Ash, Air Traffic, Jack Penate, Ox Eagle Lion Man, I Was A Cub Scout - Camden Crawl Day One, Various Camden Venues, London - Thursday 19th April 2007

After the extreme excitement of the secret and tiny Babyshambles gig, it was time to get on with the Camden Crawl proper - a great event which has expanded itself to 2 days this year. Basically, you buy a wristband which allows you entry to 15 gig venues in Camden, to see a load of brilliant new bands, with some well-known headliners chucked in too. There are a couple of venues that hold 1000 people or slightly more, but after that, the remaining venues are very small indeed, most in fact are just pubs.

To calm down from the buzz of watching Pete Doherty trash a venue, we went for beer at the picturesque Camden Lock. The fact that the sun was shining of course helped the beer to sink down much more easily, and the fact that there were fellow Camden Crawlers everywhere also made it much more of a laugh. Camden Lock in the sunshine did remind me that there are some lovely parts of London beside canals, with summer coming up, I may try to visit a few more of them!

Anyway, the bands started properly at around 6:30, and the first band I saw was I Was A Cub Scout, at Dingwalls. This is a 2-piece band, just a guitarist / vocalist and a drummer. The drummer played the show wearing only a pair of underpants, and the singer had a pair of tight cycling shorts, with a checked shirt, fully buttoned up, tucked into them. It was a very strange look, more than a little bit gay. Their sound was very good, many of the songs featured frenzied guitar riffs, funny lyrics, and there were many decent sounding indie-pop songs on offer.

After I Was A Cub Scout, it was into Camden Town proper for the next band, Ox Eagle Lion Man. They played at a very small venue, basically a pub called NW1. The place seemed to be full of bands, or at least people in bands, and you could see the singer from the band milling around before the set. I had never heard anything by them before this set, but I was impressed with what I saw. The singer looked like a great frontman, commanding the stage, and having the audience eating out of his hand by the end of the set. Very impressed, and I hope to see them again soon - Gigwise also saw them here.

After this, I went to the Camden Tup to try to see Pull Tiger Tail - a band I have seen before and quite liked. But, a big queue quickly built up outside the venue (which is a big feature of Camden Crawl - because there are so many small venues, you often have to queue for a while to get in), which trapped some of my group outside. So, we went to the Electric Ballroom instead, which has a big capacity and therefore much less of a queue. Getting in there, I caught the last 4 songs of Jack Penate's set, which was quite frankly incredible. Male singer-songwriters often have a bad reputation now, mainly thanks to David Gray, but Penate was awesome, his songs really fizzed along, and the fact that he plays with a proper band meant that they really rocked too - much better than a soloist getting all melancholy with a guitar.

After Jack Penate, I decided not to brave any more queues, and just to stay in the Electric Ballroom instead. Next up there were Air Traffic. I have seen them before and been distinctly underwhelmed - very radio-friendly but not all that appealing. So, I had pretty low expectations in advance of their set. But, possibly partly because of my prior expectation, they were much better than I had thought. They kept the chatter in between songs to an absolute minimum, and just concentrated on bashing out one song after another. They also seemed to be much rockier than I had ever remembered them being before, so all in all they were pretty decent, and certainly better than previous experience with them.

Headliners in the Electric Ballroom were Ash, busy in the middle of promoting a comeback single and album. Very little new stuff tonight though, as they blazed through an incredible set of their greatest hits. Starting with Burn Baby Burn is a pretty mental way to kick off any gig, and it sent the whole venue crazy. Listening to their set, it always amazes me just how many cracking singles they have made down the years, and of course how they can always pull out a classic indie song like Girl From Mars, to make a venue erupt whenever they feel like it.

Hearing songs like Kung Fu, Oh Yeah, and Angel Interceptor reminded me of the time when going to gigs was not as normal an occurrence as it is now - but the reaction to the band was amazing. First time I saw Ash was at the Reading Festival in 1995 - that day, Girl From Mars basically saw the entire tent as one massive moshpit. It was no different this evening, even stood at the back and the side of the venue, the crowd was crazy. It takes a special band to do that, and Ash reminded everybody what a good bunch of pop songs they have up their sleeves.