ATP 2007: Road-tripping

I explained before why I never managed to attend All Tomorrow’s Parties when I lived in England, despite it being my dream festival. But several years on, I’ve brainwashed Alec into liking cacophonous clangy music, Jeremy (long-time music benefactor – see last bit of this post) now lives in London, and Russ finally has more disposable income and better taste in music :P which meant we had a lovely little group for our Butlins chalet. After a seven-year wait, I was finally on my way to ATP!

Our road trip to Minehead was quite enjoyable. I fiddled round with Russ’s iPod to make a playlist for the car journey, asking thought-provoking questions such as “So which is better, the normal version of Mariah’s Breakdown or the Mo Thugs Remix?” and sharing unarguable truths such as “An iPod with only 1 Roxette song is an iPod not worth speaking of.”

Alec and Russ had fun too:-

#1 (Russ mentioned that he sometimes accidentally deleted entire albums from his iPod.)
Me: Just goes to show how much iTunes sucks!
Alec: No, it only goes to show how much Russ sucks!

#2
Russ: I don’t know why, but the last few people I’ve fancied have all been Irish or of Irish descent.
Alec: Wow Russ, I didn’t know I’d made such a significant impression on you.
Russ: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…oh sorry, think I laughed a bit too loud there.

We intended to cook our own food over the weekend so stopped off in ASDA to stock up, where Russ and Alec (our cooks) proceeded to load our cart with about three times the amount of food I’d have thought we needed. I ventured the timid suggestion that we could maybe use dried herb mixes instead of forking much more out for fresh herbs. They looked at me in silent derisory disbelief. We got the fresh herbs.

Continuing on our way, ten minutes away from Butlins the playlist I’d programmed hours before turned out to have been perfectly timed – the song itself started on the car speakers. Yay.

After checking in and a quick spag bol dinner where the boys served me, unsurprisingly, three times more food than I could eat, we rushed off to see The Dirty Three (the curators) do the first big gig of the festival.

8 Comments

  1. GLad you had fun. Got back from the May one yesterday and had a whale of a time. We also bought too much food on a Morrisons on the way and then had to give it away at the end. We also suffered the embarassment of Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood coming on the stereo as we pulled in to the campsite, resulting in lots of people thinking the out and proud ATP contingent had finally arrived.

  2. Just spewed breadcrumbs over my desk. Cheers for that.

    More ATP details to come once I get round to writing up the entry. Went to your myspace but no updates since forever!

  3. did you go to the infamous shellac gig?
    were you near abouts “that” Heckler?
    was your fiance the heckler?

  4. Ermm, it’s quite possible that I did.
    Brian, what in God’s name are you talking about? I googled Shellac and all I learnt is that Shellac ”

    is a brittle or flaky secretion of the lac insect Kerria lacca, found in the forests of Assam and Thailand. Freed from wood it is called “seedlac”.”

    I don’t think I was at that gig. Was it at the Mean Fiddler? It sounds like one of those.

  5. soz i heard a story about a band called shellac at atp: summary of story -heckler from hell, lead singer looses it, end of.

    anywho: “heckling” its not big and its not clever.

  6. Must’ve happened when Shellac curated ATP a few years ago. Nothing of the sort this year though.

  7. Shellac played twice at the May ATP, not the April one. Amazingly, I managed to miss them both times, but did manage to watch the absolute dirge that is Architecture in Helsinki.

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