Brighton (and Hove) is a cool city. The mix of seaside tat (Brighton Rock, amusement arcades, clairvoyants on the Pier), handsome old buildings and watering holes you'd almost want to live in makes it the perfect setting for The Great Escape festival.

In its third year, this is an event featuring 200 up-and-coming and about-to-be-hot bands in 25 venues. Inevitably there are queues: everyone wants to see the Ting Tings and Vampire Weekend and there are people who get turned away. And although the line-up is almost eye-wateringly good actually seeing everyone you like the look of is not, in fact, a possibility: sets are mostly short showcases of around 45 minutes and venues are scattered across the city, so travelling from one to another isn't always practical.

But this is a minor gripe: this event is one the organisers can be proud of - putting together such an impressive and diverse array of artists and speakers takes a certain amount of nous and having too much to choose from is a nice little problem to contemplate if you think about it.

The Great Escape is a music industry conference as well as a festival and a delegate pass gets you into all sorts of panel events, interviews and debates - the most interesting of which we've written about especially for you. Most of the great and the good are hobnobbing in swanky city hotels, but Twisted Ear decided to go au naturel and stay in a campsite owned by The Caravan Club (no, we're not members) a couple of miles out of town. Our arrival in East Sussex was not without comedy and so, especially for you, here is our blow-by-blow account...

Thursday

Yay! It's the start of the weekend! And The Great Escape!

5pm: Arrive at Caravan Club campsite, slightly wary of wardens, having heard rumours that they're a bit strict and might even turn us away if they don't like the look of us.

5.05pm: Enter the reception to meet a frightening, middle-aged posh woman with close-cropped grey hair and severe, thin lips. Smile warmly and convince her that we are in fact respectable. Nod compliantly when asked not to pitch at the top of the third field as this is reserved for a party of schoolchildren, who will be arriving on Saturday (they go to school on Saturdays round here?).

5.15pm: Experience great surprise at seeing the first two of three tent fields almost already full with Great Escapers: surely we were the only ones thought of this? There are signs everywhere barking orders to "PITCH TENTS 3 METRES APART", but these campers don't look like your normal Caravan Club folks, so it's like Glastonbury but all regimented.

5.16pm: Experience great discomfort at realising that the third field, the only one with any space and the one the posh lady suggested we head for, has a 45 degree slope. Apart from the flattened-out part at the top, reserved for a party of schoolchildren.

5.17pm: Consider pitching on the flattened-out part at the top, reserved for a party of schoolchildren.

5.18pm: Remember the woman with the grey hair and thin lips and think better of it. Find a patch of grass not exactly in a field at all but opposite the washing-up area. Decide to chance it: there aren't any signs telling us not to pitch here...

6pm: Wander into a toilet block to find it locked, with a keypad to enter a code for access.

6.03pm: Wander into another toilet block, also locked.

6.05pm: Ask the woman with the grey hair for the code for the toilets. "They're not for you," is the response, "You just use the ones in the tent field". Which, by the way, are cramped and a bit manky. But then this is the Caravan Club, and we are not caravanners, and actually, some of the 'caravans' and motor homes here are bigger than my house (how on earth do people drive those things?).

6.06 pm: Head into town to register and get our passes, drink beer, eat food and watch bands. The man at the delegate registration desk tells me I am 'photogenic'. Oh, these PR types! Let the schmoozing begin...

The first venue of the night is the Pavillion Theatre, which has a bar downstairs selling special festival cider but nevertheless feels very civilised. In fact, people are sitting cross-legged on the floor to watch Alabama singer-songwriter AA Bondy; it's all very polite and a little bit like a school assembly, but it does fit with the music. Bondy's gentle folk is curious when you discover his previous incarnation as the singer in the Nirvana-inspired and Dave Grohl-produced Verbena, formed in the early 90s and disbanded after their third album in 2003. He's well-received by the crowd, thanks them for being quiet during the songs and shuffles off, after which point people stand up and drift forward.

