The original Amy Winehouse Band are today’s torchbearers for her live performance legacy.

Next month marks 15 years since the singer’s untimely death, and it’s the 20th anniversary of her epic breakthrough album, Back To Black, later in the year, too.

Consequently, the band have never been so busy. But Amy’s long-time musical director, confidant and bassist, Dale Davis, (third from right in the pic above) still found the time to speak to Camdenist this week.😏

As regular readers will know, I’m a little wary of the way that, in this era of indefatigable Instagram bucket lists, ‘brand Amy’ is so often reduced to a local gravy train of knockoff merch, pub cover versions, touristy tours and a queue for a photo opp by the statue.

Her legacy and stunning music catalogue deserve a better kind of reverence than all that commercial grubbing, while ‘brand Camden’ must also be careful about wistfully/lazily looking backwards to rely on safe former glories, as opposed to looking forwards, taking creative risks, and helping foster the next big musical thing, right here.

But you can’t argue with the authenticity of Dale and the rest of the band, who are genuinely continuing the thread from where Winehouse herself tragically left off.

“There are a lot of tribute acts out and they're all trying to steal a march,” says Dale of the hungry and plentiful competition, “but they can't take away what we have. Between us, we all knew Amy and spent a lot of time with her, and we can still give that when we play to an audience.

“When people come up to us afterwards, they're talking to the band who’ve all had connection with Amy, which is so important for them. Then, with the younger generation, who’ve picked up on her through the Back to Black film - some of whom wouldn’t even have been born when Amy was around - our show is the closest opportunity they can get to seeing something like her own live performances.”

It’s a compelling argument, even for a slight cynic like me, and sold out annual Christmas performances at classic Camden venues Koko and Roundhouse have proved there’s still masses of love for their show, something I don’t think a simple covers band could possibly deliver at such scale.

“We still do it just as Amy did it,” Dale says, proudly. “She was very natural in the way she performed, and we like to keep it like that. We don’t use backing tracks, and we also keep the music pretty much as it was. Sure we do a few variations, but we keep to the spirit of things - if we make too many changes, we’d lose that connection.”

I ask him how he thinks that Winehouse sound might have developed, had it had the chance over more recent years. Of course, even in her day, Amy was an artist who gleefully updated and owned the sounds of the 50s and 60s, so does he think she might have followed someone like Madonna, and leapt upon musical trends emerging from the clubs and online culture, to draw upon new sounds in the quest to remain perma-relevant, too?

“That's very interesting,” he laughs, “as the difference between Madonna and Amy is the actual musicality. You know, Madonna sounds the same on every song. But Amy just had this rare ability to captivate every time. She could sing with an orchestra, and then on her own with a guitar the next moment. She was that comfortable as she was genuinely a great musician, so I bet she’d have had the capability to sound just as good over something more electronic, if she had chosen to.”

For those local that can remember, Amy Winehouse was indeed regularly to be seen carousing through the streets and pubs of Camden Town, just as her folklore suggests. But Dale is frustrated that some of the thornier elements of her received history are just plain wrong, having been twisted into convenient narratives over the years since her death. “I suppose when someone has that much coverage, and its a difficult time for women in the media spotlight in the first place, it’s inevitable,” he muses. “However, I do think people now put her up there with the greats, alongside the likes of Bob Marley, Kurt Cobain and artists like that. Ones who’s careers were cut short, but have still had a massive impact. And that’s absolutely right.”

As the band prepare to return the North London for their first proper local festival performance, at the Kaleidoscope all-dayer next month up at Ally Pally, he also reveals a lesser-known impact of Camden’s most celebrated, tragically missed daughter.

“When she moved in to that big house in Camden Square, they suddenly cleaned up that whole area,” he says. “I remember that Square well from beforehand, and you could really see the change. I remember thinking, wow, she’s like royalty.”

Then, and perhaps even more so now.

🎺 The Amy Winehouse Band play at the Kaleidoscope Festival in Alexandra Palace Park on Sat 11th Jul, alongside Rudimental, Groove Armada, Roni Size, MJ Cole, Black Grape and loads more. Tickets and more info here.

There are plenty of major development projects rumbling slowly onwards (and certainly upwards) in the Borough right now. And where there’s a computer rendered vision of a multi-storey tower or three, there’s also almost certain to be some local resistance, too.

I’m generally open-minded to proposals that reimagine our more underused or crumbling plots, particularly when there’s a pro-culture carrot at the end of the developer’s stick. But these projects are damn complex to deliver, and broken promises litter the landscape where commercial realities trump early optimistic glossy ideals.

It was interesting to see so many locals turn against the Camden Film Quarter - which was approved this week, but only by a strikingly close margin - once the scale of their vertical studios concept and Council-required housing units were revealed.

However, I can’t help but remain excited by the promised transformation of the dull Regis Rd area, which has cut Kentish Town in two for decades, into a cultural powerhouse of production and training. Perhaps we will end up bitterly, depressingly disappointed at some point in the future, perhaps the digging and traffic will be truly unbearable long before that, but a neighbourhood like Kentish Town has been in a constant industrial evolution ever since the Midland Railway first carved up this very land in the 1860’s.

If ambitious creative production is to be the next phase of that, well it beats the no-access triangle that we have right now. It’s right that local concerns are voiced, and pressure applied to the more problematic elements of the scheme, but my optimism isn’t dimmed.

Meanwhile, new plans for neighbouring Murphy’s Yard, (the originals of which were roundly rejected for being far too bulky and towery by vocal residents a few years back) are to be unveiled next week at a series of consultations in three nearby locations.

