Old Pub, New Pub October 1: Camden Rock Cafe

So last night I had one of my strangest pub-going experiences in a very long time. A friend of mine had been booked into a last minute slot at an acoustical night at Camden Rock Café. “Where?” said I. I was sent a link which informed me that it was formerly The Caernarvon Castle, formerly the Fusilier & Firkin, as you can see on fancyapint, who might not want to bother updating their picture as I’m not sure it’ll stay like it currently is for long…

Basically the whole pub inside and out has been painted in outrageously bright psychomadelic colours (as you can just about make out behind the metallers heads here), but then, THEN they have stuck to the walls huge 10-15 foot high plasticated (I think that’s the right word) digitised photos of the key musical acts of our age all with scary swirly backgrounds, all* with their names next to them just in case you can’t tell them apart. And “WHO ARE the key musical acts of our age?” I hear you bellow. Well they are:

Them Beatles
Pete Doherty
Muse
Clodplay
Hard-Fi
Bloc Party

and

VICTORIA BECKHAM!

Marvellous, there.

There are approximately one million things wrong with this pub from the positioning on the stage to the size of the toilets (12 urinals, 8 cubicles in the gents, for a size of pub that would usually have 4 max), and that’s before we get to the affrontery of the dippy hippy norger lass running the night who had the temerity to come and ask us, after we had been sat in the pub for two hours before they started doing the door to PAY for being there. We passive-aggressively said we didn’t have any cash on us (true in my case), and then bought drinks on our cards for the rest of the night.

*except the “inside cover of sgt peppers” shot of them beatles

1. FT's Sarah on October 22nd, 2006

   Plasticated is cool, like being an AUTON! Sadly chiz I think you may mean laminated :(

2. FT's Pete Baran on October 23rd, 2006

   OMG: I saw this place on Saturday fromt he outside. MY EYES!!!

   There was some terribly scrotey Indie band inside who scare dme something rotten.

3. FT's CarsmileSteve on October 23rd, 2006

   no dude, it’s totally not laminated, they are giant plastic boards that have the dreadful pics mentioned printed on to them. it’s so difficult to describe, i’d suggest just going and gawping at them.

4. Jon on October 30th, 2006

   Although the interior decor has changed the walls still have maintained their roots !

   Please explain ?

   This is the pub where I first saw Babyshambles.
   This is the pub where I saw Led Zep Too last night.

   Both rocked

5. Max on December 25th, 2006

   The sound used to be good but now completely sucks
   Dido also features on the wall somewhere if you look closely enough
   From Babyshambles to dreadful indie/metal bands playing to no-one within 1 year
   someone should be sacked

6. steve on April 8th, 2007

   ALIED JONESSSSSSSSSSS HA HA HA