328 Hello The Skids - Sweet Suburbia

Chart  entered : 23  September  1978

Chart  peak : 70

Number of  hits : 10

This  lot  weren't  around  for  long  - their  hit  span  is  only  fractionally  longer  than  Bill  Haley's -  but  they  made  their  mark.

The  Skids  had  formed  barely  a  year  earlier  in  Dunfermline  , playing  their  first  gig  there  in  August  1977. The  original  founders  were  guitarist  Stuart  Adamson  who  was  born  in  Manchester  in  1958  but  whose  parents  returned  to  Scotland  when  he  was  four  and  bassist   William  Simpson  ( born  1958 ) .  They  had  been  in  a  short  lived  covers  band  called  Tattoo  together. They  recruited  drummer  Thomas  Kellichan ( born  1954  )  through  an  ad  then  had  a  chance  meeting  with  "the  only  other  punk  in  town"  , 16  year  old   miner's  son  Richard  Jobson  who  became  their  singer  and  lyricist.

In  true  punk  fashion  their  first  record  was  an  EP  on  an  independent  label  No  Bad  set  up  by  a  local  music  shop  owner  Sandy  Muir. It  was  released  at  the  tail  end  of  1977. The  main  track  "Charles"  is  a  prescient  tale  of  a  manual  worker  being  made  redundant  by  technology  told  as  a  sardonic  Ballardian  yarn.  Much  of   The  Skids'  sound  is  already  in  place, stiff-wristed  drumming,  heavy  melodic  riffing   and  Richard's  declamatory  yelping  though  the  lyric  is  untypically  direct.  "Reasons "  has  the  first  outing  for  Stuart's  bagpipe  guitar  sound  in  the  instrumental  break  but  is  otherwise  punk-by-numbers   and  "Test  Tube  Babies" is  loutish  and  unlovable.  John  Peel  picked  up  on  "Charles"  and  invited  them  down  for  a  session. Virgin  got  in  touch  straight  afterwards  and  signed  them  up  in  April  1978.

"Sweet  Suburbia" was  their  first  single  for  the  label. The  first  15,000  copies  were  on  white  vinyl  and  the  sleeve  carried  a  sarcastic  sticker  saying "This  white  vinyl  record  has  a  weird  promotional  gimmick. You'll  like  it !". The  sleeve  design  featured  an  antelope  in  high  heels  with  a  well-defined  genital  area  for  no  apparent  reason.

Like  most  of  their  songs  Stuart  wrote  the  music  and  Richard  the  lyrics. The  joy  of  Richard's  lyrics  is  that  his  Scottish  brogue  and, to  be  kind, untutored  singing  make  them  virtually  unintelligible  and  your  own  guess  at  what  they  could  be  is  likely  to  make  more  sense  than  what  they  actually  are  written  down. The  title  hints  at  some  sort  of  recognition  of  where  most  of  the  new  bands  , though  not  themselves  obviously , were  coming  from  but  "Living  on  the  paper  periscope / Hot  dog  life  for  the  antelope " and  "Time  for  one  to  seek  an  anti-soak" are  pretty  impenetrable".  What  matters  though  is  the  energy  , the  pogo-friendly  rhythm, football  chant  chorus  and  the  novel  sounds  that  Stuart  wrings  out  of  his  guitar  in  the  course  of  a  two-and-a- half  minute  pop  single. It's  not  their  best  or  most  successful  single  but  it  certainly  made  a  great  calling  card.