The Skids were formed in the summer of 1977 in Dunfermline Scotland and would go on to make 2 albums and seven singles before 1979 was ended and all bar one on the Virgin label. Arguably the biggest Scottish punk band of the 76-79 era, their most successful year was 1979 where they spent over half the year in the singles charts with hits like Charade, Working For The Yankee Dollar and their biggest song the top 10 hit Into The Valley.
Given time to develop the band went from from punk to poetical and from lyrics about factories to dodgy teutonic overtones to Scottish myth. But hey that's what its all about.
Next on our turntables was 'Into The Valley', released in February 1979, which reached the top ten, although the truly discerning preferred the reverse, 'TV Stars', assuredly the only record to date to bring together in song the stars of 'Coronation Street' and 'Crossroads' along with Kenny Dalglish, the greatest living Scotsman, and this typist.
There were further hit singles, stirring LPs, and it wasn't too long before the music weeklies, having come to terms that Richard Jolson was really Richard Jobson, spotted that he was also a likeable, gregarious, and highly quotable chap. 'Jobbo', as we had to learn to call him, has never been backward at coming forward, and he took to this notoriety with definite enthusiasm, using it to his own advantage and diversing into poetry and the theatre.
After the Skids third LP, 'The Absolute Game', Stuart Adamson, by now a highly individual guitarist, resigned his commission, leaving Richard, brother to Meadowbank Thistle's goal-hungry striker, John Jobson, to soldier on with bassist Russell Webb.
On the stage, amid locker-room gossip that he never simulated anything, no siree, Richard was to be spotted spending evenings lying on top of the celebrated ingénue, Honey Bane, and he could be observed at artistic soirees declaiming his and other folks' poems in a firm and manly voice. Contemporary with this arts-lab activity Richard was working with Russell on 'Joy', an LP in which they ferreted back into Scottish history and culture. Despite a warm review from the Guardian, reaction to 'Joy' was pretty frosty and shortly after release the Skids were no more.
Brushing aside with a contemptuous snort all the usual stuff about legacies of fine music, the great sadness in the demise of this most admirable of bands lies, for me, in that in his search for a Celtic identity and sound, Richard Jobson (nee Jolson) overlooked the fact that it was precisely these elements that distinguished the Skids from the post-punk herd in the first place.
If you don't believe me, listen again."
width="425" height="350">>
