Skids

"The Complete Sessions 1978-1980" (Album, 2025)

Last Night From London Records

I love this band. I may have mentioned that previously. I will surely mention it again.

Poetic/ incomprehensible (even with a lyric sheet) words, great guitar playing, really varied drums, break downs, build ups, drop outs, tempo changes; Skids were very much not a straight ahead Ramones style punk band, and I bought this collection of BBC sessions with no hesitation.

Housed in a nicely minimalist sleeve (and correctly avoiding the definitive article*), as you might expect, what you get here is slightly different versions of songs you know and love from the really quite extraordinary Skids back catalogue, plus some odds and ends that never made it to a studio recording.

The songs you know are, on the whole, not as good as the ‘properly’ recorded versions, but this is to be expected, as they (especially the two sessions from ’78) are not worked up into their final shape.**

The Saints Are Coming especially, is very different, lacking the fantastic intro that makes the ‘proper’ version so great***. That said, the different versions and production lets you hear layers of guitar work either obscured or missing from the studio versions.

I have always wanted to hear a version of Circus Games (their last truly great single) without the entirely rubbish children’s choir on the end, and here you get exactly that, unfortunately there’s a really annoying high pitched double tracked vocal throughout which ruins it in a completely different way.

The tracks drawn from the limited free bonus LP Strength Through Joy**** which I think I played once and put away in irritation/ boredom aren’t nearly as bad as I remember them. Maybe I should dig it out and give it another listen?*****

Various session recordings turned up on singles as B-Sides and extra tracks during the original lifetime of the band, so these will be well known to serious Skids aficionados, and it’s nice to hear Hymns From A Haunted Ballroom and All The Young Dudes (best version ever) again, but it’s the two session from 1979 that will be of most interest, featuring as they do, otherwise unheard tracks.

There are four unreleased tracks from February ’79 - Summer, Hang On To The Shadows, Zit and Walk On The Wild Side. I’ve always disliked Lou Reed’s snooze-fest, and although this is a better version than many I’ve heard, it still leaves me cold. The other three tracks all have the classic ‘early Skids rumble’,****** and musically can all stand up to anything on Scared To Dance, but Summer lacks the lyrical bite I’ve come to expect from Jobson.*******

Withdrawal Symptoms and War Poets from April are less impressive, the first being a stab at reggae which is not really their forte, and the second being a slightly unfocused effort, with an uninspired chorus.

Taking all this into account, the question to ask is – is it worth buying? For the committed Skids fan, the answer is yes; if only for the unreleased tracks, and to remind you how great the Jobson/Adamson songwriting team was. For the casual listener? Not so much. You’d be better served picking up one of the many compilations collecting their official output. For the fans: 8/10. For the casual listener: 5/10

*Like Buzzcocks and Ruts, there is no ‘The’ in the name.

** Scared To Dance is one of the few ‘perfect’ LPs to come out of punk (along with The Scream and This Year’s Model) where the songs, the production, and the cover/ design are all exactly right. There’s not a duff track on it, and not a track that couldn’t have been a single. It shares an atmosphere with The Scream and I think it’s almost as good – (I’ve never really understood why Goths haven’t claimed early Skids; maybe the lack of definable ‘image’?)

*** A song so great even that most egregious of egos without a soul, Bono, couldn’t make it shit, even though he tried really, REALLY hard. It’s first punk song that I heard that I actually liked, and the first punk single I ever bought. Everything else, I discovered retrospectively, after the moment in 1978, I saw Skids on Top of the Pops and my life changed forever... I can’t put my finger on what ‘it’ was, but this was definitely ‘it’. It all made sense to me in terms of the Rockabilly stuff I was listening to; short, aggressive songs recorded pretty basically, with a definite attitude and something I can only describe as ‘flash’. Most importantly, it was by people like me, not songs about Cadillacs or girls, or Route 66 or any of those things I didn’t understand. Suddenly, although I still liked the music and the look of the original ‘50s rockers, all the Teds I saw around SE London looked like what they were: relics of a bye-gone age. They were up to their necks in the Tar Pit and they didn’t even know it.

**** Don’t get me started.

***** This will almost certainly never happen. Stubborn and set in my ways? Me?

****** A phrase I have just coined but expect to be all over the internet before the year is out. Best heard on the intro to Into The Valley (I think it’s called ‘dampening) which although not a new technique (Eddie Cochran used it a lot), passed from Skids through to a huge number of punk records and most obviously in Oi! via The Cockney Rejects (It’s used on every song I have been able to bear to listen to by The Last Resort), and on into Thrash Metal (notably Metallica).

******* Although, who can really say? Even without the inch thick accent, his lyrics are obtuse in the extreme. We just won’t mention T.V. Stars…

Nick Hydra (February 2025)