You couldn't really imagine Sunset Rubdown's kaleidoscopic songs playing out to a seated audience; the music is too energetic - too jumpy - for that. This is their first ever show on British soil and they are an intriguing prospect: singer Spencer Krug, who started the band, is one of a number of Canadian musicians with his fingers in all sorts of pies (Wolf Parade, Swan Lake, Frog Eyes), but Sunset Rubdown, which started off as a solo project and grew into a band, is arguably the most interesting. Theirs is a sprawling and difficult-to-pin-down sound, but it is rich, textured and at times almost orchestral, and you wonder how it is that five people can create such a diverse and dizzying mix, swapping instruments as they go. Krug's idiosyncratic and almost nervy vocal style makes you think of Bowie sometimes; sometimes Tom Verlaine. He's not a silken-voiced singer and, sitting mostly at a keyboard at the side of the stage, doesn't hog the limelight like a traditional frontman, but somehow, you cannot take your eyes off him. Tonight's show is special, and even though it's early on in the weekend it's difficult to escape the feeling that this is going to be one of the highlights of the festival. You'll want to pretend you were here, even if you missed it. The NME won’t be pretending, though, as one of their hacks informed Krug, who in turn informed the crowd, that Montreal just isn’t cool anymore. Expect property prices to plummet.

And talking of NME, it's midnight and we now find ourselves in the annex labryinth of Barfly at Club NME to soak up the heavenly capricious Brooklyn oddities Yeasayer. Or, judging by many an adolescent cackle heard that should be "Yeah-sayer" ("Aw man, I'm on me mobile, we seeing Yeah!-sayer and then Tings Tings, y'should get down 'ere"). Semantics aside, the place is a teenage minefield of potential pustule eruption. Everyone is young - so young - fearless and feckless: for every comedy drunken prank, there, hidden in the shadows, or trap three of the gents, is a puke-stained casualty. We've all been here, and now, years later, we must return: older, wiser and just a little bit ashamed. Even Yeasayer frontman Chris Keating has to brave a trip to the bar (where's his rider, NME?) and it's a journey down memory lane: beyond chunderdome.

If the clientele of Club NME are peculiar, then the DJ-provided soundtrack isn't. In fact it's all a bit samey - same four-to-the-floor slams, same jutting guitar lines, same yelp-y vocals - it's neither indie, nor dance, but a curious non-descript crossbreed significant only for the fact it's the type of pounding mayhem that the NME, if we're honest, don't really write about. Shame on 'em. No shame though on Yeasayer, who manage to orientate their performance towards the full blooded rhythms of the preceding DJ set and to its dancefloor dwellers. Their striking intertwining melodies still shine as bright, but it's the drums, bass and loops - voluble and pushed to the fore - that afford a glimpse into Yeasayer's previously unseen danceability. Sunrise is taut and punchier, Wait for the Wintertime more aggressively buoyant, even the perma-animated Keating is more manically agitated than ever, both vocally and in stagecraft not too dissimilar to that of a drinking bird business toy. The fluid brilliance of their song is obvious, but the fluidity of Yeasayer's mindset and purpose on this display is a winning discovery, pitching it to new eyes and ears perfectly. Even if, tonight, it's reserved for a party of (drunk) schoolchildren.

Friday dawns cloudy and damp, worlds away from the striking sunshine of last weekend.

But never mind: there's plenty to do indoors; the back room of Komedia plays host to the Great Escape Pub Quiz, in which members of the public can pit their team wits against critics and musicians alike. Making up the critics we have David Quantick, punk combover disaster Simon Price and Biggy Smalls' lost sister, and summinktodowithRadio1, Briggy. Of the music-makers we have Levellers' Mark Chadwick, Dave Eringa and Jack Boswell from Bread, sorry, the drummer from Dodgy. Twisted Ear sit and watch both get their pursuit for the Best of the Bestest crown rumbled by a team appropriately named Dark Horses. We snigger at the fact that no-one in the room, us included, know what either a Paul Garred or a Richard Hughes is, or what it's used for.*

