Crack

Camden Crawl is an opportunity for Camden town to flex its utterly mental muscles at full tilt for 48 hours. The best way to describe this inner city mega bash is as an amalgamation of every experience anyone has ever had on the gigging, boozing, mash-up, legal high-ladened streets of Camden Town, mixing it with the punks, goths, mods, rudeboys, drug dealers and dayglo ravers in unison. You get the idea.

The weekender sees every venue within a stones throw of Camden tube opening its doors and laying on a mixed bag of music, performance and comedy. It's fair to say that there is just about something for everyone. From Koko to the Roundhouse, all the way to the Forum in Kentish Town (44 official festival locations to be exact), these venues enter into a soundclash free-for-all to see who can tear it up the best, and it is fair to say that at no point do any disappoint.

Truth be told, I rocked up sober as a judge (bar a couple of valium that I munched just to get me in the party spirit) at about midday on the Sunday. Amidst the melee I found sanctuary at the Levi's Craft of Music stage, just one of many musical happenings spearheaded by Levi's in recent months in an attempt to sell more jeans, but also to help rediscover true musical craft in times of such silliness. As the Craft of Music homepage states 'Craft is individual and instinctive, something that is lived, learned and mastered.'

Situated in the Proud Galleries – a converted horse hospital no less - I was lucky enough to be part of a medium-sized crowd which witnessed a list of intriguing musical talent including the night-time-sleep-inducing-bars of rising lyricist Ghostpoet, multi-instumentalist-singer-songwriter Marques Toliver and, of course, the diminutive genius that is Graham Coxon.

Showcasing (for the first time) a host of new material from his seventh solo studio album The Spinning Top, Coxon done did smashed the stable roof off with his at times thrashingly mental / at times monotonous / at times folky bejanglements. There was so much love in the venue that even when Coxon paused to offer hecklers a forum to speak their mind he was greeted with a “WE LOVE YOU GRAHAM” in which he replied, “that isn't a heckle”.

I admit I slinked off home before Grandmaster Flash took to the turntables and did I get some free jeans? Did I fuck. But neither of these things are that important: what the Levis Craft of Music stage represented during my time at Camden Crawl was sanctum, an opportunity to get away from the madness and actually clock some serious music making.

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Words: Thomas Hawkins

Photos: Imogen Freeland

http://www.thecamdencrawl.com/

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