Skids
It’s been absolutely brilliant to hear these classic tracks from a golden era of British music this evening.
artist
Once again, The Skids are back on the road, this time around to tour their third album, The Absolute Game on this its forty fifth birthday and tonight it’s that which dominates the set.
It’s not played in sequential order unlike most bands tend to do these days, which I felt benefited the setlist, but there are still some damn fine tracks from it that get an airing, Hurry On Boys, the classic Circus Games (the last song that he wrote together with Stuart Adamson) and for the first time ever in the ‘live’ history of the band, we are treated to Goodbye Civilian, a track that back in the day that they always struggled to reproduce at gigs, so they just never played it!
Front man Richard Jobson is very engaging, he informs us that it’s more down to the fact that at sixty-five, he just needs a breather in between the songs these days, it’s something that I am sure the majority of the audience can easily relate too looking around at the average age of tonight’s punters!
Stories from their early days of appearing on Top of The Pops, touring and playing at the Hammersmith Odeon are all recalled, and to hear that this was all done at the age of just sixteen and seventeen, which on reflection is really quite incredible.
He sets the record straight, that he and Adamson despite media reports at the time, never actually fell out, it was more like Adamson just decided to move on and in another direction to form the hugely successful Big Country. There is still very clearly a lot of big love, respect, and fond memories of those heady days where they had so much fun and success together as young men as they ventured down to England for the first time from Dunfermline in Scotland. Wow, what a great adventure that must have been.
Jobson is looking super fit, with the body of a body builder when compared to the skinny kid that we first saw on TOTP all those years ago. He still has that crazy dance of his that became his trademark and as iconic as many of their classic’s songs.
He reminds us that it was actually The Skids who wrote The Saints Are Coming and not U2 or Green Day (hopefully, they have made a few quid from the royalties that those bands will have brought in with their versions?). It’s quite amazing that tracks such as this along with the classic Into The Valley were all written when they were around their twentieth birthdays, quite incredible really.
Some of the album tracks do sound a tad dated, but the bigger tracks still sound epic, with the distinctive big Adamson guitar sound ringing around the venue.
Back in the day, The Skids were right up there with the very best of the post punk, new wave bands and it’s been fabulous to see them once again, they round the evening off with the worst song that they ever wrote according to Jobson, but the one that everyone is dying to hear, TV Stars.
From the opening guitar riff, the place comes alive as people of a certain age forget that they may just need to go to work tomorrow!
It’s been absolutely brilliant to hear these classic tracks from a golden era of British music this evening, so all that’s left to say is Sandy Richardson, Annie Walker, John Peel, Stanley Ogden, Albert Tatlock, Ena Sharples.
If you know, then you know.