A pause now for the business-minded as we take in the Net, Blogs and Rock N' Roll panel discussion at the Sallis Benney Theatre. Here those that blog (20 Jazz Funk Greats creators and Rhodri Marsden) come face-to-face with those that assist and aggregate (Hype Machine founder Anthony Volodkin) and those that use for their own ends (Head of Beggars Group's Web Development David Emery). If nothing else the debate is at least an admission by record companies that blogs are used and seen as valuable, even if it is primarily seen and used as A&R for gratis. Interesting points are raised about the transient nature of blogging, and its constant race for the next prize even if that results in unstained interest in previous blog teacher's pets (the second album fall from grace of Tapes n' Tapes is mentioned and it's interesting to see Emery squirm at the mere mention of the audience drop-off for one of his label's acts). Given the mutual deference of all panel members it's disappointing that a burning question never gets answered: since the record companies’ acknowledgement of the usefulness of music websites, where do they place the value in them? Quality of content, number of mentions for their artists or number of hits?

Over at the Old Victorian Courthouse seasoned music writer David Quantick makes his second appearance of the day, this time to interview the man who gave the world the first glimpse of Madonna, and who therefore has to be responsible for all subsequent painful glimpses: Seymour Stein. It's an odd-mix really, Stein loquacious, enthusiastically genial if a master of positive spin, and Quantick, a man who has the irresistible and uncanny ability to make his every utterance sound laced with playful sarcasm: a likeable David Baddiel. An odd-mix that works as we learn of Stein's love of both Lonnie Donegan and Glasvegas, and that were it not Stein witnessing the Ramones, and then acquiring them for his leading edge label Sire, then he would not have also have bagged Talking Heads. His glass half full spirit is, however, tested when twat-haired Simon Price asks, from the audience, what he felt about The Smiths' States-side failure. Failure? To Stein's ears, there's no such word. 

The Freebutt is an odd venue. It's difficult to find, a bit like Jacob's house in Lost.

I think it's a pub, sort of, with a little bar and DJ upstairs, and an oddly-shaped room downstairs with a small stage and not-very-helpful hulking great pillar right in the middle of the room.

It's a good job that there only two of The Pack AD and an even better job that there are only ten people watching them. A shame, though, because these girls from Vancouver fill the room with an immense, gutsy, booming sound. With just a guitarist and a drummer (yes, you do think of The White Stripes, but for my money they've got more balls than Meg and Jack), the punch they pack is quite startling. Becky Black's scream is like a louder Janis Joplin and Maya Miller's drums, alternately powerful and sloppy when they need to be, form the foundation of the duo's sleazy bar-blues, steadfast and urgent.

They rattle through songs from their debut Tintype including a rattling version of All Damn Day Long and it is a travesty that there aren't more people to witness it.

You have to follow dirty rock with more dirty rock, really. And so The Hold Steady at the Old Market (which is in Hove, actually) are the only band to watch next. It takes a good 25 minutes to walk down there and the venue is quite busy. It's fascinating to people-watch here; the crowd is generally a lot older and less, well, cool than the one that gathered for Yeasayer. It's interesting, too, to contrast this setting with that of ATP vs Pitchfork less than a week ago; there are many more people here, and you get the feeling that they are genuinely excited about seeing Craig Finn and cohorts, whereas the overwhelming impression at ATP was one of bemusement (who are these middle-aged men? are they cool enough to be here? etc...).

They open with Stuck Between Stations from their third album Boys And Girls in America. And immediately the neat, clean, austere Old Market erupts into a proper rock show, people at the front jumping around and throwing beer everywhere (they must be wealthy down here, because the booze isn't cheap). It even gets to the usually affable Craig Finn, who asks in one of his off-mic chatterings that people "Stop throwing beer!".

Aside from that he's enjoying himself, and the venue - even though it seems a bit posh - really does lend itself to the Hold Steady's everyman rock; there's no barrier and the band are centimetres away from the crowd at the front and they (band and audience) love it.

