It was The Camden Crawl – a week of gigs from both established, new, and up-and-coming artists playing a variety of venues in Camden Town. There were a lot of music venues in Camden so it was a pretty busy schedule. I’d picked up tickets for a couple of the gigs, plus was going to be at Camden Palace for Feet First on the Tuesday, so it was probably good that I only lived a few tube stops (or one night bus) away in East Finchley at the time.

Anyway, kicking off the week on this Monday was a gig at The Underworld. All three bands were getting attention in Melody Maker/Sounds/NME and Echobelly had actually had two Top Ten albums and a host of singles hitting the Top 40 so getting a chance to see them at a venue such as The Underworld was a rare treat.

A rare ‘hot’ treat. The place was packed solid. Probably one of the busiest I’ve ever seen it.

Northern Uproar were first on the bill. A new band from Stockport who had only started earlier in the year they were relatively unknown – although within a year had an album at #22, and two of their singles hitting #17 and #24. They were ok, a good way to start the evening.

Next up were Audioweb from Manchester. They’d been around for a few years so I knew the name, although they didn’t release their debut album until 1996, and even got a Top Ten US single (“Into My World”) then too. They were pretty good and probably my favourite band of the evening.

Echobelly were being picked up by the new ‘Britpop’ which was building in to quite a phenomena. To be honest they’d have done alright even with the movement picking them up, but they certainly became one of the more popular and enduring bands from the scene. They were really good live.