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Best Bars & Clubs in North & East London

Image courtesy of huskworks.com

Now I can take or leave the Artic Monkeys despite their record NME nominations (seriously that list of nominations is at best bollocks, at worst an insult to anyone who has ever sung a chord or picked up an instrument). Now my malais towards the Monkeys may be because I remember regionally accented rock the first time round in the early to mid 90s but before you start throwing stuff at me, I do acknowledge that they have been outrageously successful and that they are talented young chaps.

So I’m pretty excited that Turner’s been working on this new direction with Miles Kane from “next big thing” band The Rascals and is apparently being heavily influenced by the penchants of The Horrors (check out their influences on their myspace page, next thing you know they’ll be saying Michael Howard is their favourite politician). If this is true, I expect it to be more psychobilly than psychedelic.

Anyway, on this topic of The Horrors’ influences, it reminded me of the surreal bus journey I had up to Holloway on Friday night. I was on the 271 and this American kid was going on-and-on about mushrooms and biker bars and a whole manner of other typical bullshit, but then, suddenly, he redeemed himself:

Twitting American Imbecile: Hey you guys heard of Joe Meek?
Clueless, dribbling British chums: Nope
Me (in background): *makes surprised scoobie doo noise
Babbling Yank: Yeah, he was basically the best producer of all time, he lived over there at 304 Holloway Road.

Now I’ll be damned, not only did he go up in my estimations but he managed to teach me something! Also I’m not one to pull out the scoobie doo noise willy-nilly! I spend quite a bit of time in Holloway (see our brief guide) but didn’t realise I was on the doorstep of a legend…Talking of doorsteps (or in this case tombs) did you know that Karl Marx is buried in Highgate?

I digress, to finish this post I wanted to add a few other snippets of conversation I heard on this surreal bus journey:

Irish Guy to friend on the phone: “look the way I see it, we can split the profit 40%/60%, 30%/70%, 10%/15% – whatever, I’m not greedy and I’m not going to sell out a friendship for money”. Either an example of a great business mantra or an example of a great liar…I know which one my money is on….

40 year old bottle blonde to scraggly looking guy outside the Hercules pub in Holloway: “The problem with your mother is that she is unable to love anyone”. I think this is my favourite passing remark ever – it’s so charged that I thought about sticking around to hear the riposte!

The Swimmer – nice little pub that is doing some strong lengths in the gastropub lane. The staff are refreshingly friendly, the food suitably tasty and the Monday night pub quiz notoriously hard! They stock a great and unusual array of drinks and have a free jukebox that could only have been chosen by someone with taste so impeccable that they float on a cloud of smugness permanently. I’d also say that it has the best banter of any pubs I’ve been to in London; shock horror, people actually speak to people they don’t know in the Swimmer! Which has led to me becoming embroiled in conversations on topics as diverse as; did the Incredible Hulk inspire Spielberg’s 1971 classic Duel to is texting your girlfriend “don’t worry, I’ve split up with my girlfriend” the worst text man has ever sent.

Nambucca – doesn’t look like much and really isn’t much, but to a certain sub-set of the local population this place is Mecca. Nambucca finds and breaks new bands with the vigour of a treasure-hungry Pirate on speed. The list is so long that I’m just going to implore you to check it out for yourself. Also the birthplace of Bloody Awful Poetry which has now sired dirty lovechildren all over London. Nambucca is currently running with a vintage jumble sale every Sunday and also, to fuel your thrift, they are serving up Roast dinners at a downright bargain price of £5…

Boston Music Rooms (Boston Arms), Tufnell Park – nice venue for live music and home to the Dirty Water Club (every Friday), this is definitely somewhere that needs to be on your radar if you’ve been exiled to the near North.

Big Red – Gather round, gather round! Rockers, pool tables and pinball wizards a plenty at this bizarre but loveable biker bar-esque joint. Warning, this place isn’t for the namby pamby amongst you, if you can’t run or break a pool stick over someone’s head, don’t even bother!