The Skids frontman’s solo tour saw him do an intimate evening of “Songs and Stories” from his long career in music, TV and film, accompanied by special guests Big Country, featuring Bruce Watson and his son Jamie, the band that former Skids guitarist Stuart Adamson found commercial success in thereafter.
Big Country opened the show with two of their songs, including ‘Fragile Thing’, before being joined onstage by Jobson, who started with Skids song ‘Hurry Up Boys from the band’s third album, ‘The Absolute Game’, They then performed tracks from their latest albums, ‘Burning Cities’ and this year’s acoustic album, ‘Peaceful Times’, with ‘Kings Of The New World Order’ and ‘Animation’, the latter originally from their second album, ‘Days In Europa’.
Inbetween songs, Jobson took questions from an interviewer about his career, starting with how he first got into punk and his long-term friendship with Adamson, relating a comic story of how the pair of them travelled on a motorbike all the way from Scotland in the middle of winter to visit Malcolm McClaren’s ‘SEX’ shop and buy a pair of leather trousers.
He also touched on other bands he was in including The Armoury Show with John McGeoch of Magazine and Siouxsie & The Banshees, which never achieved any success, doing a peformance of ‘Castles In Spain’. They then played ‘Charles’ from Skids’ first release, their 1977 ‘Charles’ (or ‘Skids’) EP.
Jobson, who poignantly touched on the theme of war in his set, also sang a cover of Eric Bogle’s ‘And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda’ unaccompanied, before taking some more questions, this time from the audience. The evening came to a close on ‘A Woman In Winter’ and the Skids’ two best known singles, 1978’s ‘The Saints Are Coming’ and 1979’s ‘Into The Valley’.
02/09/19: Richard Jobson + Big Country @ Union Chapel, London.
Photos © E. Gabriel Edvy/Blackswitch Labs.
© Ayisha Khan.