House of Common festival review: Good-time grooves bring the heat to Clapham

Righteous reggae: Ziggy Marley
Erika Goldring/Getty Images
Rick Pearson27 August 2019

“It’s almost 40 years to the day when seven spotty kids from north London turned up at BBC Studios to perform on Top of The Pops,” said Suggs halfway through his band’s headline slot at House of Common.

In the intervening four decades Madness have become one of ska’s best-loved bands, selling millions of records worldwide and doing wonders for the sales of Dr Martens. Now they have their own festival: House of Common, a one-day celebration of reggae-influenced music, held on Clapham Common.

In front of a crowd not entirely comprised of teetotallers, the Camden collective rolled out the hits from their extensive back catalogue. One Step Beyond was a riot of brass and off-beat rhythms while a stripped-back version of My Girl was a reminder that Madness do craft as well as chaos.

Paul Weller joined the band for a soulful take on Shop Around and stayed for the appropriately titled Heat Wave, The Jam’s cover of Martha and the Vandellas’ Motown hit.

If the field of sozzled, sunburned Brits gave the festival the appearance of Torremolinos: The Musical, Madness also couldn’t have wished for a more willing crowd. From the front to the back, from the first chord to the last, they danced as one.

The London gigs you absolutely have to see in 2019

1/16

Before this, Ziggy Marley augmented his own set of righteous reggae with a cover of his father’s classic Get Up, Stand Up. The legendary Jimmy Cliff, now 71, offered up spirituals such as Rivers of Babylon and good-time grooves in the shape of You Can Get It If You Really Want.

Away from the mainstage, Akala impressed with his poignant, politically minded hip-hop. The musician, who’s spoken so eloquently on the causes of knife crime in the capital, proved he could be just as impressive in song, with Sometimes prompting an impassioned call-and-response from the crowd.

Other festival plus-points included an adequate number of toilets, a fast-moving bar queue and sizeable number of food options. Six pounds remains an outrageous amount of money to pay for a can of Red Stripe, but such is the way in festival land.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in