The customary postcard came through the door about this a while ago, but it seems to have been thrown out at our house, and when I went to look up details online to include them here, they are nowhere to be found. Even the AI was flummoxed.

Such consultations are always seemingly desperate to connect with new, younger residents, and not just the same old forums and interest groups, and yet they make it almost impenetrable for a real variety of people to even want to participate. Camden Film Quarter have been very good at their community outreach, which is certainly one of the factors that has kept me a believer in the plans.

I just spent the day with 30+ other local media organisations looking at ways AI tools can be customised by over-stretched news rooms and independent operators to help - not replace - us humans. It was one of the most positive AI-related dialogues I’ve been part of, with improving ways of finding out what the hell is actually happening on our patches one of the most popular requests.

But if things like consultations, co-design processes and the reasons behind broken promises remain so opaque online, no wonder locals jump to resist seemingly over-ambitious plans that feel like they are parachuted in and may well then fail to deliver.

Those same AI tools can and should be used to transform the creaking consultation process, and ensuring the culture carrot on the stick is central to all the bigger ones. Wouldn’t it be nice if our much-feared LLM overlords could be harnessed to make sure more voices are heard, compromises can be identified and less developer promises can ever be wriggled out from?

After a series of faltering starts, including a rather unfortunate basement flooding incident, the Museum of Youth Culture finally opens this Sat 20th Jun. It’s a project that has toured various pop-up locations in London over the years, but this permanent home becomes a world first in celebrating the oft-overlooked but culturally pivotal history of how young people have expressed their creativity over the decades through music, fashion and shared social spaces.

As well as a custom-built soundsystem, the first exhibitions in the fantastic new facilities (just by the canal on St Pancras Way) include one called ‘Dancing Down The High Street: Club Culture in Camden 1988–2000’ with an archive of images to define a brilliant era for local nightlife with global impact. Also look out for ‘Things I Lied To My Parents About: Mapping Youth Through Truth and Deception’ which explores stories of sneaking out to parties and glorious misadventures with friends.

I have caught a few rumblings of dissent from some Camden-based orgs and charities, who feel that a whole lot of scarce Council support has been sucked up by this one project. But the seminal eras celebrated and importance of the material in collection are genuinely special, and perfectly suited to having a home in Camden, as one of the very first youth culture hotbeds. With the whole concept of underground subculturtal production and social exploration challenged for today’s youth by phones and other tech, the arrival of this space is also a very timely reminder of why it’s so vital to get out there, make mistakes, and forge new culture in the process.

ART: 🎨 Tonight, Fri 19th Jun, sees the latest free private view at the Camden Open Air Gallery, where artist Brofoz presents Vivarium, featuring figures within constructed enclosures, where the body is both subject and specimen, observed yet unresolved. It’s a meditation on menstrual pain and failures in women’s healthcare, particularly conditions such as endometriosis, and runs to 28th Jun.

FESTIVAL: 🎶 It’s a double header of outdoor music, food and urban merry-making in NW5 this weekend, as the Council’s impressive Windrush Homecoming Celebration returns to Talacre Gardens on Sat 20th Jun, with steel pan, carnival dancers, masses of craft and food stalls. The live stage is hosted by TV model Annaliese Dayes and Mi Soul Radio DJ Matt White, plus local heroes Dig It Soundsystem will also be thumping it out at a proper local gathering all afternoon.

FESTIVAL: 🎶 Then on Sun 21st Jun, with the legendary Alma St Fair having a bit of a fallow year, it’s time for the smaller Inkerman Rd Street Party to bring six live bands, free-flowing Camden beers and street dancing outside Map Studio Cafe all afternoon.

EVENT: 🥵 This Sat 20th Jun, Somers Town Community Action are hosting Somewhere the Sun is Always Shining across their whole neighbourhood with everything related to extreme urban heat, from ice cream trucks, to cooling kits, storytelling, to visual art sessions, film screenings to craft workshops, plus academicians and researchers sharing valuable info on how we might live, cool down and look after one another as our cities heat up.

Hampstead Summer Festival get into gear this Sun 21st Jun with the first of it’s five varied events - the Art Fair at Keats House

MUSIC: 🎤 Tucked in between the big, beery World Cup fanzone screenings currently on at the 02 Forum Kentish Town, British-Jamaican soul singer Celeste is marking the release of her new album with a one-night-only London stop-off on her European tour on Thurs 25th Jun.

COMEDY: 😂 JK Comedy Club runs affordable stand-up shows 6 nights a week across three venues in Soho, Covent Garden and Leicester Square. They also host air conditioned afternoon gigs, including this Sat 20th Jun upstairs at Nell of Old Drury Lane, if giggles and refreshments offer welcome respite from the promised heat.

MARKET: 🍰 There’s a brand new post-work food-themed social art event being held at The Fields Beneath, right beside Kentish Town West Overground station on Wed 24th Jun. The Palette Art Market includes free fruit lino printing and watercolour portraits, alongside freshly baked treats, smoothies and wine by the bottle, all available from the café.

CINEMA: 📽️ Local summertime favourite Everyman on the Canal is back on the Granary Square steps from Mon 29th Jun where the daytime Wimbledon action will make way for movies and music into the evening. The first night opens how they mean to go on - with Jaws screened at 5pm, then the excellent DJ Yoda brings his AV show alongside a 7,30pm showing of Tom Cruise classic Top Gun. It’s all free, but you need to rock up in good time to get one of the coveted astroturf waterfront spots. Runs daily to 16th Aug.