Current mood:	drained
Current music:	Jethro Tull - "Thick As A Brick"

What costume shall the poor girl wear...?
Got back from A.T.P. Curated by The Breeders last night. As was to be expected, the event was brilliant: whoever came up with the idea of taking over a holiday camp for a festival is a genius.

We travelled down by car on Thursday and stayed at one of the Premier Inns in Taunton. The journey down took eight hours and was uneventful.

Friday
We got up about 10am for our designated check-out time of noon. As we couldn't check in at the chalet until 4pm and I wanted to buy a book as I had neglected to charge my Sony Reader like the numpty I am we decided to pop into Taunton town centre for a bite to eat and book shopping. The weather was pretty mank with rain and strong winds but had dried up a bit by the time we set off for Minehead and Butlins. On arrival we discovered our two-berth chalet to be comfortable enough if a bit draughty and very poorly lit (next year I may take a reading lamp and will definitely remember to put batteries in my makeup mirror. My plan for the evening was to see Throwing Muses at the very least but after dinner I was so wied out that Mike put me to bed before 7pm. He reported that Throwing Muses were very good, Yann Tiersen was interesting and Bon Iver was pretty much unlistenable.

Saturday
The rain was pretty torrential today and the wind still howling but I felt a lot better so actually saw some bands. Blood Red Shoes were a very pleasant surprise: awesome and clearly overwhelmed to be playing an event they had been attending as fans for years.C.S.S. had filled the stage with balloons and delighted the assembled crowd with high octane Brazillian pop-rock and bags of energy (wish I knew where they got it from). I had told myself to not get my hopes up for Teenage Fanclub (difficult when you've wanted to see a band for over a decade and a half) but they certainly did not disappoint: playing a career-spanning set including a few songs from their forthcoming album with great aplomb. Absolutely my top band of the entire festival.Afterwards we headed up to the "nightclub venue" Centre Stage to catch the tail end of designated "house band" Shellac's set which was odd but thrillingly good. We headed back to the main stage to see headliners The Breeders' set but I was fading fast and could only stay for the first few songs which failed to inspire me to stay awake for the remainder of their set.

Sunday
I was awake and feeling not too bad so we popped into the Crazy Horse pub for the Pop Quiz which was entertaining before going for a rest and dinner before the bands started. Gang of Four were very good but somehow slightly unremarkable until the point one of them started providing percussion using a baseball bat and microwave oven. Keeping with the slightly-unhinged theme were Shellac, again in the same venue and again, outstanding. I finished up by catching the first few minutes of Supersuckers' set which I wish I'd had the energy to see more of. They are an intesting prospect, obviously taking influence from the entire history of rock 'n' roll which gives them a sound which feels familiar yet not derivative: not an easy thing to do.

Journey home yesterday was only slightly blighted by bad weather: torrential rain in the South West then intermittent bright sunshine and slightly less torrential rain for the rest of the journey.