So ATP/Willwal was finally wound up in January

profk · 2021-07-01T19:58:32.313Z

went to one ATP (was supposed to go to the Pavement one but me and the tv I was going out with at the time broke up so…didn’t). Mainly ate burger king, watched Mr Shows on the curated tv channel, and lost hundreds of pounds on the claw machines.

profk · 2021-07-01T19:59:41.141Z

Kallgeese · 2021-07-01T20:01:16.520Z

Will get a flag made up of this for Primavera next year. Pour an Estrella out at the former ATP stage.

shes_so_high · 2021-07-01T20:29:01.467Z

This reminds me of one of our journeys home from a minehead ATP when after a weekend of excess a friend was feeling particularly delicate but in his wisdom when we stopped at the services he necked a pint of milk. Ten minutes later he was puking out of the car window!

wastetimewisely · 2021-07-01T21:28:49.406Z

I remember thinking at the time of ATP vs the fans, great concept, but how are you paying for this.

Prob500 · 2021-07-01T21:35:39.219Z

To be fair I remember in the voting instructions that they said it wasn’t worth voting for Radiohead or The Rolling Stones as they couldn’t afford them.

dots · 2021-07-01T21:59:20.763Z

Another great memory was driving home as late as possible on the Monday from Camber back to Manchester. My friend was driving and I was sat in the back seat half asleep. As he changed lanes I could have sworn he had accidentally switched the headlights off but knew he would notice immediately and put them back on. Waited and waited and waited and he just didn’t so I assumed I must have been wrong. Wrote it off as lack of sleep & too much fun on my part. Then after what felt like eternity I thought I’d better just check and said “Ed did you accidentally turn the headlights off about half an hour ago” and it turned out he had and hadn’t noticed and was feeling terrible so we stopped for a nap. Great story.

apiginacageonantibio · 2021-07-02T06:17:59.991Z

Makes me a bit sad trawling through the article: ultimately the whole thing ended up like a giant Ponzi scheme as they desperately tried to cover their debts by putting on more and more festivals/events. Ultimately they ran out of road in terms of attendees: how could anyone within the Drowned in Semen/indiepoints/librarian crowd afford to go to three festivals plus numerous gigs per year? Just madness. Didn’t realise he was overpaying for bands, but I guess that’s pretty obvious really: was surprised that they didn’t make more of the links curators had to try and keep costs down. E.g. why didn’t the Slint ATP have Will Oldham/Kim Deal involved considering their links to the band? I suppose at the end of the day it’s hard to take the ‘business’ out of something like music. I mean, look what happens when you get a bunch of amateurs to run a festival…They can’t!

CillaCrack · 2021-07-02T06:42:47.259Z

Mate of mine who’s played a few ATP/Barry events over the years is still staunchly defensive of him despite them not getting paid on occasion, or being paid much later on. It’s weird behaviour given how the issue of promoters reneging on their promise to pay bands is a cardinal sin (and rightly so). The ATP vision was an amazing one that I loved dearly but I don’t see how that absolves him from continually fucking it up and leaving bands in the lurch. Another friends’ band had intended to use their ATP payment to fund the recording of their album, however the money never showed so that screwed them a bit.

hardworking · 2021-07-02T07:00:34.752Z

Some thoughts from another promoter. I think he’s got a fair point, some people can afford to shrug off not getting paid, but plenty of people can’t.

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Caedus · 2021-07-02T07:18:09.586Z

yeah, i walked in with a pint of red wine for mastodon (i think) as it seemed like the most cost effective way of dealing with things.

That was an interesting day!

(Mastodon were on fire around that point of their career also. SO good)

Caedus · 2021-07-02T07:27:06.493Z

Yeah, we’ve been saying it in this thread too, the whole undercurrent of the article from Barry, and pretty much all of them is that it didn’t matter that people lost money, as their hearts were in the right place and were trying to have a good party and make sure artists were paid. It’s a shocking level of ignorance and privilege to think that everyone can get by if they aren’t paid for work.

It really comes across as a PR exercise…WE fucked up but we’re really nice (but a bit edgy lol, fucking love some mandy me)

hesastopsiiiiign · 2021-07-02T08:00:34.132Z

Saw two of my favourite ever bands Jesus Lizard and Sleep play back to back two nights in a row. The pit for JL was the most good natured, positive outpouring of anticipation and excitement. Everyone going wild but picking up people as soon as they fell, hugging, high fiving, screaming the lyrics arm in arm with total strangers. As I’m approaching 40 now I seriously doubt I’ll ever attend another gig as fun and energetic as those.