No Rock And Roll Fun

"HE LOOKS LIKE HE MIGHT BE YOUR CADDY": We've been wondering how Mike Skinner would travel, as The Streets seem to be one of those peculiarly English acts that might make little sense beyond the M6 slip road and the WKD bottle strewn bus shelter of modern British life. We certainly didn't guess that the Chicago Daily Herald would think he looks like a bloke you'd employ at your local golf course. They seemed more concerned about the problems of translating from vinyl to stage, rather than across the Atlantic:

The songs were designed to show the sensitivity of a slacker. But onstage, Skinner played up his inner Beastie Boy. A contraption holding ready-to-pour vodka and brandy bottles was on hand so he could dispense drinks for the audience. He also readily handed out backstage passes to front row ladies who caught his eye. And when he struck thug poses and faux break danced, it was intentionally comic.
He was a clown who realized the joke wasn't on him but on the rigid expectations of his genre. The complexity of his narratives may have been too dense to translate very well onstage, but even when he blew off steam, it felt like a blast of fresh air.

We guess that Skinner's also locked into doing the Grand Won't Come For Free stuff in the proper order now, otherwise it'd fuck with the narrative - which might be a bit of a mixed blessing for an artist.

[the link did come for free, via Largehearted Boy]