All Tomorrow's Parties is one of the most bizarre on the festival circuit and this Nightmare Before Christmas seemed as if it were going to be especially crazy. Held at Pontin's holiday resort in the seasonally deserted town of Camber Sands and curated by the one and only Mars Volta, the recipe was certainly for some sort of extreme madness. Only one R13 journo braved the cold of the December air and the howling winds coming off the eastern seas close by, only one was willing to report from the maddest chalet on campus, the Acid Quarters, and only one was excluded on the last day for mayhem, chaos and destruction...
And that would be me. The deal with this festival is this; you buy your tickets in fours and you share a chalet, which is a luxury rarely afforded at a festival, with neighbours to the left and right and downstairs the two all-night parties being held in our room were not much appreciated by some. With 30 people crammed into a space no bigger than the average bedroom two nights on the trot, the hammer was bound to come down at some point and on Sunday we were evicted from our flat, which resembled that of any typical rock 'n' roll hotel room after booze and merriment...
Shameful... Yes. Being there reminded me of the Butlin's holidays of yesteryear, those halcyon memories being torn apart by brute perverted and degenerate forces, of course I was merely there to observe journalistically, but some of the things one bared witness to are truly unmentionable. However, the music was what it was all about, I somehow, somewhat surprisingly, was able to conserve my energy by managing to sleep through the bad craziness rampant in the Acid Quarters, and due to this I saw a fair few bands and felt honoured to know they were hand-picked by The Mars Volta...
So, to be a credit to this glorious website, to be a help, I hope, to our loyal readers, and to maintain my integrity as a music journalist par excellence, a serious of despatches from The Madness and Chaos that was The Nightmare Before Christmas, All Tomorrow's Parties 2005, curated by The Mars Volta, is to follow...