Gig venue guideMusicThe gig venue guide: Koko, London
The former Camden Palace is a venue of beauty – but also one in which a large chunk of the crowd can’t see the stage
Capacity: 1,410.
Who plays there: Koko’s big on the rock and indie circuit – it’s the venue bands play when they’re too big for the clubs and not big enough for Brixton Academy. You get hip-hop here, too, plus occasional special shows from star acts – including Prince, Madonna and Red Hot Chili Peppers. Regular club nights include Club NME every Friday night and Guilty Pleasures on the last Saturday of each month. The presence of Club NME means Friday night headliners have to be on by 8pm, to give the venue time to clear before the indie drinkers come in.
Cloakroom: Yes.
Admission: Generally around £20, increasing for bigger names (or infrequent tourers) and diminishing for those less well-known or nearer the start of their careers. Also, be aware that Koko is an over-18s venue unless otherwise stated for specific gigs.
Bar: There’s no trouble with the number of bars at Koko. What can be less easy is getting served in a timely fashion, especially at the main downstairs bar, where staff seem to divide the bar into sections: God help you if you end up standing right on the dividing line, where you could end up waiting all night. Drinks themselves are the usual cans of beer or generic wines and spirits. Cans are decanted into plastic glasses. Prices, as is the way of major London venues, are just the wrong side of reasonable.
Food: No.
Toilets: Plenty of them, upstairs and downstairs. Though you wouldn’t call them a treat to visit, especially at the end of the night.
Disabled access: There is ramp access into the building, put in place by security when needed, with an accessible viewing area beneath the royal box at Balcony level (which is the level you enter at). Tickets are sold through normal agents, and are not marked as “accessible viewing area”, but the space is allocated. Those with accessibility needs should contact the venue on 0870 432 5527 to arrange entrance and viewing area allocation. Those needing a personal assistance should contact the venue direct – it offers a two-for-one ticket deal for personal assistants. There is an accessible toilet next to the accessible viewing area.
Sound: Generally OK, with one or two warnings. Don’t get trapped underneath the balcony, unless you can position yourself near one of the suspended speakers. As is so often the case, those underneath the overhang get muddy sound.
Where to stand: Well, as we’ve just explained: not underneath the overhang of the balcony. So if you’re going for the stalls, get there early enough to get further forward. Be careful if you’re standing at the sides: the emergency exit doors either side of the dancefloor are reached via a couple of steps, which are easy to overlook in the dark of a gig, and you might find yourself with a turned ankle. Upstairs, you need to get in early enough to get to the front of one of the viewing areas. A top tip that I only discovered this year, after literally decades of going to this venue: if you head to the very top viewing area, there’s a row of sofas at the front, which provide perhaps the most comfortable viewing experience in London live music.
Overall: Oh, Koko. What an enigma you are. On the plus side, this is one of London’s most beautiful venues. It was built as a theatre in 1900 and for 20 or so years after the second world war was used as a BBC theatre – The Goon Show was recorded here. It became a music venue, the Music Machine, in 1970, and was one of the key punk venues, before morphing into the Camden Palace in 1982. It closed in February 2004 and was extensively and expensively restored before reopening in 2005. From the stage it looks beautiful – tier upon tier rising like a scarlet wedding cake. In the right spot, too, it’s great – down on the floor, you feel remarkably close to the band for a 1,400-capacity room. The problem lies in the number of the 1,400 who can actually get to see the stage: the front of the dancefloor can get rammed, and so you’ll find people at the back perching on the stairs to try and get some sort of sightline. Upstairs, in the balconies, only those in the front rows can see anything: rather than having a conventionally raked single balcony, or two balconies, Koko has a series of shallow, flat tiers, with bar areas hidden behind them. For a live music venue, it’s a startlingly inefficient use of space, and one that makes trying to watch bands a frustrating pastime. There’s also the fact that those upper tiers are bizarrely maze-like: it can be awfully confusing trying to find your way up and down. On the bright side, if you get to the very top, you rarely have to queue for a drink.
Address: 1a Camden High Street, London NW1 7JE.
Telephone: 0870 432 5527.
Website: koko.uk.com
Public transport: Mornington Crescent (Northern line, Charing Cross branch) is a minute’s walk away, with Camden Town (Northern line, both branches) just five minutes or so up Camden High Street. Camden Road station, on the London Overground, is 10 minutes’ walk, as is Euston. Scores of bus routes pass through Camden, too: 24, 27 , 29, 31, 46, 134, 168, 214, 253, 274, C2, N5, N20, N28, N29, N31, N253, N279.
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