Camden Crawl pt.2
By: Thomas Hannan
His name is Billy Bragg and he's from Barking, Essex (as he tells us at least three times throughout his set in the Electric Ballroom tonight) and he's just about made my festival. Really, this was like going to church, except I didn't fall asleep. I came straight out not just wanting to change the world, but thinking that I actually could do it. Who's with me?
The Kissaway Trail are. They want to change the planet for the better by filling it with luscious, meaty melody rather than un-ambitious and inescapably mediocre indie. Their desire to be a big league, important band rather than another also ran is hugely admirable, as are their attempts to remind us that five people all playing the same note can often sound really bloody fantastic.
Luckily, or perhaps cleverly, we were only beaten by the queues once over the two days, as there was just no hope of going to see Blood Red Shoes. Why there was however absolutely no wait to see the marvellous Eamon from Brakes is anyone's guess. If you'd have been there, you could have jumped on stage and sang a Johnny Cash cover with him as he plucked away at that battered acoustic guitar. But no, you were watching the Cooper Temple Clause... Quite a lot of dancing on the stage there was in fact, what with the kids going mental AGAIN for Foals at the Underworld - that band, that band...
Previously, a wonderful afternoon was spent sitting in and out of Camden public houses watching all manner of unsigned acoustic talent regale us with tales of love, war, pestilence and the like. Just made you wonder why they don't do it on a weekend when more people would be able to catch 'em, doesn't it? Although more punters is perhaps the last thing this jaunt needs...