Skids: Masquerade

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Reissued in 1995 as Sweet Suburbia – The Best of the Skids and in 2005 as Into the Valley – The Best of the Skids One of the people who didn’t forget was U2’s The Edge. Approached with the idea of doing a charity single with to aid victims of Hurricane Katrina, he came up with the idea of a cover version of The Skids’ third single The Saints Are Coming (the New Orleans Saints is the name of the American football team whose stadium was used as shelter while the good people of the Big Easy waited in vain for their government to help them). Released in 2006, it topped the charts around the world. The Aryan thing?” says Jobson. “I thought that sleeve looked great – but I was probably, I dunno, 18 then. But is it in the songs? I don’t think it is. I mean, there’s a song called The Olympian and there’s a sense of Europe… To be fair, I think what had happened is that we’d gone to Europe.

The same line-up performed a concert on 5 March 2010 at the ABC in Glasgow, with support from The Law and Bruce & Jamie Watson, and lastly a concert on 6 March 2010 at the Alhambra Theatre, Dunfermline with support from Beatnic Prestige and Bruce & Jamie Watson. This final concert was to conclude a week of events celebrating the works, past and present, of Richard Jobson as part of The Fifer Festival 2010 on 6 March 2010. As a kid I was a skinhead,” he says. “It’s kind of interesting talking about it now because people’s idea of a skinhead is this kind of National Front, right-wing thug. But this was before all that – it was all about music, clothes and football. I’m from an Irish Catholic family, but where I was brought up was in a pretty hardcore Protestant housing estate – I think we were the only Catholics on it…A new album, Destination Düsseldorf, has been announced for March 2023, [11] then postponed to June 30th. Bill Simpson, Bruce Watson, J.J. Johnson (3), Jamie Watson (6), Mike Baillie, Richard Jobson, Russell Webb, Rusty Egan, Stuart Adamson, Tom Kellican With their second effort, 1979's arty Days in Europa (produced by Be Bop Deluxe's Bill Nelson), Skids scored a pair of Top 20 hits with "Masquerade" and "Working for the Yankee Dollar." Trouble loomed, however, as Jobson's increasingly grandiose plans for the group's music alienated not only their fans but also their own rhythm section, and both Simpson and Kellichan were long gone by the time of 1980's The Absolute Game, recorded with bassist Russell Webb and drummer Mike Baillie. By 1981's Joy, only Jobson remained from Skids' original lineup. Prior to recording the album, Adamson quit to form his own group, the internationally successful Big Country. After the release of the folk-indebted Joy, Skids officially disbanded; Jobson soon returned as a solo artist before forming the Armoury Show and beginning a career as a broadcaster. Debut album Scared To Dance was a flawed but brilliant mix of keening guitars and anthemic choruses. The critics hated it. “It had a high production value and at the time people found that kind of offensive,” says Jobson. “Stuart was influenced by Bill Nelson and Nils Lofgren – that guitar-led thing – and he did guitar solos. The clothes, the music and the violence were part of your daily diet. As a teenager – though it’s shameful to talk about it with any excitement now – it was really exciting. You weren’t persecuting violence against some guy walking down the street, you were fighting other gangs. But most of the time it was about music and hanging out and learning how to dance.”

Since leaving The Skids, Jobson formed the short-lived Armoury Show, has been a poet, a film critic, a movie director and novelist. Ask him why The Skids have been all forgotten, and he takes some of the blame.

Skids – 'Songs from a Haunted Ballroom' (Cleopatra Records) – RPM Online". Archived from the original on 20 May 2021 . Retrieved 16 June 2021. The band undertook another reunion tour in 2017 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of their formation. It had a more extensive set of venues than the 2007 reunion with concerts throughout the UK and Ireland, and headlining the 2017 Rebellion Festival on the final night. The lineup included Richard Jobson, Bill Simpson, Mike Baillie, Bruce Watson and Jamie Watson.