Stuart Braithwaite (mogwai)

Photo by Steve Gullick

Mogwai are inadvertently (sort of) responsible for this whole artist-curating/fan-curating craziness that’s swept festival-land. Though it’s sweet that Stuart incorrectly perceives the front-loading of festival schedules with industry-created garbage to be mainly a UK and Canadian problem, he has a pretty dead-on view of the current festival situation and an incredibly thick accent that rewind buttons were made for.

Vice: Festivals have always been a common tradition in the UK, but in America, it’s been up and down for the last four decades, so why do you think it took so long for America to catch this latest case of festival fever?

Stuart:

I don’t know, I’ve noticed that myself—it’s quite strange. There’s not a touring circuit over here like there is in the States, so festivals are the only way for people to see some bands. Bands just don’t play as many shows. It’s not such a bad thing, lot of festivals over there, because a lot of the ones over here are horrendous. Coachella is really weird because it seems based around the celebrities backstage. All Tomorrow’s Parties is great over there. The audiences are much different over here, in Scotland and England, people are really hedonistic, and I don’t think people are that way at American festivals. There is a much different expectation as far as behavior goes when you’re at a festival in America.

If you get into a fistfight at Coachella, you’ll be removed and possibly arrested.

Well, you will over here, too. What I’m really talking about is… I think you’d be removed from an American festival if you vomited all over the place. And over here, there’s vomit everywhere at festivals. Some of them are just vomit festivals.

Yeah, I can’t picture a lot of crowd members vomiting at the All Tomorrow’s Parties in New York. For the most part, and for obvious reasons, ATP has the best reputation of any festival.

One of my biggest pet peeves about festivals is that the organizers will put four or five really atrocious, shitty bands early in the day, bands that you’ll never hear of again because the record labels are getting them on there. ATP goes in the other direction from that. We were the curators for the first ATP, and one of the things I really like about that festival is there’s no separation between the audience and bands. No airs of superiority like you see at other festivals.

How were you asked to curate the first ATP?

Actually, they asked us to headline and we suggested picking the bands.

Did you labor over which bands to pick? Were you worried about hurting anyone’s feelings?

It was a strange situation because the festival had already been organized and canceled, so we probably hurt a lot of people’s feelings when we kicked them off so we could put bands that we liked on the bill. That was almost ten years ago, and we were young and didn’t care how people felt. I’d feel much worse about it now. I remember my girlfriend at the time, she didn’t want me to do it because one of those bands, we were friends with.

Of the bands you picked, were there any you later regretted?

No, no. I don’t think so. The only thing I regret is that it was the first time we headlined a festival, and it wasn’t a good set, so I was down on the Sunday after and missed some bands I wanted to see. Also, I got really wasted on the Friday and Saturday nights.

Let’s say, hypothetically, that you were asked to curate ATP in 2010, a ten-year anniversary gesture, who would you pick to perform?

Mudhoney. I’d try to get Codeine to reform, and some younger bands.