When you walk into Proud Galleries you are immediately faced with the choice between turning right or left.

Turning right will take you into the venue itself, a 700-capacity room that assumes the role of photography gallery during the day, yet when the comfortable seating is taken away and the lighting suitably dazzling, is a live venue par excellence.

Turning left will take you into the converted horse stables, each one of them now acting as large, flamboyantly adorned drinking booths, at the end of which is a balcony looking out onto the Roundhouse and Chalk Farm. Which ever way you turn is a good option.

The key then to Proud Galleries, is choice. Photography and art gallery, swinging live venue and trendy drinking hole are the options. It is something Alex Proud is, umm, proud of. If the music is not so clever, there’s always the stables to get smashed in.

“That’s the way I like live music,” says Proud, himself more than just a venue owner – more one of London’s great music entrepreneurs. “I don’t want to be forced to have my eardrums burst by a band that actually might be quite bad.”

Not that Proud Galleries is in the business of booking bands that are ‘quite bad’. With up to 30 promoters a month putting on nights here, the range is of a fine, eclectic standard. Monday is jazz, Thursday is indie and Saturday is electro. It also, on occasion, acts as a useful rehearsal space for massive international acts.

The stables were built in the 19th century and were a horse hospital for the first hundred years – indeed the biggest in London because of the convenient intersection of the canal, the railway lines and the roads. In the 20th century it has been used for storage but was derelict before becoming an antiques and bric-a-brac market when the markets began in the 80s.

Of course, Proud Galleries has not always been in its current location. Only three months has it sat here.
“When our old venue just across the way was knocked down as part of the redevelopment,” explains Proud, “we moved across here. Our last venue had a good pedigree because it’s where The Clash did all their rehearsing for years and years and years.”

The old venue hosted over 1000 bands in its two years, with Proud (who exhibits impressive taste – expressing a penchant for Nada Surf, Vampire Weekend and Bon Iver) citing Amy Winehouse, The Kooks as his highlight performances, as well as Johnny Borrell… “for all the fact a lot of people don’t like him”.

Despite the odd venue here and there shutting down in the last year, Proud insists there is something of a live renaissance in London at the moment, and that a simple formula is required to succeed for venues.

“I don’t think (the state of live music) is connected to the economic climate,” he says. “As long as you’re open-minded and like good music then I don’t see why you should be overly worried.”

Proud Galleries adheres to this and more, and with a 200-page lease and a lot of ambition this venue is assured to be here for the next 25 years.

What with the venue’s three identities, Proud is able to attract a fascinatingly diverse clientele – not something every Camden venue can claim to – partly because Proud has a pretty fair idea of what fans want.

“There are three sorts of people,” he says, “there’s people who like dingy venues like Barfly, there’s people who don’t care, and there’s people who’d like to come to more live music but don’t like dingy venues, and I think we get the latter two. People who don’t care and people who really like music but don’t think you have to be knee-deep in urine to enjoy the experience.”

Upcoming events at Proud Galleries include Mica Paris (22 August) and So So Modern (23 August2008).