This geezer's still got it.
Mike Skinner tries to find a fan's lost phone at The Powerstation.
Ryan’s lost his phone.
“Don’t worry, Ryan,” says Mike Skinner. “We need to get you your phone back.”
Skinner knows a good story – one that fits his geezer-on-the-couch, pints-at-the-pub, lost-in-the-club vibe cultivated over 30 years with The Streets – when he sees one.
So, at last night’s rabble-rousing sold out Powerstation show, Skinner launched a venue-wide hunt for Ryan’s phone, one that stretched for nearly the entire set.
During a dazzling show full of reinterpreted and reimagined hits cherry-picked from his seven albums, Skinner wove in this meta-narrative like a veteran geezer standing in a hall of mirrors.
This story had several beats.
First, Skinner found a phone.
Then he patted Ryan down to make sure he really was missing his phone.
Then he got Ryan to write down his phone number.
Finally, as the climax, Skinner got a different fan to call that number and confirm this particular phone really was Ryan’s phone.
Invested? You bet we were.
A lost phone is the kind of basic-dude yarn Skinner’s been turning into songs for 30 years now, starting with those groundbreaking first two albums that combined mumbled lyrics about life in London with dub, pop, grime, dance and rap influences.
Nineties UK dance trends are on the come-up, but if Skinner’s feeling any pressure at selling out shows again it doesn’t show.
He’s more laid-back these days, delivering his eyes-half-closed musings with a hand in a pocket or his bum planted on a speaker, as he did for the night’s slower moments ‘Dry Your Eyes’ and ‘Never Went To Church’.
At 45, he’s no longer chugging back pints on stage and whatever else off it as he did at those hyper Big Day Out performances back in the day. “It's not cool to be 40 in a nightclub, getting off your face,” Skinner told The Guardian a while back.
Instead, he engages fans in a different way: by climbing down off the stage and getting right amongst them.
At one point, Skinner crowdsurfed from the back of the venue to the front.
At another, he climbed on Ryan’s shoulders for a ride back to the stage.
Getting as close as possible to fans seems to be a post-Covid concert trend.
Josh Homme did it at Queens of the Stone Age.
Paris Texas did it at Laneway.
But Skinner did it the best, matching his regular ventures into the crowd to the lyrics of his jaded nightclub anthems, building energy for the biggest moments ‘Has It Come to This?’ and ‘Fit But You Know It’.
The best came near the end as Skinner staggered through the crowd mumbling lines from ‘Blinded by the Lights’ – “I hate coming to the entrance, just to get bars on my phone / You have no new messages, so why haven't they phoned?” – as he was smothered by fans.
It felt like a music video unfolding in front of us.
That time, Skinner had a point: he was on a mission to find a fan who had enough data on their phone to call the number scrawled on a piece of paper.
Was it Ryan’s?
I’m not going to spoil Skinner’s story.
You really had to be there.
But that euphoric moment will live long in my memory banks among the rowdiest climaxes ever seen at a Powerstation show.
“Ryan’s happy and you’re happy,” Skinner said as he waved goodbye.
“Most important of all, I’m happy.”
If you can’t tell, I’m really enjoying putting this newsletter together. I have some great stories planned for next week, including one 20 years in the making. But I can only keep doing it with your support. If it’s not going to cause hardship, please consider upgrading your subscription so I can keep doing this…
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Got a tip, some advice, a piece of gossip, an anecdote or something to get off your chest? Contact me at iamchrisschulz@gmail.com. I’d love to hear from you…