May 27th - Day 39

Jeff Lang (and Grant Cummerford) at Green Note, Camden

September 3rd - Day 138

 In the cosy upstairs room of Camden's Lock Tavern a hushed audience watched Elena Tonra perform fragile, haunting songs, songs with titles like "Ghost Man" and "Bones", accompanying her voice simply and effectively with gentle acoustic guitar. Were it not for the continuous buzzing coming out of the speakers, you could have heard a pin drop.

myspace.com/elenatonra

September 24th - Day 159

On Day 4 of this escapade I saw a band called Rum Shebeen doing their sound check. I didn't know they were doing their sound check until the singer asked me if I could hear them alright (this despite me being the only person in the room apart from the five band members). That night, at Easycome in Nunhead, I ended up watching a folk duo called The Lorcas and missed Rum Shebeen, because they were on last and I wasn't there any more. I liked the sound of Rum Shebeen, and so I vowed that, one day, I would see Rum Shebeen perform. Today was that day.

Dan and Tasha told me about the Flowerpot in Camden - "a minty-green, one-room pub at the heart of a very modern musical revolution" said The Guardian - because it has free live music every night. My kind of place. The band came on at ten and suddenly the place was packed. There must be a point when an upwardly mobile band's audience shifts from consisting mainly of supportive friends to consisting mainly of supportive fans. I think tonight Rum Shebeen's audience was still the former, but I don't think they're too far off tipping over to the other side. Or maybe they've just got tonnes of friends. I wonder whether artists are able to pinpoint a particular gig where the shift from friend-audience to fan-audience is obviously discernable, or whether it's subtler than that.

Anyway. Tonight. The music - think Ska/Sandanista Clash/Oi/Roots - "Werewolves singing their way into heaven" says their myspace. The moves - you know, running on the spot, skanking, bouncing. Band members and audience. Camberwell boys (and one girl) calling up the Camden spirit of Madness. Really good fun. Great tunes. Great gig. The End.

(Taking photos didn't seem to be a cool thing to do at this gig, and I'd hate people half my age to think I'm uncool, so here's another image for the dodgy undercover photography file)

October 26th - Day 191

I met Chris for a drink in Hampstead this evening. He reckoned Hampstead was the kind of place where there was bound to be live music, a confident attitude probably not unconnected with the fact that Chris lives in Hampstead. I know from experience that even places with a listing in the Time Out music section and a large sign outside saying, "Live Music Tonight!!!" are not bound to have live music. And sure enough, as far as I could tell, there was nothing doing in Hampstead tonight.

I made a couple of phone calls to venues advertising free gigs tonight, listed in the London evening paper that I'd found on the tube. I plumped for something at The London Irish Centre somewhere in Camden and, after a couple of beers, set off on my own.

Somewhere in Camden turned out to be a quiet square towards Caledonian Road called Camden Square. On one corner of the square two smokers stood outside an unremarkable looking building which was the London Irish Centre. Bright lights lit up two empty rooms at the front. A couple chatted in the quiet foyer. Had the gig been cancelled since I spoke to the man an hour ago?! I heard distant music and walked down a corridor towards it. The corridor turned to the left.........hang on.......

November 8th - Day 204

Dreamy feedback and blissful pop from Yo La Tengo - "like ten bands in one" as the man in the toilet queue put it. My first visit to The Roundhouse - what a great place! Hope to add a bit about the venue's history soon.

December 7th - Day 233

Thanks to writing my seven day diary for the South London Press (at a newsagents near you on Friday...if you live in south London) I've recently been spoilt with south of the river music. This isn't a dig at the musical quality north of the river, but...well, living as I do in the foothills south of Peckham that we call Nunhead, it's been good to have the excuse to travel nearer afield. Consequently I found tonight's trip to an open-mic night at The Earl of Camden, in Camden, a bit of an effort. I watched the opening act who was singer-guitarist Treana (I think she also ran the evening). As she played I thought how she, like so many unheralded musicians I've seen over the past eight months, would not be out of place on a summer festival stage. This turned out to be a prescient thought because of another musical encounter a short while later. I left as a young guy was playing his bluesy first song - his face is lit up on the right of the above photo (click for closer view).

The tube to London Bridge stopped at Euston. As the train waited for the green signal I could hear haunting, breathy pipe music swirling around the platform outside (this despite having The Fall on my MP3 player - though not very loudly, I'm sociable like that). In one of those sliding doors moments I got off the tube as the doors slide behind me. At the bottom of the escalator was a guy called Alamin playing an Indian bamboo flute called a bansuri (I have to admit I didn't know it was called that - Alamin told me). He was backed by the percussive pre-recorded sound of, I'm guessing, a tabla. Slightly bizzarely someone else had also heard Alamin's enchanting music and got off the train, though in his case it was because he recognised the sound and the tune and knowing Alamin he wondered if it might be he. I might be wrong, but I think they knew each other from out of London. I chatted with the other guy who'd interrupted his journey, Paul, as we waited for our next tube. He told me something he'd read, about a violinist busker in Central Station, New York who'd been ignored by most people flashing past and received a dollar here and there from a very few others. The violinist was one of the top violinists in the world and he was playing some of the most difficult pieces. So the question Paul asked, and I echo and paraphrase slightly, is, "Do we appreciate music for what it is, or judge it by where it's performed?" Significantly, children passing the violinist busker, hearing only the music, often wanted to stop only to be pulled onwards by their parent.

I've done a bit of research and this article - link below - if not the one that Paul read (it doesn't mention the children, though other related pieces on the net do), tells the tale. The violinist was Joshua Bell. The station was actually in Washington, but what the hey, that's not the point.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/tomserviceblog/2007/apr/18/joshuabellnoordinarybusker

Alamin and his bansuri

March 21st - Day 337

For several hours today live music repeatedly slipped from my grasp, disappearing around one corner as I rounded the previous one, leaving tantilising tracks. There were the gospel voices above Lady Meg's African Restaurant next to Peckham Rye station. The Romanian jazz musicians, loud and unseen as the train rolled over Hungerford Bridge into Charing Cross station. The accordianist at the far end of Villiers Street. The musicians packing up their instruments as the last of the Sport Relief mile runners approached along the Embankment. The person singing into a mic at the Sport Relief entertainment area that had been replaced by boys street dancing to Michael Jackson by the time I got there. The Soho pub where the jazz wasn't free, as I'd thought, but was eight pounds. The audience clapping an unseen attraction as my bus drove over Camden Lock. The piano lit up by the sun in the empty Fiddlers Elbow bar on Piano Jam afternoon. The chap packing away his guitar back where I'd seen the clapping audience next to the lock. The array of musical instruments leaning up against the wall behind him.

I waited to see what would happen to these instruments. A man sat down next to them and ate celery. In front of them another man sat on a stool whilst a friend massaged his shoulders. Some people greeted each other and one by one they picked up instruments. The guy being massaged also. The band was called Cocos Lovers and they come from Deal in Kent. They were headlining up the road at The Enterprise pub in the evening (whilst they busked they promoted the gig and sold CDs). This sunny Sunday late afternoon alongside the lock, I think however, was ideally suited to their shiny Fleet Foxes-esque set.

(man eating celery on right)

cocoslovers.co.uk