Roo Savill and Mike Skinner of The Streets, photographs by William Hamilton-Coates
“What percentage of the crowd do you think will be men?” I asked my brother a couple of hours before going to see The Streets at Palace Foreshore.
I got us the tickets, thinking it’d be the perfect activity for a sibling date. The Streets’ music pulls in many of our respective interests: UK rap and dance music; morose, quintessentially British self-deprecation; a self-aware skewering of laddish bravado.
The gig at Palace Foreshore, a full album performance of The Streets’ most tightly constructed LP, 2004’s A Grand Don’t Come For Free, was more musical theatre than hip hop.
The stage backdrop featured the bus shelter from the album cover. There was no between-song chat from the usually verbose Mike Skinner. Backing vocalist Roo Savill intermittently stepped into the spotlight to play the role of the narrator’s girlfriend, Simone. There were genuine screams of delight during the album’s final song, “Empty Cans”, when (spoiler alert) Skinner located the thousand pounds that went missing in the album’s opening track, “It Was Supposed to Be So Easy”.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
“Hmm. About 80 per cent?” my brother answered. “A conservative estimate,” I said.
Mike Skinner’s humour is as often goofy as it is wittily sharp. But his lyrics, particularly on A Grand Don’t Come For Free, are deceptively well-crafted, with frequent callbacks, intertextuality, and a deft knack for scene building. Songs like “Get Out of My House” and “Such a Twat” evoke the smell of a musty flatshare, half empty takeaways strewn across the place, several weeks since the electricity bill has been paid, and no one knows whose jacket potato it is in the fridge but everyone knows it’s covered with mould.
It’s the sort of music you imagine British backpackers listening to on their year abroad, downing 11 pints and bear hugging their way through homesickness. And in that respect, there was no better location for the gig than St Kilda Beach; the Britishist seaside spot in any Australian city.
“I think it’s about 90 per cent,” I said to my brother as we settled into a spot in the middle of the crowd.
A group of three men stood in front of us. They’d been pre-gaming hard. Maybe playing FIFA, maybe rolling bank notes into tight, thin cylinders. One of them, in a blue shirt, was clearly very moved by the show and was eager for his mates to pay closer attention. But one of his friends was preoccupied with a guy who, he claimed, looked at him funny.
“Who cares?” said blue shirt, to no avail. His friend walked over to snarl at whoever he perceived had slighted him. Blue shirt, looking dejected, called after him. “Oi,” he said. “What are you doing?”
It was a distraction. But it also added to the scenery. Lads, a bit too loose, getting a bit too antsy about something that probably didn’t even happen. Hurt feelings. Misguided targets. A desperate call to be heard. It’s straight out of the Mike Skinner playbook.
A Grand Don’t Come For Free is not a particularly nice album. Friendships fray, lovers throw daggers. Remorse wrestles with pride, self-interest with loyalty. Money is paramount but scant.
The album-as-musical ended with Skinner, Savill and vocalist Kevin Mark Trail standing side by side at the front of the stage, singing the ambivalent refrain:
It’s the end of something I did not want to end
Beginning of hard times to come
But something that was not meant to be is done
And this is the start of what was
On paper, it’s a bit of a fuzzy, lightweight sentiment. But new layers of substance materialised with each of its half-dozen repetitions. Hard times, when they become the norm, can begin to feel safe, purely based on their familiarity. Skinner also suggests that, despite our fuck ups, the life we want might still be within our grasp. That even when things don’t go as planned, it might not be a total bust.
As we walked out of the venue, I felt someone’s hand on my shoulder. It was blue shirt. “Sorry,” he said, then he caught up with us and said, “Amazing show, right?” “You had fun?” I asked. “Yeah, I love The Streets. They’re such an important band. But my mates left. They didn’t get it.”
“What was the highlight?” I said. “A Grand Don’t Come For Free is my favourite album,” he said. “But I’m so happy they played ‘Never Went to Church’.” He paused. “Because my dad died. And he never went to church, but the rest of us did.”
“I’m glad you got to see it,” I said.
He nodded and walked off, looking slightly bemused as he joined a convey of folks in football jerseys and Adidas trainers who were heading towards the Acland St McDonald’s.
The Streets performed at Palace Foreshore, on the stolen land of the Bunurong people of the Kulin Nation, on Thursday 5 March.
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