Fox Cubs, Noah And The Whale, The Boycott Coca Cola Experience - Various Camden Venues, London - Saturday 19th April 2008

After a good time the previous evening at the Camden Crawl, it was back in the area at lunchtime the next day, to take in some of the afternoon "fringe" events that happen around the Crawl. Last year, this involved seeing the Rumble Strips in a pub in the middle of the afternoon, whilst the sun blared in through the window. No such luck this time, as the sun was nowhere to be seen.

First stop of the afternoon was a pub called the Buck's Head, which had been decked out in the theme of a child's birthday party. Throughout the boozer, there were people painting smiley faces on paper plates, blowing balloons, and decorating stuff. It was utterly surreal, and during our stay there, we saw a completely bizarre singer called the Boycott Coca Cola Experience. He had a particularly strange song about gas, which just seemed to have everybody that was actually listening to the words scratching their heads. After about 45 minutes of the kids party, and about 20 minutes of the strange singer, it all became too much (especially with a hangover as well), and I had to get out and go somewhere a bit more "normal".

That place was Bar Vinyl, a nice bar without strange people. Whilst we were there, the excellent Noah and the Whale played. Although a few people at the back were more interested in talking loudly, rather than listening to the brilliant band that was performing in front of them, Noah and the Whale's set went down really well. They only played for about 25 minutes though, which was the only shame. Towards the end of their version of Five Years Time, they went into singing Sweets For My Sweet, which really went down well with the audience. Apparently, the band played five different sets over the 2 days of the Camden Crawl, which I thought was brilliant, and hopefully won them a lot of new fans. They were very well received in this set, which was thoroughly well deserved - a really good band.

A couple of hours after Noah and the Whale, the pisspoor One Night Only were due to be playing Bar Vinyl, which was not fancied by anybody I was with. So, in anticipation of the venue filling up with teenyboppers, we left and went to the good mixer. This was a bit of a mistake, as the pub part of the venue was open to non Camden Crawlers (boo!), so was absolutely packed, and very hot. They did have Soccer Saturday on, just a shame that nobody decent was playing though!

In the Good Mixer, a band called Fox Cubs were playing, who I'd never really heard of before. I thought they were really good though, they played a very upbeat set which contained some very polished indie pop songs. The people that had managed to get into the gig room (which involved a queue I couldn't be bothered to join, especially as you could hear everything perfectly anyway), seemed to be loving every minute of it, and from where I was standing, the band sounded fantastic.

Eventually, though, the venue just became too hot and too packed to stay in for too much longer. We saw a bit of the beginning of Eastern Conference Champions' set, which sounded pretty good and lively, before decamping elsewhere. Elsewhere turned out to be Tommy Flynn's, where a slightly ropey band from Teesside were playing (whose singer sounded like Paul Smith when he spoke). Tommy Flynn's was also nightmarishly busy, and full of non Crawlers, so we escaped from there as quickly as possible, and headed for Koko to start the Crawl properly.