14 Aug 2014 danstowell   » (Journeyer)

Jabberwocky, ATP, and London

Wow. The Jabberwocky festival, organised by the people who did many amazing All Tomorrow's Parties festivals, collapsed three days before it was due to happen, this weekend. The 405 has a great article about the whole sorry mess.

We've been to loads of ATPs and I was thinking about going to Jabberwocky. Really tempted by the great lineup and handily in London (where I live). But the venue? The Excel Centre? A convention-centre box? I couldn't picture it being fun. The promoters tried to insist that it was a great idea for a venue, but it seems I was probably like a lot of people thinking "nah". (Look at the reasons they give, crap reasons. No-one ever complained at ATP about the bar queues or the wifi coverage. The only thing I complained about was that the go-karting track was shut!) I've seen a lot of those bands before, too, it's classic ATP roster, so if the place isn't a place I want to go to then there's just not enough draw.

That 405 article mentions an early "leak" of plans that they were aiming to hold it in the Olympic Park. Now that would have been a place to hold it. Apparently the Olympic Park claimed ignorance, saying they never received a booking, but that sounds like PR-speak pinpointing that they were in initial discussions but didn't take it further. I would imagine that the Olympic Park demanded a much higher price than Excel since they have quite a lot of prestige and political muscle - or maybe it was just an issue of technical requirements or the like. But the Jabberwocky organisers clearly decided that they'd got the other things in place (lineup etc) so they'd press ahead with London in some other mega-venue, and hoped that the magic they once weaved on Pontins or Butlins would happen in the Excel.

This weekend there will be lots of great Jabberwocky fall-out gigs across London. That's totally weird. And I'm sorry I won't be in London to catch any of them! But it's very very weird because it's going to be about 75% of the festival, but converted from a monolithic one into one of those urban multi-venue festivals. The sickening thing about that is that even though the organisers clearly cocked some stuff up royally, I still feel terrible for them having to go bust and get no benefit from the neat little urban fallout festival they've accidentally organised. Now if ATP had decided to run it that way, I would very likely have signed up for it, and dragged my mates down to London!

Syndicated 2014-08-14 04:50:27 from Dan Stowell

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