The set, like most at The Great Escape, is only 45 minutes long and it rattles past furiously. Clearly The Hold Steady are playing to their own crowd: backing vocals on Chips Ahoy and Massive Nights are provided by the audience in such a fervent manner that the band need not join in, and two new songs - Sequestered in Memphis and the title track from forthcoming album Stay Positive - are received like old favourites. Of course they slope off and come on again for an encore (you would, wouldn't you?), closing the set with Almost Killed Me.

This brings Friday to a somewhat premature close. Twisted Ear do attempt, valiantly, to get back over to Komedia, where the day started, for a DJ set by Hot Chip’s Joe Goddard.

But it is closed, or has moved elsewhere. So then your brave correspondents try and get a drink at a pub called the Mash Tun, which proves to be an impossible task.

It’s Saturday, FA Cup final day and, almost out of reverence, all quiet on the convention front. Best roll the clock forward to the evening…

Meet Scott Hutchison and James Graham. Hello. Scott Hutchison is lead singer of Frightened Rabbit. He is Scottish. He is most definitely not Andy Cabic. Cabic's Vetiver were due to play here, the wonderfully ornate Theatre Royal, on the second night of the Fat Cat Records birthday celebration, but, thanks to a monumental scheduling cock-up/misprint, they played the night before in the same venue. So, Scott Hutchison not Cabic, and Frightened Rabbit are most certainly not Vetiver. Scott Hutchison's Frightened Rabbit are musicians who rejoice in doomed relationships, the sort of men unafraid to cry on occasion and let it be known in the anthemic masculine break-up music they make. Essentially, they are Snow Patrol mk II only with fewer radio-certified hooks; it's forlorn, drown-your-sorrows, why-did-she-run-off-with-my-best-mate, heartachey, heartbreaky music. To many they give great show. They receive chest-swelling adulation from many within the Theatre Royal - Hutchison even crowbars in an obviously pre-scripted gay gag which is both unfunny and riotously received - but closer inspection reveals the clappy accused to probably be the band's elder relatives. Come back Vetiver, please.

James Graham (you've already been introduced) is lead singer of The Twilight Sad. He too is Scottish and also not Andy Cabic. He and Twilight Sad follow both Scott Hutchison and Frightened Rabbit on stage at the Theatre Royal. The Twilight Sad marvel in enormity, everything they do is soaring and stratospheric, monumental and towering, as vast and open as that sounds, Graham's voice - a howling beacon of abrupt brogue - makes it also seem both guarded and defiant: they are the forefathers of a new sub-genre I've invented called Lighthouse Rock. James Graham, like Scott Hutchison, also makes a gay gag. It's better crafted but isn't greeted with anywhere near the same laughter levels. Maybe that's to do with his vaguely threatening near-Glaswegian inflections. Although the band is warmly received, both James Graham, and Lighthouse Rock, say something about the Twilight Sad’s prospects; all are capable of something devastatingly dangerous, but, until then, keep your distance. 

Sarabeth Tucek is playing at the Unitarian Church, very close to the Theatre Royal, and it seems apt to check her out and see what all the recent buzz has been about. But it seems as though Sarabeth herself either doesn't know or doesn't care; she slides onto the stage with a distinct whiff of primadonna about her, complaining that the microphone is too high (and asking her guitarist to adjust it for her - can't she do it herself?), refusing to acknowledge or even look at her audience and generally giving out an aura of I-don't-want-to-be-here sullenness. Her music isn't even that good, her voice an imperceptible sort of drone, her lyrics as morose as her demeanour. All of this is a pity, because her band, cramped on the church's tiny stage, are quite good and probably deserve better.

It is a weird way to close what has been a largely successful and very interesting weekend. There will be people who go away from The Great Escape with long lists of new CDs to purchase, bands to Google, ideas from panel discussions, and gigs to attend. For the punters, as long as you go to Great Escape knowing that you really won't be able to see everyone you want to, it can't be beaten for value, especially when you know that seeing someone you didn't intend to but caught on a whim could well turn up one of the most interesting discoveries of the year. We'll be there next year. If only someone could invent a personal jet-pack...

* - They're the drummers from Kooks and Keane, thicky.

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