ATP NY Day One: Built to Spill, Meat Puppets, and ‘Shining’ glam

Pub date September 25, 2008
SectionNoise

Tim Harrington Ladder.jpg
Les Savy Fav’s Tim Harrington rises above. All photos by Jessica Reeves.

By Todd Lavoie

I just flew in from New York, and boy, are my arms tired! Ba-dum-bum.

A corny opener to this humble journal of my All Tomorrow’s Parties NY experience, but entirely too apropos for my weekend of serious ear-grinning up in the Catskills. Consider the venue choice: Kutsher’s Hotel, one of the few resorts from the “Oy vey!” heyday – Oy veyday? – of the Borscht Belt still in operation.

Kutsher's Entrance.jpg

This place was once at the absolute dead-center of the Henny Youngman/Jackie Mason/Sid Caesar nexus of Jewish summer-resort comedy, after all, so a few yuk-yuks were more than expected by the several thousand attendees of the so-called “boutique music festival.” As it turned out, there were yuks galore – but most of them were inspired by, or directed at, Kutsher’s itself.