It was raining. We were ready. And The Streets were supposed to play. But when we finally fought our way through the sea of people from Magic Box to the main stage, it dawned on us that everyone else was heading the other way. We stepped out onto the grounds — and found ourselves almost alone. It felt like arriving at a housewarming where the host has forgotten to invite the guests, but is still pouring drinks and cranking the sound system.
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Disclaimer: Apropos Magazine received access or a review copy. As always, we share our own impressions — unfiltered.
Six stars
It began with a promise: “Who’s got the bag? Don’t mug yourselves.” Mike Skinner stood there in slouchy sneakers and a crumpled polo shirt with his own logo on it, looking as if he’d woken up in a tent that smelled of hash and bacon crisps. And then the music started.
‘Turn the Page’, ‘Let’s Push Things Forward’, ‘Don’t Mug Yourself’. It all flowed like cheap lager in a warm plastic cup. Between songs, Skinner talked, laughed, flicked out British pub humour and invited us into his musical outdoor temple. A kind of shared, pagan sunlit prayer, where he repeatedly insisted that if we just tried, God would let the sun break through the clouds.
He drank the audience’s beers. He climbed onto shoulders. He talked about Green Day with a passive-aggressive warmth that left you unsure whether it was beef or just a very strange bromance. And then it happened: after twenty minutes of warming up, something clicked in his head. He went full Skinner mode. A show that was already good turned brilliant.
He played among the crowd. And the crowd loved him for it. There were mosh pits, there was sweat, there was “Fit But You Know It,” “Blinded by the Lights,” “Dry Your Eyes.” Everything was delivered with the full band — Wayne Bennett on guitar, Cassell the Beatmaker on drums, Kevin Mark Trail on sublime backing vocals, and a guitarist who may or may not have been Rob Harvey — an uncompromising energy, as if this were Brixton, not Odense. They were with him all the way, playing as if they’d been to war together.
The stage lighting was simple, but effective. The spotlight followed Skinner as he crawled over barriers and clung to shoulders, while the rain fell in a steady veil across the grounds. A guy with a headlamp filmed everything from his mate’s shoulders. A girl in a yellow rain poncho screamed the words to “Dry Your Eyes” as if she’d written them herself. This wasn’t just a concert — it was something you became part of.
And then. At last. ‘Take Me as I Am’. Everything culminated in one long, wet climax. Huge mosh pits opened up, Skinner stood on stage soaked in beer, barefoot, without socks. Like a drowned prophet with a crowd around him that had just been given one of those experiences you spend weeks trying to explain, but which never sounds as magical as it felt.
Let’s just put it like this…
Mike Skinner could not have given a fuck how many people showed up. But he gave everything. And that made those of us who stayed the luckiest people in the world.
The energy when he dropped ‘Let’s Push Things Forward’ and shouted “Who’s got the bag? Who’s got the bag?” was electric. The rain, the crowd — everything was crushed into a single moment. The whole concert was pure presence.
Skinner and his crew kept the momentum going until the final note. When they closed with ‘Take Me as I Am’, the main stage exploded — and we could shout it loud and clear: 48,000 people missed this blast. Worth six stars — without blinking.
