The 2009 Camden Crawl is underway in glorious sunshine.
Garlanded people replete with wristbands are ambling about in a relaxed manner, the bouncers are being genial and in the media centre a conveyor belt of tonight's many and varied acts are processing past, smiling and waving and looking like they'd rather be in the sunshine.
For the first time the two-day festival is venturing into comedy this afternoon, while at the same time the World's End lines up bands and the Hawley Arms runs a programme of acoustic and not so acoustic performances. There's even a short films programme and a music quiz.
At the lock the waterbuses are enjoying brisk trade with full boats of decadent damsels floating here and there, and the canalsides are full to bursting.
The main programme gets underway at 6pm when The Virgins fire the starting gun at the Roundhouse; Underworld, the Electric Ballroom and KOKO crank up their speakers at 6:15pm with Bleech, The Von Bondies and Datarock respectively.
The big draws tonight are unquestionably headed by an ealy Roundhouse set from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at 7:15pm - the Roundhouse sets have their own wristband access separate to the rest of the Crawl and are allocated on a first come, first served basis to capacity.
Also likely to be rammed is The Big Pink's Electric Ballroom set (8:45pm), Marina And The Diamonds at the tiny Cuban Bar (10:30pm), Dan Black at the Earl of Camden (10:30pm) and veterans Echo & The Bunnymen at KOKO (10pm).
But with 17 venues all with full programmes, finding something good to see is unlikely to be too troublesome and if you've not got a wristband you might like to know that the Good Mixer is free entry until full and has a full programme including Alessi's Ark, Brakes and Everything Everything.
We'll be tweeting this one for the most part, with occasional blog posts and full reviews too. At least till we fall over.
On Twitter, follow @musicomh for the lot and drop us your tips while you're about it.
