Top 5 Pubs to watch music in

By Josh Jones, le cool London
Photo: Tom Medwell

There are obviously loads of good things about living in London, but one of the best ones is that there are plenty of places where you can go and watch a band who are minutes from becoming huge in the comfort of a cosy pub with relatively small queues at the bar and affordable pints.

Here's pretty much a north, east, south and west guide to the best pubs that play the best music in London town.


Windmill Brixton
The Windmill is a total gem of a venue in the middle of a really scruffy part of south London. Inside, it's pretty scruffy as well, in fact it's scruffy as fuck (in the best possible way), but this Irish boozer in Brixton has played host to an whole host of bands - some now massive - it's one of those places a band needs to play before they go on to bigger things. But also, if you want to watch some really new music, then this is the place. They have at least three bands on a night and in the summer they have a free bbq and up to 12 bands playing throughout the day. Plus the beer's cheap and the locals might be a bit scary looking but they're really friendly.

Luminaire
Any gig venue that has signs on the wall telling people to shut the hell up while the gig is on deserves to be in a top five. And this is the place. They actually do have those signs. And not as polite as that. Up in Kilburn, the Luminaire has an amazing array of bands old and new - they even had one of two original delta blues guys still alive, David Honeyboy, Edwards play there - which is pretty cool.

Halfmoon Putney
"Christ, Putney?" I hear you say. And you're right. That whole part of London is absolutely terrible. All jackets and jeans and boat race faces and shit like that. But the Halfmoon is something of a London institution. No, really - The Rolling Stones, The Who, U2, Elvis Costello, Bo Diddley, Kasabian and Morrisey have all played there. It's currently under threat from closure, so maybe go there and show some support.

The Macbeth
By getting in a different promoter in pretty much every night of the week, The Macbeth is assured of a massively varied amount of music standing on its stage. For instance, I remember seeing a guy who put his laptop on a chair, pressed a button and fucked off out of the place leaving us to watch a badly animated mouth sing in a monotone robot voice. But they usually have much better stuff on than that. Plus it's now got a third floor and an outside terrace for smoking your rollies.

Amersham Arms
I was once interviewing a band from New York and they asked what New Cross and the Amersham Arms was like. I told them it was as tough as today's Shoreditch wished it could be and that it was a heady mix of fashion students and rowdy south Londoners. The next day they emailed me and said within the first song, someone had been glassed and a car had been set alight right outside the front door. Surprisingly close to London Bridge (if you never venture south), the Amersham Arms features some of the best bands on the bandwagon. It's owned by the people who own the Lock Tavern in Camden if that helps too.