] illustrated my ‘future of the music video‘ story for Rolling Stone, as shown below. His work has also appeared on t-shirts for Threadless [my interview with Art Director Ross Zietz here]. Coincidentally, I wore his ‘drum ‘n bass‘ shirt design last night. Spooky. I asked him some questions about his craft.

Simon, are you a full-time artist and illustrator, or do you work on a freelance basis?

Until recently I was working as a part-time freelance illustrator, but have since joined a commercial illustration agency and heading towards full-time client work.

How did you follow this career path?

I have been drawing since I was five and originally began pursuing a career as a fine artist after high school. Although I’ve been a part of several exhibitions and artist’s residencies, I was searching for other creative avenues where collaboration was more encouraged. I completed a Bachelor of Communication Design last year which helped reinforce my love of illustration and character design. I now enjoy working together with artists of different disciplines, ranging from animation, sculpture, fashion and graphic design.

How did you become an illustrator for Rolling Stone?

I was introduced to the art director of Rolling Stone through my illustration agency. I’ve currently worked on three recent and upcoming issues.

Where else has your work appeared? Who are your regular clients?

My work has appeared in different media and in a variety of styles. From clothing, shoes, magazines, books, installations & tattoos etc. I was also profiled by Art & Australia and NOISE as one of the top 25 artists under 25. While I have had the privilege to create things for clients like Adio, Adobe and Qantas, my regular clients like L.A. clothing label Acrylick and my own character design creation, “The Moops” are my favourite jobs to work on.

Is it difficult to illustrate for briefs? How much do you like to know about a story before you’re comfortable illustrating for it?

On occasion, it can be difficult when there is a lack of clear communication and indecision, nevertheless I enjoy the pressures of deadlines and the overall processes of working with clients and art directors. Sometimes all you have to work with is a short sentence and a few examples; however my illustration thrives under these conditions and the result becomes something surprisingly refreshing compared to my laboured exhibition artwork.

Web or print illustration - do you have a preference?

I love web graphics and animation but my work is usually created for print, so I have to say I prefer that certain thrill of seeing my pieces printed and sometimes wearing them.

What advice would you give to young illustrators looking to work for commercial clients like Rolling Stone?

Show your work to clients you wouldn’t normally approach, talk to art directors and get as much feedback as possible. Also don’t be afraid to experiment with different techniques and points of views.

View more of Simon’s work at huskworks.com. He can be contacted via email.

Filed under Conversations | Tags: conversation, illustration, illustrator, Interview, rolling stone, simon-noynay, the-moops, Threadless | Comment (0)

Rolling Stone story outtake: A conversation with Gavin Parry, General Manager of Digital & Brand Development, Sony BMG

Here’s an outtake from my first Rolling Stone story on streaming music subscriptions. It’s an interview with Sony BMG’s General Manager of Digital & Brand Development, Gavin Parry [pictured below right]. Sony launched the digital music outlet bandit.fm in late 2008. I spoke to Gavin on 25th August, 2009.

Andrew: As I understand it, Gavin, Bandit is currently a pay-per-download site, but in October, it’s being re-launched as a purely subscription-based site for streaming music. Is that correct?

No, that’s not correct. I think what happened with the article in The Herald and everything sort of spiraled out of control and there was misreport after misreport. Essentially what’s happening is we’re continuing the download service, and a subscription service will run along side of it. You can either choose to download on a pay-per-download model, or you can choose to be involved in a streaming model, which is basically a monthly payment plan.

So it’s up to the consumer to consume music how they want, basically.

It’s all about trying to provide as many options as possible, remembering that we also provide all our videos free to the user, free video streaming. Every featured artist on the site, which is about 1,000 featured artists at the moment and that’s increasing, they have three tracks each that are free to the users for streaming. That’s there right now.

How long has the streaming service launch been in the works? I know Bandit was launched in November as a download service.

We’ve had it in place since November, when we organized all our licenses. It’s always been in our plans.

To my knowledge, all the major labels have music for sale in the store, but Sony is the ones running the site. Is that correct?

Correct - you have to be very clear here. What happened with The Herald article is it said we were running the service on behalf of the industry. That is incorrect. At Sony, we’ve set up Bandit and we own and operate it, but we have licensed any music from any other three majors.

And Sony is the main financial backer of Bandit.

Yes.

What do you think the benefits are of a streaming-based subscription model to the previous, per-download model?

I just think it’s about options. There was a lot of feedback online about how people don’t stream music to the PC and people would never use it. If you look at The Music Network this week, they did an article in there that said 50% of kids stream music to their PC on a weekly basis. We know how popular Spotify is in the UK and Europe. There is no doubt that a streaming service, not just to the PC, but to any Wi-Fi device could be quite popular.

Conversely, what do you imagine some of the costs of a streaming-based site might be, such as high bandwidth and the necessity to allow many concurrent users?

The cost from our perspective or the cost to the consumer?

The cost from your perspective.

From our perspective, basically you have to employ someone like Akamai to cope with the volume. We currently employ Akamai. You are familiar with what Akamai is?

I haven’t heard of Akamai, no.

Rather than streaming from our servers, we basically employ a series of other computers, a network of computers that Akamai operate to take the load off of us so the streaming that occurs from a local PC - if you’re in Perth and you’re streaming from Bandit, you’ll be streaming from a computer in Perth rather than a computer from our hosting arrangement. This means the biggest cost to us is actually paying Akamai to be able to operate that high bandwidth.

There are also hosting costs, obviously to ingest and to hold - we’re up to about 70 Terabytes worth of data. The cost of hosting is pretty significant, as well.

