Christmas cracker?

It had escaped my attention until today, but the complete line-up for December's Godspeed!-curated ATP - destined to be my final festival of a seven-festival year - was announced in the middle of last month. Personally, the jury's still out on quite how good it'll be, but there have been some concessions to listenability and genuine songs in the form of Thee Oh Sees, Tindersticks and Deerhoof and it's certainly refreshingly leftfield, avoiding the occasional tendency of ATP bills towards repetition and stagnation. Other than the headliners, Oneida, Bardo Pond, The Dead C, Neurosis, Black Dice, Mike Watt and "Weird Al" Yankovic are all on my "to see" list.

While I'm on the subject of festivals, the Guardian decided to give a Comment Is Free platform to someone whingeing that festivals are no place for children. I could understand it perhaps if she was lambasting parents for taking their kids to ATP and subjecting their tender ears to Fuck Buttons at 2am or My Bloody Valentine's "noise holocaust" - but the festival around which her complaint centred is Green Man, the most family-friendly shindig I've ever been to.

Apparently it's the actions of selfish parents to take kids to festivals full stop. So that'd be why last weekend the site was alive with beaming tots clearly having the time of their lives, would it? And no, their presence doesn't preclude unencumbered revellers (like myself) of doing the 4am thing (it's certainly not "positively hostile to the childless"), and if she didn't want her precious sleep to be disturbed by kids early in the morning, she should just have avoided the family camping areas. What a load of toss.

(Thanks to Darryl for the link.)