London's Most Rock And Roll Street Party Returns To Camden

Chris Lockie
By Chris Lockie Last edited 120 months ago
London's Most Rock And Roll Street Party Returns To Camden

Camden

The first seven words of the title are the event's self-administered tagline, but with the line-up the organisers of the Camden Rocks festival are putting together you'd be hard pressed to have an issue with it.

With the Camden Crawl taking a break last year it has fallen upon Camden Rocks to step into the breach. This year's event on Saturday 31 May follows 2013's spectacular debut on the same spring weekend, and the latest addition to an already packed Camden Rocks line-up sees Hertfordshire trio The Subways hit the Electric Ballroom towards the top of the bill. Other headline acts include Reverend & the Makers, The Blackout, Blitz Kids and Nine Black Alps, the Manchester four-piece who have shaken Camden more often than the 168 over the years.

Across the 19 Camden Town venues involved ā€” all the usual suspects present and correct ā€” you have a staggering number of bands to choose from, as shown on the poster for the event. Worthy of particular recommendation are raucous punk outfit Max Raptor, who made mincemeat out of a crowd at the Barfly back in January, and London band Bleech, who use the Subways' blueprint to forge a splendid racket of their own ā€” here's 'Here I Am' from their latest album, Humble Sky, out now.

The organiser of the festival is Chris McCormack, the guitarist from former indie rock heroes Three Colours Red and noted Kentish Town resident. In an interview with the Camden Review in January, the man himself stated his and the festival's ethos, plain and simple: "Iā€™m going to keep it very straightforward, loud guitars."

McCormack's drunken jamboree is staking an early claim to hold onto the crown it wrested from the Camden Crawl, which itself returns in June. The superb line-up of Camden Rocks means it's already 1-0 to the upstart before a ball's been kicked. We've just tried to count the number of bands listed on the line-up poster, and it's something like 111 with more still to be announced.

Londonist predicts utter mayhem as Camden's reputation for guitar carnage (guitarnage!) breaks many a rock fan who genuinely thinks, when they start drinking at noon, that they have a snowball's chance in hell of lasting until midnight. Tickets are less than thirty quid for the whole day. Not a hard decision, is it?

Camden Rocks takes place on 31 May. Tickets are available from See Tickets.

Image courtesy of Linda Wisdom via the Londonist Flickr pool.

Last Updated 18 March 2014