Update: See Fletch’s write up over here!

On the face of it, 1600 miles of driving in three days across various parts of Europe (France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Italy) might seem a bit crazy. But when you do it in some of Bayeriche’s finest (an E39 M5, a Z3 M Coupe, a Z4 and a 745i) and cover some of Europe’s best roads you start to understand the appeal. The roads and views we encountered have to be seen to be believed, and thanks to the miracle of technology that is the Internet you can right here. They’re up on Facebook as well but that does a pretty good job of mangling colour profiles and compression so they look a bit cack. I’ll whack them up onto Flickr too at some point just for good measure.

I didn’t take as many shots as I like as I spent approx. 99% of my waking time over the weekend behind the wheel but there’s a few good ones in there. Fletch took a shit load as well with both his camera and mine, and he’ll no doubt write something more descriptive fairly shortly. All in all it was an amazing weekend, great roads and good people to be on a road trip with. Highlights for me had to be Faz’s physics-defying driving in the 745i, Fletch’s ability to control the weather by singing various songs, Matt’s psychotic overtaking manouvres, and the views from along / around Great St. Bernard’s pass.

So when’s the next trip? :-)

I’ll keep this short - ATP was fucking ace. Butlin’s was a real surprise (in a good way) and the lineup was unreal. I’m up for going to the next one but I’ll be amazed if the bands playing are half as decent…

Highlights were definitely seeing Shellac play twice (three days if you count me seeing them on Thursday in London), Trans Am’s set which was extraodinary thanks to Phil Manley’s skills in the absence of any working keyboards, and the drinking binge that kicked Friday night off and then destroyed most of Saturday for some.

We also experienced by far and away the worst kebabs ever, got poisoned by Burger King (what do you expect at 2am in the morning), and Boothy made friends with some ducks. Speaking of the Booth, he also managed to fulfill his lifelong ambition of making out with a rock star.

Can’t wait for the next one.

The new Santa Rosa equipped Apple laptops can’t come quick enough for me really (click for big):

I’m hoping that it’s a one-off, but as that’s the first time I’ve seen that happen in the 18 months I’ve owned the laptop it’s probably a sign of impending doom. Time to take advantage of my Applecare warranty….

Pelican (and These Arms Are Snakes) last night were pretty good, although I missed the first half of TAAS’ set - thanks to walking miles in the wrong direction - but as I’ve seen them before I wasn’t too bothered. Pelican sounded awesome live, they played a good set which I enjoyed whilst throwing pints of Grolsch down my neck.

What wasn’t much fun was finding out that Bank was in fact shut just as we cruised through it on the tube. In my inebriated state I missed the next stop and so had to trek halfway across London via two other stations whilst busting for a piss. Fletch will probably say that’s my own fault though for living out in t’sticks…

10:08 <fletch> Acton!!!
10:08 <fletch> get that!
10:09 <fletch> Zone 78
10:09 <fletch> takes a week to get there by mule

After missing them tour almost as many times as I saw Bluetip play, I finally managed to see Retisonic at the Barfly in Camden Town. They put on a good show and I managed to fire off a few photos from the front, but as it was pretty packed in there (the Barfly is fairly small) and I was bunched up against the right speaker, this meant two things: my left ear was ringing really fucking bad by the time their set finished, and I didn’t do too well on the photo front in terms of quantity. I did manage to catch this moment though.

Cursive headlined not long after that and I moved out of position in order to drink a few warm glasses of Grolsch somewhere near the back. They aren’t really the same band as they were when I saw them a few years back in Manchester (circa Domestica) so I wasn’t all that excited about hearing them play but I’m actually glad I did. They sounded good, put on a good show and played one or two tracks I like so I was happy. The beer helped as well though, I’m sure.

The tube journey back out of Camden was pretty much as interesting as the gig itself, with a championship greyhound gracing the presence of one tube station (or so the owner claimed - Scanman would have had to have been there to verify) and then some film school kid ‘entertaining’ the cabin of a tube I was on with a selection of slides he’d drawn for some project. If there’s one thing London isn’t, it’s dull….