Tuesday 11 December 2007

Portishead ATP: The Aftermath


I wanted to post some of my own pictures from the Portishead-curated ATP festival, but at the moment, my camera is on the table, my card reader is in my bedroom, and I am on the couch. Also I am cold. So I cannot move and complete the camera-to-computer photo process. Maybe tomorrow!


I saw Silver Apples on Friday night. I am also convinced that I saw SA's Simeon hanging out on several different occasions during the festival. Possibly this desire to spot Simeon is a direct result of me being so out of it during his set that I can't really remember it all that well--although I can tell you that it was 100% hands down AWESOME! Every time he started a new song I would get really excited and yell "YEAHHHHHH! "A POX ON YOU!!!!!!" Whether he ever played the song I don't exactly recall for sure, but the sheer joy of repeatedly thinking every song in the set was "A Pox on You" had me feeling pretty good by the end.

Portishead and Aphex Twin both played two different nights to satisfy demand. And great news: Portishead were awesome! And so so nice! They seemed genuinely pleased to be performing, and towards the end Beth jumped down and started shaking hands with people in the crowd. I know--OMG, right? You know what this means, right? Yes--BETH SHOOK MY HAND GUYS OMG!!! "Sour Times" and "Cowboys" were both particularly awesome live, but alas I haven't been able to find any footage of them on YouTube yet. I did dig around and find some good quality footage of some of the new songs they played, and the links are below.

From the Saturday performance at ATP's Nightmare Before Christmas 2007:

Machine Gun

Wicca

Peaches

Mystic

Ahhh, swoon! The person who shot these is a hero.


What else to say? There were lots of drone rock bands, there were lots of sludge rock bands. There was a mad-out-of-it sea gull doing a little tap dance at 10am on a Monday morning! We discovered and then got locked into an arcade game machine graveyard! After Aphex Twin got out, we joined a mob of people dancing to the music emanating from a game called the Lighthouse, then paraded through the holiday camp grounds at 4am while repeatedly chanting "Sexy High Hat!" (No, I do not know why. Probably something the Lighthouse said.) And all kinds of assorted other moments that will seem absolutely uninteresting to other people, but which I will be sure to talk about if you see me at the bar.

Surprisingly I feel significantly less awful than I did after Electric Picnic, but there's still time for that to kick in, and I'm nervous! So, fingers crossed, because I really don't want to end up feeling like that seagull. RIP, little guy, RIP.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, portishead are so goooddd.
you're so lucky you got to see them live.
Can you believe that this post actually says they shouldn't release a new album?!

Anonymous said...

I know the Sexy High Hat nstigator! For all those that missed the Sexy High hat scene, here's the legend himself singing "Touch Me" by Samantha Fox ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl77lhVTVEE

Alison said...

Admittedly I wasn't as out-of-my-head excited to see Portishead as I would've been 10 years ago, but I still thought it was a totally entrancing set. I was kind of worried that the new songs wouldn't do anything for me, but I think there'll be at least a few good ones on the album. They're a solid group, and they didn't just happen to get lucky making a few hits. They are TOTALLY more than a coffeeshop band!

Also, "Sexy High Hat" was incredible. Somebody please post video of this to YouTube!

Anonymous said...

I don't have a video but i've got a couple of photos of the beginnings of Sexy High Hat... We danced our faces off round that machine!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisconnor/sets/72157603450223523/

PS someone was definitely filming it so maybe it will appear somewhere....