Since the invention of the Internet has made thieves of us all, the potential for musicians to make money from selling their music has been reduced dramatically. Yeah, we’re all going straight to hell. Consequently, making money from playing live has become a bigger deal than ever. That’s why gig tickets have increased in price so drastically the last few years. We only have ourselves to blame for that. Despite this increase in costs, more people are going to gigs than ever before, some of whom I’d rather didn’t. But that’s not our fault. We have Jo ‘New Music’ Whiley and Edith ‘Amazing’ Bowman to blame for that. Gigs are full of dilettantes now. And nowhere is that more evident than at festivals.
V, Latitude, Reading - they’re all terrible, awful cunts; don’t go. But, as terrifying an experience as they all are, none get close to the unrelenting shit-fest of Camden Crawl. Defying every ounce of reason in my body, I found myself attending this past weekend, spending the entire two days shaking my head in disgust, getting pissed-on by torrential rain while waiting in unnecessary queues, numbing my moral compass with alcohol, and avoiding getting assaulted by knucklehead ‘music fans’ in bootcut River Island jeans and Camper shoes. I’m not going to go to hell for downloading music for free; I got sent to Camden Crawl instead.
To save anyone else the bother of making the same mistake I did, I’ve compiled a list of reasons why Camden Crawl is the worst (I’m assuming the Platform readership are smart enough to know this anyway. My bad). For those that did make the same mistake this weekend, hopefully this is a cathartic experience for us all. Ever feel like you’re been cheated?
THE LOCATION
The first tell tale sign that Camden Crawl is going to be a cultural holocaust is that it’s called Camden Crawl. About 15 years ago, a jingoistic, slightly xenophobic thing called Britpop happened, its spiritual home in Camden Town. You may have heard about it in history books or on the only TV programmes Kate Thornton can now get work. Graham Coxon could often be found drinking with builders in the Good Mixer and ‘great’ bands like Menswear rolled around on the floor like they were going to be famous forever. Briefly, Camden was the centre of the world, and tourists and cool kids flocked to it like an indie Mecca.
Then the arse fell out of New Labour and the world moved on, music got better and most of the shit bands fucked off to work as session musicians for bands that only ever play at the Cambridge Folk Festival. But Camden never changed. It’s perpetually locked in 1995, a museum piece for musical crimes and cybergoth fashion disasters, like if the Hard Rock Cafe curated the Chamber of Horrors.
Littered everywhere are remnants of a past I’d rather forget. The walls of every venue are lined with standardised black and white posters advertising forthcoming gigs for bands with names that suggest the English language doesn’t have enough words. Like everything tired and old, it’s filthy, too. Seemingly coated in a perpetual slime, dirt sweats from the concrete up, outlining discarded condoms, lakes of vomit and trays of food not even considered edible by hunger-crazed drunks with numb tongues. Nothing stays white for long. My skin is still coated in layers of grime that can barely be boiled off, my fingernails appearing as if just being in Camden alone was enough to paint them into some Gothic fantasy.
Camden, you’re a mess. Please have a bath.
THE PEOPLE
It’s important not to be too elitist about this, as not everyone enjoys music in the same way - some people are boring and like Lightspeed Champion and jobs in IT. That’s fine, just don’t bother me. For the most part, the people that attended Camden Crawl were merely victims of their own naivety and lack of culture. That said, I could have done without the meatheads throwing pints at bands and the neon pink-clad meowmeow idiots who clearly hated other people’s eyes and ears.
What was truly remarkable was the number of very normal looking, slightly threatening men present, all unable to move to music, show any appreciation for gig etiquette (lesson 1: when it’s busy, it’s OK for people to push past without attacking them), or describe a song without saying “quality”. For them, music is not art or even of importance. Music is merely an excuse to drink yourself into incontinence, “pull a pig”, and behave like Brits abroad, when at home. I don’t know why they have to attend a festival to experience this. It’s the Rise of the Lad, again.
That all said, the worst offenders at Camden Crawl were the staff, in particular the security. The sanctioned and accepted criminals they are, they behaved with all the care and consideration of Hurricane Katrina. What’s more, there was the inexplicable arrogance that the paying customer should at all times display eternal gratitude for being allowed the privilege to attend their festival. If you have a question that isn’t “how do I spend more money?” then you can fuck off.
THE ORGANISATION
While I’m stupid enough to attend Camden Crawl, I’m not stupid enough to have paid for that dubious honour. A band I know were scheduled to play both days and sorted us out with guest passes. That was the plan at least. When confirming their appearance a few months beforehand, their agent was informed they’d be given a ten person guestlist for each day. On arriving, they discovered this had been reduced to six without explanation, leaving four people without tickets. The band gave us the three we’d been promised, while I rang around sorting tickets for the four left out in the cold. We then had to take our tickets to the Roundhouse to join a mile long queue at the end of which we were to exchange them for wristbands.
On getting to the front of the queue, I realised that my ticket was only a day pass for the Sunday. Not very useful since today was Saturday. I asked to speak to a manager, in order to find out why the band only had the six tickets anyway. The woman I was told to speak to treated me as if I’d just raped her cats (she definitely owned a lot of cats) and then informed me that any issues with tickets had to be resolved by going to Koko, a venue at the opposite end of Camden. That’s right, the two most important spaces at the festival were situated as far apart as possible, a fact made even more galling because the sky was ejaculating liquid like a teenager on Chat Roulette. What’s more, the band were not even given priority passes and had to queue to get in to the venues they were due to play.
Camden is a haven for outdated promoters with their ‘pay-to-play’ policies, five band bills and never-starting guestlists, never-ending cheap lists. Camden Crawl is that attitude to music amplified into an entire festival and, somehow, it’s getting away with it.
THE PRICE
Tickets for just a day at Camden Crawl cost £37.50. The line up lists about fourteen million bands, which on paper equates to pretty good value for money. In reality though, it makes as much financial sense as pyramid selling.
Due to the scheduling, getting to see more than four bands the entire day was pretty much impossible. Getting to see more than four good bands would have taken divine intervention. Or a different festival. Of the bands I did get to see, all of them I had seen in London before for either free or no more than £5. Let’s do the maths - just say you got lucky and managed to see Spectrals, Male Bonding, The Drums and Dead Meadow on the Saturday. All good bands, no doubt (yes yes, even The Drums. I know, controversial. “The Future” is a brilliant song). Ordinarily, that would cost you about £25 max. Perhaps getting to see The Drums in a small(ish) venue would be a big enough allure for some. But guess what? No one was getting to see The Drums anyway. There were queues so long for their show I thought Michael Jackson had been reincarnated and was to be joined onstage by U2 and Jason Derulo.
And there’s one final twist - you had to pay extra to see the headliners (but to be fair, anyone who paid to see them deserved to be robbed of their money).
THE MUSIC
Pendulum and Calvin Harris headlined. Evidence, if ever needed, that Camden Crawl is a festival only Australians could enjoy.