23/08/2007
Camden Crawl,
London
At times, wandering through Camden on weekend afternoons can resemble a trip to an indie-Disneyland. Streets are overflowing with suburban youths wearing their tribal colours, groups of tourists walk along gawping and dealers hang out on the bridge trying to con students out of their money for bags of oregano. Shops and stalls trade in amazingly unwitty t-shirts and unpleasant food. If during the day it can be irritating, then at night try just downright unnerving.
But the bottom line is that Camden is perhaps London’s musical heartbeat. This is where the young bands cut their teeth, this is where the kids create the buzz around them and this is where all self-respecting music fans come to check it all out. However, repeated visits to Camden to see the next ‘next big thing’ could get draining. How often can a person with even a modicum of regard for their own hygiene and safety return to Camden before they eventually flip out and head off out to Surrey in order to live in a hermetically sealed anti-bacterial box?
As much as the organisers of Camden Crawl would have you believe that the whole thing is a showcase for new bands and a celebration of live music, there’s still the sneaking suspicion that it’s really about reducing the need for extended and prolonged exposure to Camden. After the umbrage taken due to the excessive queuing that many people had to endure last year, the Crawl was extended to a second day to give people the chance to see all the bands. However, problems arose when it turned out to be two of the most beautiful days London has seen all year. People weren’t surviving in Camden, they were actually enjoying it. People jacked in queuing for gigs in favour of sitting by the lock sipping cold beers, or making new friends in old drinking dens like The Good Mixer and Tommy Flynn’s. Camden was in danger of looking like a place that you wouldn’t actually mind hanging out in.
Still, Amy Winehouse in the back room of the Dublin Castle had over-eager punters keeping the queue, as did The Charlatans and Travis at Koko. However, the real treats were to be discovered in the quieter corners of the Crawl route with incendiary sets from bands like upcoming Oxford outfit Foals. Call it math rock, call it the work of the devil, either way they had a crowd in The Underworld indulging in some stage-invading and truly awful dancing at 4 in the afternoon, which is surely the Crawl’s real magic.
If Foals were the underground darlings then a brief glimpse of what is destined to be one of this year’s breakthrough acts could be seen at the Electric Ballroom in the form of Air Traffic. Ash may have been headlining but after the epic theatrics
of these young rockers, there was no doubt that an exciting new prospect had arrived. A quick stumble from there to The Enterprise revealed perhaps the biggest treat of all. In a small and sweltering room before a densely packed crowd, Birmingham’s singer-songwriter extraordinaire Scott Matthews played an acoustic set accompanied only by a cellist. Working his way through a repertoire of some of the most delicate and breathtaking pieces of music to come out of this country in recent years, it was little wonder that his attempts to leave the stage were blocked and the poor chap was forced to play a total of three encores.
As memorable as all of this was, it collectively paled into insignificance when compared to what happened to Camden over that 48 hours. A breeding ground for this country’s finest and most innovative music, undoubtedly, but a place of
friendliness and charm? If the Crawl manages to land such fine weather next year and thus bring out everyone’s more affable traits, the place may actually be known for something other than its music. At a time when numerous music venues in the capital are being closed, it’s a wonderful sight to see the cross-section of Londoners that make the city’s live scene as marvellous as it is uniting for two days of indulgence. If the developers and city planners were to see days like this, perhaps they wouldn’t be quite so keen to start erecting even more empty office blocks. After all, without the joy of Camden during the Crawl, what the hell would be the point of living in London anyway?
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