GIG REVIEW: Skids, Boiler Shop, Newcastle,
Friday 12 November 2021
Scottish punks Skids have been one of my favourite bands since I was 12 years old, when, like many other fledgling punks, I heard Into The Valley.
Sadly, I never saw them back in the day with the late, great Stuart Adamson on guitar (though I saw his post-Skids outfit Big Country many times).
Happily, they’ve reformed in recent years, giving those like me who missed out the chance to see them at last.
They really were the thinking man’s punk band, thanks to Adamson’s ahead-of-its-time guitar work and vocalist Richard Jobson’s poetic lyrics.
If there’s any doubt as to how good Adamson was, consider the fact the reformed Skids need two guitarists to replicate what he used to do.
The fact one of them is his Big Country bandmate and fellow Fifer Bruce Watson is somehow fitting (the other is Watson’s son Jamie – Jobson calls them ‘The Proclaimers’).
Tasty appetiser
Jobbo, an engaging frontman and raconteur, takes centre stage, while bassist Bill Simpson and a new drummer pound out the rhythm, and a keyboard player completes the six-piece.
A set by Duncan Reid and the Big Heads – a power-pop punk band led by the former singer and bass player of The Boys – opens proceedings, and slips down nicely as an appetiser.
It’s a mix of their own songs and a smattering of The Boys’ classics, ending with First Time, one of the finest singles of the whole original punk era (even if its lyrics would probably see the band become victims of cancel culture today).
Talking of great singles, the Skids had a few of those too, and they open with one of them, Animation, which gets the crowd onside from the word go.
Great singles
Charade, The Saints Are Coming, Working For The Yankee Dollar, Circus Games, Masquerade and the inevitable Into The Valley – does any other punk song start with a more recognisable bassline? – remind us what a great run of 45s they had during their original five-year run.
They weren’t just a singles band though, as the wonderful B-sides Out Of Town and Of One Skin and album tracks like The Olympian demonstrate.
Kings Of The New World Order, from 2018 comeback album Burning Cities, shows they’re not just riding the nostalgia train, and there’s a medley pairing cult B-side TV Stars (whose ‘Albert Tatlock’ chorus Jobson detests) with the Sex Pistols’ Pretty Vacant and Buzzcocks What Do I Get?
Covers feature heavily tonight, presumably because their latest record is an album full of them, Songs From A Haunted Ballroom.
Cover versions
Recorded as a tribute to the Kinema Ballroom in their hometown Dunfermline, it features Skids versions of songs by the Pistols, The Adverts, Magazine and Ultravox! among others.
A two-song encore sees us treated to two tracks from the record, very passable versions of The Clash’s Complete Control and The Stooges’ I Wanna Be Your Dog.
I could name half a dozen Skids songs I would rather have heard, but I’m not going to quibble. I’m just glad to have seen them again, with my high point a stunning version of Hurry On Boys, which for some unfathomable reason was never released as a single.
We didn’t know it at the time, but it was a gateway to the anthemic, evocative music Adamson would later make with Big Country. When you’ve got songs as good as that in your canon of work, who needs covers?
