Marking 40 years of their second studio album – ‘Days in Europa’ – The Skids embarked on their delayed electric tour postponed because of Coronavirus, performing songs from the album as well as others and their best known singles.
The band began on the album’s opening track, ‘Animation’, with lead guitarist Bruce Watson’s soaring Scottish folk-rock guitar solos, following this with second track ‘Charade’; frontman Richard Jobson tributing the founding of the band in 1977 to bass player Bill Simpson. After recalling his audition with founding guitarist Stuart Adamson, Jobson performed from The Skid’s debut album ‘Scared To Dance’ with Adamson’s ‘Charles’ and single ‘The Saints Are Coming’.
They remained about 1979 and ‘Days in Europa’, playing ‘Working For The Yankee Dollar’, the first track of side B of the record. Jobson entertained with some more funny stories and crude jokes inbetween songs before moving onto the band’s third album, ‘The Absolute Game’, with ‘Circus Games’.
The Skids drew their set to an end on B-side single ‘T.V. Stars’ and short covers of The Pistols ‘Pretty Vacant’ and The Buzzcocks ‘What Do I Get?’; then returning to the A-side singles, Jobson performed his favourite song ‘Masquerade’, featuring ghoulish electronic sound effects, and ‘Into The Valley’. They finished on a final track from ‘Days in Europa’, ‘The Olympian’, with an encore of The Clash’s 1977 single ‘Complete Control’ to end the show.
09/10/21: The Skids @ O2 Academy Islington, London.
© Ayisha Khan.