Category: London

London Eleventh and Twelfth Trips

I have travelled a few times down to London with work and at one stage was visiting a company who were based nearby to Moorgate station and adjacent to London Finsbury Square. In 1784 the Square witnessed the first successful attempt of a hot air balloon flight and there is also a memorial installed there to commemorate the 1975 Moorgate tube crash where 43 people perished.  

Finsbury Square. Image Credit londonplanning.org.uk

In the summer of 2017 after leaving a meeting I was headed back to the tube for the journey home and heard music playing. In the early 20th century, the square was home to the London Royal Yeomanry and on that day the Band of Royal Yeomanry (Inns of Court & City Yeomanry) were playing a gig.

Their regimental history dates to 1548 and the band formed in 1961. They perform at many events, including D-Day memorials in Normandy and 6 Nations matches at Twickenham. They still maintain their original ceremonial uniform of French blue jacket and trousers, chain mailed shoulders, George boots and spurs and Chapka helmets.

Band of Royal Yeomanry Band. Image Credit flickr.com

I have always been a huge fan of Hold Steady and have now seen them nine times in total and they sit in bronze medal position of my bands most seen list. That figure would undoubtedly be higher if not for the fact that they have not played a Manchester date since 19/10/14. The reason for this dearth is that they have chosen since then to just play an annual three-day residency in London with no other regional dates.

As a result, we decided to make a pilgrimage down to the smoke in 2019 as I was missing my Hold Steady fix! Their base for their seasonal jaunt is in the thriving Camden suburb of the city. I met Uncle George and John Dewhurst off the train, and we dropped our bags at the handy location of Euston Premier Inn.  We then headed off on the Northern tram line to find our first hostelry, the Dingwalls pub on Camden Lock overlooking the canal.

My first visit to that establishment was in 1987 when I saw Brilliant Corners supported by a yet undiscovered Happy Mondays. The pub has certainly gone through a regentrification phase since then, but they still have live music there on a regular basis.  We also had a foray to the Old Eagle public house and to refuel we hit a local pie shop but there were unfortunately no butter pies on sale!

The Hold Steady show took place at London Camden Electric Ballroom. The Ballroom is a long-established venue and has been in place for 80 years. It began its days as an Irish club where the crooner Jim Reeves used to play and adopted its current name in 1978. There used to be a weekend indoor market staged there and was in place until 2015. It survived potential demolition in 2004 when there was a proposal to redevelop Camden Town underground station.

Camden Electric Ballroom. Image Credit Electric Ballroom

There are two dance floors and four bars contained within and it has a capacity of 1500 and there was good viewing of the stage from any vantage point.  They launched straight in with the vibrant ‘Stuck Between Stations’ and didn’t let up for the next 24 tracks, it was another thoroughly enjoyable performance.

It was also appropriate as a milestone event as it was Uncle George’s and I 500th gig together, a mere 32 years since our first, a staggeringly good Pogues show at Manchester International 2. Our 100th was also a belter with Black Rebel Motorcycle playing the Mill, a small club in Preston.  

After the set had finished, George and I progressed onto London Camden Monarch for number 501. The original Monarch prior to 2000 was in another area of Camden which then became the music venue Barfly. The new Monarch opened in 2008 in a new site on Chalk Farm Road and the DJ on the opening night was none other than Amy Winehouse!

The pub subsequently closed in 2020 but reopened the following year under the new moniker Monarchy retaining the live music in a downstairs events space called the Vault.  On the night we visited a local indie band called Stay Club took to the stage.    

London Tenth Trip

A Northern invasion of London is always to be savoured when Mogwai decide to play in the capital city. Thus, when they announced they were to be incorporated in the bill for the Meltdown Festival in 2014 by playing Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank we jumped at the chance to attend.

Uncle George, John and Tony Dewhurst and I headed down on the Virgin express to and dropped our bags across the road at our digs at the handy Premier Inn opposite Euston Station. We met Nigel who had headed in from Brighton at a boozer in Borough Market where we discussed my gig list and the very early germination at that stage of the idea to create this very blog!

We progressed down the river and had a drink at the bar within the Globe Theatre. As we passed London Tate Modern, I witnessed a young singer called Jolie Fox on a makeshift stage. We continued down the river afterwards to then arrive at the London Royal Festival Hall.

Globe Theatre. Image Credit travellousworld.com

The Festival Hall was opened in 1951 after an expenditure of £2m and was built as part of the Festival of Britain which was instigated to provide a boost to the national morale after the Second World War. It sits alongside the Hayward Gallery, The Queen Elizabeth Hall, and the Purcell Room within an 11-acre site all under the auspices of the Southbank Centre, with the main venue having an all seated 2900 capacity.

It has been run as an independent concern since 1988 and the building has Grade 1 listed status. In 2014, their Festival of Love concluded with 70 couples, including 15 same-sex couples marrying on the main stage. On the musical front, Grace Jones and Patti Smith have played there and Brian Wilson premiered his sixth album Smile with a live performance.

Royal Festival Hall. Image Credit circular1.com

We mulched about briefly in the downstairs area and I purchased a new Mogwai t-shirt from the merch stand, Clinic had supported that night, but we had missed their set. We headed upstairs and grabbed our seats and admired the surroundings before Mogwai took the stage. I thought ‘Travel is Dangerous’, and a thunderous ‘Mogwai Fear Satan’ were excellent, with the latter track ending the initial set, before the aural assault continued into the encore with ‘New Paths to Helicon Part 1’ and We’re No Here’.   

Afterwards we jumped on the nearby tube for the commute to the final gig of the evening, but annoyingly I left my newly purchased T-shirt in the carriage when disembarking! Our destination was Chalk Farm station which takes you instantly into another of those innumerable London suburbs with its own high street, bars and community.

The tube station is next to the Roundhouse venue where many fine bands have undertaken residencies there, our next venue was not as highbrow and was namely London Chalk Farm Fiddlers Elbow.

Chalk Farm Fiddlers Elbow. Image Credit londonsubscene.net

It was a filthy rainy night (not in Soho!) and we struggled to locate the pub, but we landed eventually much to our relief. The hostelry was built in the 1840’s and was previously known as The Old Mother Shipton before holding the Fiddler’s name since the 1970’s. It is a Grade II listed building and a homely venue with Chesterfield sofas and a music room with a 150 capacity.

It is an independently run concern and they host alternate event such as poetry readings and book signings, but their main pursuit is live music, with both the Vibrators and The Damned having played there back in the day.

On the night of our visit, the band on stage were the MOBBS, who billed themselves as ‘garage punk rock ‘n’ roll at one hundred miles per hour’ but unfortunately, they did not quite live up to that rather enticing preamble!