Where do Australia’s internet service providers sit within this discussion? Are you concerned that Australia’s network might be ill prepared for this kind of streaming model, given that other territories have had faster connections and unlimited bandwidth, compared to Australia?

I think it will be fine. It just depends on what sort of plan you’re on. Obviously, cable will work fine; it depends on what plan you’re on with the ISPs. A lot of the bandwidth now should be able to cope with the streaming service.

I can imagine traveling throughout the city and falling into black spots with mobile phone coverage and having the song interrupted by buffering might be a bit annoying.

It’s the same thing you’ve got if you’re on a Wi-Fi network. You’re up to the vagaries of what the network might be. There are concerns but it will all be up to the consumer to ensure the bandwidth they’re paying for with their ISP is adequate to stream the music.

With Bandit, did you consider putting in place an advertising-based free service, as Spotify had done in the UK?

We essentially have got that in place with the video streaming, and with the ‘three free tracks’, which is a limited audio catalog. The problem you’ve got is the advertising model globally, when you actually look at Spotify and other services like iMeem and Last.fm, those services have really struggled to generate enough advertising revenue to continue to operate.

On a similar note, is Bandit’s launch time to beat Spotify to the Australian market?

No, not really. To be honest, when we launched Bandit in November, Spotify was on the radar and probably has significantly upped its profile in the last twelve months. Bandit’s plan was always to have a subscription service operating around October/November of this year.

The other thing I should mention is there is another service that we’ll operate, and again, this is all about providing options to the consumer. We’ll be operating a model very similar to eMusic as well. People can sign up and pay a monthly fee and receive a certain value of downloads.

A certain value, what do you mean?

Are you familiar with the eMusic model?

No.

You pay a monthly fee, but you are given a certain value for that fee. You’re given a value; for say $20 a month you’ll get $30 dollars worth of value that you can download. It’s not about streaming. Again, it’s a regular payment plan, but it’s all about downloads.

Will this value package be launched at the same time in October, or is it currently available?

The plan is we’ll launch it at the same time as we launch the subscription package.

Are you able to provide some figures on Bandit since it launched in November, such as how many users or what is the volume of weekly downloads?

We’ve got a monthly net browsers now of around 80,000. We’re doing about 2 million page impressions per month. We’ve got over 50,000 active users that have actually purchased something. That’s probably enough to give you an idea. We’re quite happy where we’re at after only nine months being operational. We’re pretty much on plan, as far as where we expect the service to be. We’ve done very limited marketing so far.

I was looking around your website earlier, and I noticed that a lot of artists have unique content-rich splash pages, which includes images, artist’s recommendations, and news [example below left]. Who supplies the content that is displayed on those pages? Is it managed in house or is it syndicated?

We’ve got our own editorial team that puts together news stories, and also looks after Bandit on Twitter and our Facebook page. We also have licensed in the All Music Guide.  When you’re looking at all the biographies and all of the similar artists and influenced by, that all comes from the All Music Guide.

What we’re trying to do is build a very deep, rich site that is more than just a download store. You can see how it’s been built by creatives. They’re very graphical and it’s a very appealing site. That shows with our average session duration which is around 15 minutes.

How many staff are working on Bandit full-time?

We’re still in development mode, so we’ve got a team of probably four developers. We’ve also got a person in customer service, editorial, operations, and also we have a programmer who deals with the other labels.

It’s still a pretty small team of around ten, would you say?

Yeah, which we’ll scale down once we’ve finished the development phase.

What inspired the decision to make Bandit operate within the browser as opposed to an external program, such as Nokia’s Music Store?

It’s really a matter of what you can support. If you build something within a browser - it’s really a phased approach. The first thing is once you build it within a browser, you know you’ve got a higher chance of compatibility with most computers. If you build an application, it’s much more work to get compatibility with all the various operating systems. It’s really initially a cost consideration, but having said that; we’re currently working on a download manager which is built using Adobe AIR. That’s basically an application that will sit above the site, which will manage the download process, and also manage your library. We have to roll that out in October, as well.

October is going to be a big month for you, then.

Yeah, the guys are flat-stick at the moment. We’ve got them down in the dungeon, working hard!

Final question - are Sony using the Australian Bandit Store as a kind of testing ground for potential expansion to foreign territories?

I think the focus is just making the Australian site a success, and then we’ll see where it goes from there.

Fair enough. That’s all my questions. Did you want to add anything else?

The other thing that we’ll be adding in October is a level of social networking, which will be quite interesting. In that case, the core part about Bandit is the channels. You can see different channels which split music be genre, by demographic. We put up the faith channel yesterday, which is all about Christian music. Coming in October, when we launch the social network piece, each user will not only have a user profile, but also will have his own channel. The idea is that a user can go on, select their own playlists, stream music, connect to other artist, connect to other channels, connect to other users, and in that way we’re actually giving people a lot more context. Their channel will be a representation of themselves, musically, online.

This idea of ‘channels’ kind of makes me think that you’re trying to build on the concept of the radio station, so everyone has their own channel.

To some degree, that’s it, the ability to essentially create your playlist. We think the subscription service also has quite relevance to families, and it’s not just focused on teenagers and young adults. I think the subscription model going to a family where they have unlimited music online, and they can basically just turn Bandit on to their stereo, set up their playlists, and play music in stereo, I think that is a big thing. In that case, they are actually setting up their own radio station.

Okay, thanks for your time, Gavin. I appreciate it.

No problem.

Filed under Conversations | Tags: all-music-guide, australia, bandit-fm, brand-development, conversation, digital, download, gavin-parry, general-manager, industry, Interview, Music, outtake, rolling stone, sales, sony-bmg, sony-music, streaming, subscription | Comment (0)