London

O is for…
Outdoor
Pink Floyd play Camden for free… (Parliament Hill Fields, 1969)
True to the spirit of the time, Camden Council came over all generous in the summers of ’68 and ’69 when they put on a series of free outdoor ‘fringe’ festivals at Parliament Hill Fields. The bands were mighty impressive in hindsight– Fleetwood Mac, Procol Harum, Jefferson Airplane and Fairport Convention – but the shows were reported as sparsely populated. Pick of the lot must be Friday May 9 1969, which saw a line-up of Pink Floyd, Roy Harper, The Pretty Things and Pete Brown’s Battered Ornaments playing to what was, according to a Welsh hitch-hiker, ‘a fairly typical hippy gathering with some badly disguised drug-squad officers’. Amazingly, it ran until 3am – with permission given from the council. It would seem that Camden has long been a haven to both longhairs and late nights.

P is for…
Proper punks
The Ramones teach the UK the rules of punk rock (Roundhouse, July 4 1976)
‘During the soundcheck, all these kids kept coming over to us and telling us we were responsible for them forming their own bands,’ said Joey Ramone of his band’s first show in the UK, at the Roundhouse supporting the Flamin’ Groovies. In fact, the ‘kids’ of which he spoke were actually, pretty much to a man, the future of rock ’n’ roll.

‘Me, Simmo, Jonesy, the Sex Pistols… we were all in the back alley and we threw a rock at their dressing-room window,’ remembered Joe Strummer of the show. ‘Johnny Ramone stuck his head out, we all formed a human chain and he pulled us up through the window. That was the first time we met ’em, and it was just this really great punk-rock moment.’ The show itself also made a lasting impression, not least on the young Strummer. ‘It was like white heat, because of the constant barrage of the tunes,’ he enthused. ‘You couldn’t put a cigarette paper between one tune ending and the next beginning. People weren’t ready for this, just… piledriver. It was unbelievable.’

Q is for…
Queen of pop
Madonna hits Camden – and the UK – for the first time (Camden Palace, 1983)
Arguably the biggest star to use the venue (opened in 1899 as the Palace Theatre) as a launch pad was Madonna, who performed her first UK show here in 1983. At the time, the venue was operated by Steve Strange and Rusty Egan of Visage, who had bought into the Music Machine (as it was then known) in April 1982, and saw it as London’s answer to Studio 54 (it wasn’t). This was also the UK debut of that NY disco mainstay, the ‘track date’ (ie. a star singing a few of their numbers over a backing tape) which is now a staple of clubs such as G-A-Y.

Madonna took to the stage in her now-familiar cut-off black top, black skirt and leggings accompanied by three other dancers, and performed a half-hour set incorporating ‘Lucky Star’, ‘Holiday’ and then-debut single ‘Everybody’. Despite everyone present now claiming they knew they were witnessing the birth of a megastar, audience reaction at the time was mixed. Within a year, however, Madonna had steamrollered all before her in the pop world. The next time Madonna played the Palace, or Koko as it’s now known, was 22 years later, and tickets changed hands for upwards of £250 each. Unsurprisingly, everyone in that audience made sure they said it was the best thing ever.