DIVERSE MUSICIANS ALL COME OUT FOR 'TOMORROW'S'.

Byline: Sandra Barrera Staff Writer

LEE RANALDO, guitarist for Sonic Youth, remembers his first All Tomorrow's Parties.

It was a couple of years ago. The weekend-long artist-curated alternative festival named after the Velvet Underground song was held at a seaside resort just outside London, where fans stayed in cabins piping specially curated films to televisions day in, day out.

Sonic Youth was one of the bands that played that year. Ranaldo says the music was nonstop with stages set up around the grounds. While it has been this way since the festival's inception a handful of years ago, the All Tomorrow's Parties making its American debut tonight - originally scheduled last October, it was postponed due to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks - is slightly different from its British counterpart.

``Aside from the sleep-over part of it, the format is pretty well set,'' Ranaldo says. His band will be curating the four-day festival's exclusive U.S. engagement at UCLA. ``Our job really was to decide what would be an interesting week of music.''

But coming to such a conclusion was a huge undertaking. Sonic Youth's members - Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Steve Shelley and Ranaldo - began by creating a wish list of artists from genres as diverse as jazz and folk-rock to tropicalia.

Some of the people on the initial list included Ornette Coleman, Bob Dylan and Caetano Veloso. While all of these artists seemed interested in the concept for the festival, not everybody was available. Those who were include Cecil Taylor, Smog and Lydia Lunch tonight; Eddie Vedder, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks and Unwound on Friday; Aphex Twin, Sleater-Kinney and Wilco on Saturday; and Stereolab, Peaches and Sonic Youth on Sunday.

Sonic Youth will be performing songs from their forthcoming album, ``Murray Street,'' as well as a selection of older material. In addition, the band will be sharing the stage with other artists in different configurations.

Artists will be performing on stages across the UCLA campus, making use of the Ackerman Grand Ballroom, Royce Hall and other concert venues.

``You're not going to get to see everything, which may be an unusual concept here in the States,'' Ranaldo says. ``It happens a lot at festivals in Europe where there's three or four stages going all at once so that people can wander in and out of each venue and check things out.

``It has its good points and bad points as a concept,'' he says. ``But that's the way it's going to go.''

Sonic Youth was asked more than a year ago to curate All Tomorrow's Parties by the festival's British promoter, Barry Hogan. As he explained, ``The festival is about love of music - not brand recognition.''

Artists with diverse musical tastes are brought in to curate different parts of the festival overseas. He wanted his festival's trans-Atlantic jump to the States to reflect Sonic Youth's influence, creative independence and artistic vision across genres.

``Where else would you see Eddie Vedder, Papa M and Cecil Taylor on one bill?'' Hogan says.

But Sonic Youth needed little in the way of convincing based on the band's own experience at the event.

``One of the things that really appealed to us about the All Tomorrow's Parties aesthetic is they weren't trying to make it the biggest festival in the world,'' Ranaldo says. ``They consciously were keeping it at a very manageable size so that the music would stay first and foremost.

``It's a different situation taking it from this sort of sleep-over event to just a day-to-day event,'' he adds. ``It remains to be seen if it works as well or not, but we're hoping.''

ALL TOMORROW'S PARTIES

Starring: Cecil Taylor, John Sinclair, Smog, Lydia Lunch, Mira Cohen, Gerard Malanga, Eileen Myles, Nathaniel Mackey and Renee Gladman.

Where: UCLA's Royce Hall, located one mile west of the San Diego Freeway (405) at Sunset Boulevard and Royce Drive in Los Angeles.

When: 5 p.m. today.

Tickets: $25. Call [phone].

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Photo:

Sonic Youth (Steve Shelley, left, Lee Ranaldo, Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon) recruited the festival's talent.