Week 18 – Saturday 30th April + Sunday 1st May – Camden Crawl, London - £63.50
One Royal Wedding and Eighteen Gigs
“If you can’t handle us, get out of the kitchen.”
Our gig for Week 18 was less of a gig and more of a gig, which can mean only one thing: absolutely nothing.
It means it was time for our first festival of the year, and fittingly I managed to squeeze in 18 gigs (well, I say gigs, but I mean gigs).18 gigs meaning 18 performances by bands or musicians. In this sense, your average music festival is made up of hundreds of such, distinct gigs, but as this particular festival is spread over only two days, as far as Gigaweek is concerned, in the words of Sandro’s idol Gimli the dwarf, it still only counts as one.
Alongside us on our excursion to the big smoke were (in order of increasingly accurate names): Little P, Kimbo Slice, P. Mushy, Salazar, K-May and the insufferable Cousin Bish. Among us, only P. Mushy and K-May had previously attended the Crawl, and they guaranteed us only one thing: Ice Lollies.
A great festival is like a double-edged sword: pointy.
With over forty venues being utilised throughout Camden and Kentish Town for Camden Crawl, and gigs galore throughout Saturday and Sunday, from midday to well after midnight each day, it was inevitable that we may get to see some sensational stuff, but we’d also miss some sensational stuff too.
With so much fine entertainment to take in, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this special edition of Gigaweek may be more music-centric. Forgiven, but naive nonetheless.
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Our jaunt coincided with the most important event of all time bar none, Will & Kate’s wedding.
“And there was me thinking Will was gay,” I'd said when I heard the news of the impending nuptials.
“You're thinking of Will & Grace again,” Sandro replied.
“Oh yeah. I hope Just Jack and Karen get invited.”
We arrived in London via Megabus on Thursday, quivering in anticipation. Being a wild Royalist, Sandro was covered head to toe in Union Jacks, while Cousin Bish and I were wearing our own wonderful white wedding dresses, feeling grateful that peasants such as us were allowed air.
London was evidently buzzing with similar excitement, with Union flags prevalent throughout the streets. With the Wedding preoccupying everyone, we decided to have a night in at the studio apartment that we’d be calling home for the next four nights, and entertained ourselves with a thrilling game of Buzz. Tim Vine rounded off the day and a record breaking 377 jokes later, Sal was his new biggest fan, as her repeated cries of “they’re just ‘Dad’ jokes” and “that’s not funny” demonstrated.
Astonishingly, despite purchasing our invitations in good faith from the honourable gentleman C. Tickets, we were turned away by the pedantic Welsh guards, who insisted we had ‘tickets to some gig’ rather than invitations to a wedding. Enraged, I denounced the Royal family there and then and became a staunch republican, by becoming the landlord of a pub for the second time.
With our plans in tatters, we spent the day feasting our eyes on the endless wonders of Camden market, and drinking in some of its finest pubs, in particular The Monarch, which we trashed to show the Royals what we really thought of them.
In another act of treason, The Monarch bore witness to the creation of new super-boy-band Heat. Expect big things from these boys, whose members Boil, Simmer and Smoke were on fire as they treated onlookers to a rendition of their first ever single ‘We’re So Hot, You Gotta Blow Us Out’, due to appear on upcoming debut album If You Can’t Handle Us, Get Out of the Kitchen. With lyrics like, “Boil is boilin’, simmer is simmerin’, smoke is smokin’. It’s hot in here, we’re not jokin’,” how can they fail?
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In spite of rumours to the contrary, neither Cousin Bish or I are childish men, and it would be foolish to believe that we’d nicknamed certain parts of our bodies 'Lengthy' and 'Mr. Pecker' respectively.
After a long days drinking, there was only one more stop for two such rational thinkers: Subway. Speaking in Irish accents for the length of our visit, which is a perfectly mature and sensible thing to do, we asked the staff the question on every fair-minded individual’s lips: Kate or Diana? The results were a surprise, with all four of them plumping for Diana.
As we left speculating as to who Prince Harry would choose, a scuffle broke out behind us. From a distance we saw a figure crash to the ground after a knockout blow. A minute or so later, a short, curly haired man with a large cut on his cheek stormed past, with a girl crying and grasping at him as she followed.
He swung an arm, forcibly brushing her off, and she fell to the floor. Cousin Bish and I raised our eyebrows, and looked on. The girl picked herself up and chased after the man who stormed on unabated. When she caught up to him, she latched on while he tried to shrug her off, and they both stumbled to the floor and grappled for a moment, like a pair of angry fish. Fish with arms that is.
Lowering our eyebrows, Cousin Bish and I decided it was time for intervention. By the time we got there, the man had risen and stormed on, calling back angrily in a Scottish accent as he went. Perhaps he had heard our Irish impressions and wanted to impress us. Clearly, he had been scared off by the sight of our imposing physiques.
The girl had a pair of badly grazed elbows and was cursing the Scot through tears in her thick cockney twang. After using our famed soothing skills, she settled on a bus stop next to a man and his dog, and explained her version of events. Even the dog agreed that the Scot was out of order.
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The Scotsman soon returned and we found ourselves in the middle of a heated argument. Being the brave and compassionate souls that we are, Cousin Bish and I started to inch away, before the Scotsman referred to us directly.
“You’ve got these two guys with you, who could batter me,” he said. I puffed out my chest and swelled with pride.
After some unproductive arguing, including accusations and denials regarding who hit who, we took him to one side to persuade him to call it a night.
“You two could batter me,” he said, evidently drunk.
“You’re lucky we haven’t!” Cousin Bish replied, flexing his swans. With P. Mushy and Sandro arriving to back us up, we managed to persuade the Scotsman to leave without further incident.
Despite the girl angling for us to take her back to our apartment, and Cousin Bish angling for us to take her back to our apartment, we took our leave once we were satisfied that she was okay. It was clear she was fine when she said “He’s a weirdo, I’m studying at the eighth best university in Britain,” which was completely relevant.
At last we returned to the flat, where there was still time to finish the day with a drinking game that requires no explanation: the mighty Buzzrection.*
*If you would like an explanation on the rules and nature of Buzzrection, tough.
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