Rumours that that The Strokes were to play a surprise gig in Camden tonight (July 7) were quashed by the venue this morning.

A tweet from music venue ‘Dingwalls’ last night announced a performance of a “very special one off show” from ‘Venison’ in the traditional logo style of New York band, The Strokes.

Venison was the name the five-piece used they played a comeback show in London back in 2010 before announcing, in a light hearted tweet that they would not play under the name again.


https://twitter.com/DingwallsLive/status/1015208830123331586

The tweet said: “‘Venison’ return for a very special one off London show, this is first come first served for tickets. Tickets will be available Saturday 7th July at Dingwalls between the hours of midday and 2pm.”

It added that there was tickets were limited to a maximum of 8 per person.

“Max purchase of 8 tickets per person, # newyorkcitycops # venison # lastnight # secret.”

Dingwalls posted about the event on their Facebook page early yesterday (July 6), telling their followers to “feel free to share” the post.

However, this morning, the venue issued another tweet, clarifying that the Strokes weren’t playing the venue, and that “a joker” had put out the tweet.


https://twitter.com/DingwallsLive/status/1015518872802390017

“The Strokes are NOT playing Dingwalls tonight and this is just some joker who has put this out” the tweet said, before adding “sorry for any inconvenience but this was nothing to do with us.”

Fans had already started to queue in Camden at the venue this morning for tickets.

Queue for The Strokes at Dingwalls. They’ve rearranged the queue so it doesn’t block the market now. Hopefully not everyone will need 8! pic.twitter.com/bcSGLmiUgn — Joe Stewart (@joestew88) July 7, 2018

The venue tweeted again, shorty after, urging queuing fans to go home, before then adding that the gig had been “cancelled” adding to the growing confusion.

https://twitter.com/DingwallsLive/status/1015530292449349633

https://twitter.com/DingwallsLive/status/1015539109488660480

One fan on Twitter pointed out that people were still queuing inside the venue for tickets. The venue replied “we were informed by the rep at 11am this morning that it was cancelled and the band pulled, however we have found out it was a hoax from a booking agent.”

The venue added that they will be “looking into it further.”

We were informed by the rep at 11am this morning that it was cancelled and the band pulled, however we have found out it was a hoax from a booking agent we will be looking into it further. — Dingwalls (@DingwallsLive) July 7, 2018

The Strokes last played in London in 2015 at Hyde Park, the first time they had played in the capital for five years. The band played an 18 track set of hits.

Albert Hammond Jr is playing at Roskilde festival today in Denmark, which also cast doubts on the rumour initially. However, with a set at Roskilde starting at 2:30pm, it did leave plenty of time to fly over. However, it now looks that this won’t be the case.

NME has spoken to The Strokes’ manager, Ryan Gentles, who also denied the rumours saying “nope not us…no Strokes show at Dingwalls.”

Some fans have been reacting unhappily to the venues confusing messages on social media:

uh why didn’t u say this from the beginning instead of CONFUSING EVERYONE — ?????? (@__instantcrush) July 7, 2018

https://twitter.com/EmilyBroncz/status/1015542667768401920

So I’ve just wasted 4 hours. Awesome. — Mike (@mjd113) July 7, 2018

NME spoke to journalist and Strokes fan Will Gavin who had been queuing at the venue since early this morning.

“I got there at 8:15 this morning…there was probably already about 40 people there already at that point, but by 9:15 there were enough people queuing that we were convinced that [this] was it, that was as many people as were going to get tickets. It was maybe 200 by that point.”

Later on, Gavin explained that the queue had increased significantly but that everyone was in good spirits. “By the end, there was easily 500-600 people queuing…We were quite jolly in the queue, everyone was getting on quite well and then the bar staff from the venue came out from the lock and said that they’d had a complaint from the market that [the queues] were clogging up the actual market area so they took us inside the venue.”

“It was all very British, everyone stayed in order…then we saw the first tweet from Dingwalls saying that there wasn’t a show that night. But it wasn’t very clear what they were saying…the speculation in the queue was that they’d already seen there was way too many people here and there just saying that The Strokes aren’t still playing but that Venison still are.”

Fans were then taken down inside the venue itself as more tweets emerged from the venue adding to the confusion. Gavin added that bar staff then relayed the tweets back to fans saying “this is all the information that we’ve had,” adding they were “surprised” when they saw fans queuing.

Dingwalls has since denied claims that the announcement had been a “hoax” with a former employee responsible.

A Dingwalls spokesperson said: “We would like to apologise profusely to any customers that got caught up in the hoax gig of The Strokes on Saturday 7th July.

“We are continuing to investigate who is behind this but we do believe it not to be a member of the outgoing team who left the business on positive terms. Our investigation will continue and, to ensure this does not happen in the future, we now work with an external agent to deal with all of our bookings.”