All Tomorrow's Parties 1/4

After Leeds and Bestival, ATP was my third festival this year. We (Maz, Seymour, Rob and myself) decided to wait until only seconds remained before we had to get down to Minehead before pondering the transport question, by which point trains, planes and buses had become very very expensive. Instead, we lied to a hire car company about driver details, essentially age and identity, and we swanned off in a tidy seat ibiza packing in the kids (Rob and Seymour) and the luggage in the back and boot. It was day one, friday, and we had a road trip on our hands.

Food was going to be expensive and I, an inhabitants of studentdom, copied Rob's seemingly amazing idea of cooking a shit load of pasta and throwing it in the biggest tupperware container known to man. This helped, at least at first. Other amazing money saving options included two home burnt mix cd's from yours truely and Seymour's audio bargin hunting (£2 for Fucked Up's latest and £6 for the best of the buzzcocks, the second of which is, looking back, terrible value but back then, caffeine had already made us it's bitch). Fucked Up, a band that wrestled my head with arguments aplenty. I initially heard about them more for their name, political imagery play and extra-musical activities, mostly revolving around jail time. I admit, it was all wikipedia's fault and i was romanced, as i always am, by open source information-gasms. My first taste of Fucked Up live left a shitty taste in my mouth. At Leeds fest, i was massively disappointed. To my ears they bombed so hard that all i could hear was dresden circa '45. It's funny how opinions can be turned by an album listen of attrition forced by the overplay of all other options; my mix cd's that were now into their 4th listen or the dreaded buzzcocks cd which was terrible. The chemistry of common life became an oasis for my ears.