All Tomorrow’s Parties has always been the music festival where you could, if you so chose, sit indoors and watch films on the specially programmed ATP TV. Now that the ATP festival itself has become a film, the good people behind it are offering you the precise opposite experience: to go out and enjoy the film from the, er, comfort of a sweaty mosh pit. After all, how better to promote a film about live music then with a live concert? Following the success of the Edinburgh Film Festival screening of the ATP documentary, accompanied by a live performance from Glaswegian post-rockers, Mogwai, the film will be hitting the road, to be screened in venues across the UK with a live concert by one of the film’s most electrifying performers, Les Savy Fav, thrown into the bargain.
Rhode Island art-rockers, Les Savy Fav, have become notorious over the years for the onstage antics of lead singer, Tim Harrington – as is amply illustrated by their snippet in the film, which sees Harrington careening off into the crowd with reckless abandon. And if the prospect of staring at a screen in a live venue strikes you as, perhaps, a little ‘flat’, few bands could have been chosen to give a more 3D performance to complete the experience. And for the band themselves, the idea must have seemed very attractive. After all, when your ‘support band’ is just a DVD and a projection screen, it’s much less likely to drink all your rider, over-run their stage time, and hog the dressing rooms.
The film’s producer, Luke Moris claims, "We wanted to allow audiences an opportunity to experience film and music in an innovative and uplifting context.” Since the first Bowlie Weekender at a Pontins holiday camp in Sussex, back in 1999, ATP has always been a festival at the forefront of finding new and exciting concepts and situations for experiencing live music and films. This series of combined concerts and screenings, taking in Manchester, Glasgow, London and Leeds, from October 23rd to 28th, look set to be no exception. The only question is: popcorn or lag
