No one speaks English and everything's broken

I thought I’d try a bit of interaction today.

Inspired by ATP vs The Fans.

But first, some background. Running since 1999, All Tomorrow’s Parties isn’t like your average festival. There’s no sponsorship. No camp site. And no chance of any furore over Jay Z headlining. What you get instead is a great atmosphere, a chalet to sleep, wash and cook in and a line-up with a difference. And that, is the crucial part. Because there’s a real cohesiveness to the line-up. Rather than being a hodge-podge of randomly chosen acts, ATP chose one influential or highly regarded artist or band to curate the festival. And they then choose the rest of the weekend’s line up. It’s a genius idea. So simple, yet so effective. Previous curators include Sonic Youth, Slint and Mogwai and having been to two of those, I can say with some authority that it is great. You get to see loads of bands that don’t normally make it to the more mainstream festivals, safe in the knowledge that they all come with a recommendation of sorts from a band you love. To paraphrase Thurston Moore, it’s like being given a mixtape from your favourite band. Only better, because it’s actual live music. Plus there’s the added advantage of not having to stand in a muddy lake of sludge to do it. Who could ask for more? Though, a word of advice. As with any other festival or gig, it’s best not to get too drunk and miss the headline band. I have only two memories of seeing Slint play. The first is of the band walking on stage. The second is Brian McMahan’s impassioned howling of 'I Miss You', as set closer 'Good Morning Captain' came to an end. What happened in between those two events is, and will sadly remain, a completely alcohol induced, blackout mystery. But I digress.

After a successful first run last year, ATP are handing the reigns back to the festival goers and rather than one band curating the line-up, the fans are getting the chance to choose for themselves. Voting is well underway and if you fancy going, you can vote for the bands and buy tickets over here. However, the reason I’m telling you all this is that it got me thinking, if I could put on a festival, what bands would I choose? And then I thought what bands would other people choose? And then I thought, why don’t I do a post about it and find out.

Which brings us to this point. For yes, despite all the waffle, there is a point. And it is thus. I want to know what bands you would choose to put on if you were to hold your very own mini festival. But to make things more interesting and to stop all the obvious usual answers from cropping up, I thought I’d throw in a curveball or two. So there are rules. And those rules are as follows.

Rule One - you can only pick 5 bands.
Rule Two - you can’t have seen them live before.
Rule Three - they must be alive.
Rule Four - they must be making music now, not be dream reformations.

To kick things off, here’s the line-up complete with stage times for the inaugural To Die By Your Festival, scheduled to take place in my ears sometime soon.

Mono In VCF 3:00 – 4:00
Shellac 4:30 – 5:30
Yo La Tengo 6:00 – 7:00
Patti Smith 7:30 – 9:00
Tom Waits 9:30 – 11:30

So over to you. Which five bands would you pick and while you're at it, what would you call your festival? Answers in the comments section.

Mono In VCF - cinch ring (live session version)

Shellac - crow (live Peel session version)

Yo La Tengo - act nice and gentle (Kinks cover live acoustic session version)

Patti Smith - helpless (Neil Young cover live acoustic session version)

Tom Waits - tom traubert's blues (1976 live session version)

mp3 / music / all tomorrow's parties / mono in vcf / shellac / yo la tengo / patti smith / tom waits