SKIDS live on this day in 1981 at the Chelsea College of Art. Part of the Rock Goes to College series (1978-1981), gigs were broadcast by the BBC simultaneously on TV and radio. The video has been around forever but more recently the BBC have aired the original audio recording - a massive leap in quality!
This is a chance to hear "Blood and Soil" with Stuart Adamson. A much darker and atmospheric song than you'll hear on Joy or the "Iona" single (recorded after Adamson had left to form BIG COUNTRY).
People were always sniffy about us. They couldn't quite find the right place to put us. We were the generation who came out of this new wave and there were lists and categories because things needed to be divided. We felt like we were living in history - the whole postmodern thing with these new types of writers who were all very left leaning, postmodernist creating the narrative. We were living in real history. We needed to clearly define what's going on. Like being interviewed by Paul Morley for the NME. He couldn't work us out. He was dazzled by the music but nervous of liking it because of what would his contemporaries would think with him liking these songs of coal miner's sons coming out of a backwater. None of us were from privileged backgrounds like a lot of other bands. These days people criticise Oxbridge bands that have appeared with their rich parents that can subsidize them but even back then a lot of people were from nice backgrounds. I came straight out of school and I joined the Skids, it was a totally different thing to other bands.
Richard Jobson / The Skids interview, Louder than War, 2018