Somehow 15 years have passed since VICE arrived in London and the editors would have to push piles of magazines around the city asking pubs to please take them. Since then we've grown, conceiving tiny content babies that have grown into leading industry voices (see us, here—Noisey—recklessly tooting our own horn). To mark this anniversary, this week VICE UK is throwing a bunch of events and we're running a series of content about a time in British music that most of us shouldn't, but weirdly do, struggle to remember.

Thanks to popular usage, a few phrases in the English language have become interminably tethered to a thing. Some of these are slogans: I’m loving it and McDonalds. Others relate to the workplace: the proverbial “breaking of the ice” in a air-conditioned, HR-sanctioned meeting. Rarely, however, do they relate to a band in the way “gin in teacups,” “up the Albion” and “last of the likely lads” have been married to the Libertines, soldered together into music history.

Time was, The Libertines were the greatest band in Britain. Pete, Carl, John, and Gary with their red military jackets and their trilbies were—at least in some circles—the epitome of cool in 2002. For others they were simply shit. Remove any opinion however and you have the facts: The Libertines were an extremely popular and socially welcoming band, so much so they would often hold gigs in the flat where Pete and Carl lived in London’s Bethnal Green.

Look up their debut video “Up The Bracket” on YouTube and you’ll see the place, used as a location for the shoot. Prior to that—in the video’s introduction—you’ll also see an alleyway, then simply a road but now a piece of so-called musical history. As The Libertines rose and fell and rose again, sailing through the music press like a battered wooden ship, that alleyway has become a winkle-pickered mecca for fans of the band. Fan-made videos litter YouTube, detailing the pilgrimages fans made. One upload as recent as April of this year reads in its description: “I was there for two hours.”

To these tight-jeaned travellers, the place is something of a dirtied Hanging Gardens of Babylon. It is covered with graffiti and has been for years, the walls scrawled with Libertines related witterings. But what about the rest of the world? Do they know they’re standing on a piece of musical history? Are they aware of this brief, Albion-like respite from the modern world? Or do they live in peaceful bliss? 15 years since the release of “Up The Bracket” and I’m here to find out.