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Next on our turntables was
'Into The
Valley',
released in February 1979, which reached the top ten, although the
truly discerning preferred the reverse,
'TV Stars',
assuredly the only record to date to bring together in song the
stars of 'Coronation Street' and 'Crossroads' along with Kenny
Dalglish, the greatest living Scotsman, and this typist.
There were further hit
singles, stirring LPs, and it wasn't too long before the music weeklies, having
come to terms that Richard Jolson was really Richard Jobson, spotted that he was
also a likeable, gregarious, and highly quotable chap. 'Jobbo', as we had to
learn to call him, has never been backward at coming forward, and he took to
this notoriety with definite enthusiasm, using it to his own advantage and
diversing into poetry and the theatre.
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I
don't know what is going on here!! |
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What a difference a couple of years make!
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After the Skids third LP,
'The Absolute
Game',
Stuart Adamson, by now a highly individual guitarist, resigned his
commission, leaving Richard, brother to Meadowbank Thistle's
goal-hungry striker, John Jobson, to soldier on with bassist
Russell Webb.
On the stage, amid
locker-room gossip that he never simulated anything, no siree, Richard was to be
spotted spending evenings lying on top of the celebrated ingénue, Honey Bane,
and he could be observed at artistic soirees declaiming his and other folks'
poems in a firm and manly voice. Contemporary with this arts-lab activity
Richard was working with Russell on
'Joy',
an LP in which they ferreted back into Scottish history and culture. Despite a
warm review from the Guardian, reaction to
'Joy'
was pretty frosty and shortly after release the Skids were no more.
Brushing aside with a
contemptuous snort all the usual stuff about legacies of fine music, the great
sadness in the demise of this most admirable of bands lies, for me, in that in
his search for a Celtic identity and sound, Richard Jobson (nee Jolson)
overlooked the fact that it was precisely these elements that distinguished the
Skids from the post-punk herd in the first place.
If you don't believe me,
listen again."
John Peel |
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