It’s funny the things that you can remember in great detail years later. I distinctly recall, aged 8, hearing ‘Into The Valley’ by Skids, the Dunfermline band’s fourth single, on Radio 1 one evening. I hadn’t heard of them before, but I loved it on first listen. When the DJ (maybe it was Richard Skinner?) said “That will be released next week and will be available on white vinyl”, my brother turned to me and said “You want to buy that, don’t you?”. I certainly did. Just over two weeks’ worth of my 30p pocket money were invested in the single, with its glorious pink sleeve featuring the band looking very cool, and the white vinyl 7”, complete with iconic Virgin Records label.
I was hooked on that record and I still am – its classic rumbling bass intro (courtesy of William Simpson) turning into Stuart Adamson’s blistering choppy guitar assault and Richard Jobson’s none-more-unintelligible but utterly fantastic vocals (I only realised about two years ago that he begins with “Into the valley / Betrothed and divine” – I don’t know quite what I thought he was saying for all these years!). The B-side too was extraordinary – one of those songs where only a live version exists – “TV Stars” has the band in playful, silly mood, Jobson shouting the names of various (mostly) Coronation Street and Crossroads characters across a repetitive backing, culminating in cries of “ALBERT TATLOCK” (veteran star of ‘The Street’).
Both tracks are here as Skids – The Singles is a neatly-compiled, comprehensive trawl through (almost) every track to appear on the band’s singles of their brief but brilliant initial run (only three and a half years separates the first from the last). It’s put together lovingly with the sort of attention to detail that one has come to expect from Cherry Red, so often includes different versions to those tracks that appeared on the band’s albums (and of course, a lot of non-album material too, some of it long out of print).
As was often the case with artists with guitars and a few up-tempo songs in 1978-79, when the group were first getting noticed, they were referred to as a punk outfit. I can even remember Ian Dury and Elvis Costello being included in the punk conversation, seriously. But there is a lot more to the group’s sound than that. The band’s first single, on Edinburgh indie label No Bad Records, is good, but ‘Charles’ was maybe an odd choice for their opening statement with its quicker B-side ‘Reasons’ sounding more like the A-side to these ears. ‘Charles’ was re-recorded before being included on the band’s debut album, Scared To Dance, a masterpiece which for some reason rarely / never features on those endless magazine ‘Best Album’ lists, but ‘Reasons’ and the other B-side, the topical (and ok, a bit more punky!) ‘Test-Tube Babies’ weren’t included. By the time of second single ‘Sweet Suburbia’, the band was well into its stride, with the band by then signed to Virgin Records and name producer David Batchelor bringing a bit more muscle to their sound. Oddly, that one was left off the album completely, as was its excellent flip side, ‘Open Sound’, which had earlier featured on Skids’ first John Peel session.
The third release was actually an E.P. called Wide Open, but one track stood head and shoulders over the rest;‘The Saints Are Coming’ could be said to be the band’s (other) defining song, powered by a machine gun drumming masterclass from Thomas Kellichan and Jobson’s vocals, both plaintive and impassioned. It was the first appearance, albeit again in a different form, to one of the debut album’s key tracks, the stop-start ‘One Of Skin’ too. The single reached Number 48 before the next one, the inimitable, previously mentioned ‘Into The Valley’ propelled the band into the Top 10 and onto Top Of The Pops, where Jobson’s energetic high-kicking performance was certainly the talk of the playground the next day (remember, I was 8 at the time). My Dad’s work friend went to see them and said he danced like that ALL NIGHT!
Amazingly, the next single ‘Masquerade’, was almost as good and again flew up the charts – this one with the production might of both the legendary John Leckie and Be Bop Deluxe’s Bill Nelson behind it. It was a joyful sound. I still didn’t know what any of the songs were about and it didn’t matter. Such is the completeness of the collection, it not only includes its regular B-side ‘Out Of Town’ (which sounds like a single too), but even the tracks from the limited double 7” single, ‘Another Emotion’ and ‘Aftermath Dub’, the latter being a dub version of‘Masquerade’ itself.
By the time of next single ‘Charade’, Rusty Egan (ex-Rich Kids, future Visage among others) had joined as drummer (not sure if that had anything to do with the apparent appearance of synths on the track!) – it perhaps didn’t make as much of a splash as the previous two, but that would soon be righted by the anthemic ‘Working For The Yankee Dollar’ at the end of 1979, which again had the band in the Top 20 and on TOTP. It’s a shame that the bonus 7”, including a BBC-recorded cover of ‘All The Young Dudes’, couldn’t be licenced for this release, but this is a minor gripe as the set is otherwise complete. ‘Animation’ was possibly starting to point in the direction that would be covered by Stuart Adamson in Big Country a couple of years hence – it wasn’t such an earworm though as some of the band’s previous 45s and missed the Top 40. ‘Circus Games’ returned the band to the Top 40 and is a really original track, leading in with burbling synths before the familiar Adamson guitars appear with an irresistible chorus featuring a childrens choir, not exactly what anyone would have been expecting at the time. The line-up changes continued, Russell Webb arriving on bass and Mike Baillie replacing Rusty Egan, who had gone away to become an actual New Romantic icon. The B-side, ‘One Decree’ is also well worth a listen, but may be more well-known to some than the other B-sides included here, as it appeared on the band’s highest-charting album, The Absolute Game.
Only the fact that ‘Goodbye Civilian’ was lifted off the same album can explain its missing the Top 40, it’s actually one of the most commercial songs that Skids put their name to, again with synths pushing it into more new wave pop territory, perhaps a little in the vein of XTC but still unmistakeably Skids. ‘Woman In Winter’ was even promoted with an appearance on Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, which is possibly the most 1980 sentence you will read today. The B-side is a fabulous take on the ‘…Yankee Dollar’ hit, recorded at Hammersmith Odeon, showing the band as a formidable live entity (and at times replacing the word ‘Yankee’ with ‘Virgin’!). Sadly, it would be Adamson’s last single in the group, as the last couple of 45s, ‘Fields’ and ‘Iona’ effectively had the band as a duo of Jobson and Webb. ‘Fields’ and its B-side ‘Brave Man’ are both here in 7” and 12” versions (and actually the only 12” versions that exist by Skids). ‘Iona’ meanwhile confusingly had two different 7” versions – both are here and it’s quite a low-key end to the band’s singles career, a slow bagpipe-driven lament.
By 1982, Skids were over, with (the sadly no longer with us) Adamson going on to enjoy great success in Big Country and Jobson and Webb forming the excellent The Armoury Show. Happily, Skids have been active again in various permutations since a 2007 reunion show, with Jobson and a new line-up continuing to play to this day.
Skids – The Singles is released by Cherry Red Records on 13th June 2025.
