Search - Skids :: Days in Europa

When Pong Was Still Fun...

Erik J. Fortmeyer | Brooklyn, NY USA | 09/26/2001

(4 out of 5 stars)

"You are probably well into your thirties like myself if you remember The Skids. They were a Scottish band that fell somewhere in between punk and New Wave who put out a number of UK Top 40 singles in the late 1970s. Most remember them as the band that had a young Stuart Adamson developing his guitar style and songwriting abilities before forming the classic New Wave band Big Country. There have been several full length CDs put out chronicling The Skids fifteen minutes of fame; this list now includes their 1979 release ?Days In Europa?.It?s important to recall the times this album was written in when listening to it now in the twenty-first century. The economic situation was not good at all on either side of the Atlantic then. The Old World was truly dying off but, still wielded great influence. This was the backdrop upon which The Skids were writing and performing. The UK was transfixed by Paul Weller?s common man anthems in the form of The Jam while the college set were enthralled by the edgy polemics of the Gang of Four. The violent frustrations of the punk movement were by then often drowning in a sea of heroin but, their mark had been left. Americans were still wandering about looking for cheap gasoline while the Eagles and Jackson Browne droned away on the Philco AM car radio. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were on the horizon. Worse yet, disco still lived. It was time for a change. This album contains the original ten tracks and adds on seven bonus studio tracks from the same recording period that were mostly B-sides to the singles. ?Aftermath? is a dub version (remember those?!) of ?Masquerade?. It is hard not to chuckle or grimace at some of the keyboard ?sounds? that were so much the rage then. You can almost sense bands like Magazine, The Teardrop Explodes, New Musik, and Missing Persons furiously taking literal notes when listening to ?Pros and Cons? for the first time. Richard Jobson?s opening vocals in ?Thanatos? remind me alot of Joey Ramone. There is much less of a punk edge on this album compared to The Skids debut release ?Scared to Dance?. It does come out to a degree in ?Charade? but sounds little like The Sex Pistols, Clash, or Buzzcocks assuming that?s what you define punk by. Are you a dedicated fan of the ?Entertainment!? period of Gang of Four? You will love ?Peaceful Times? then. I would love to ask Mike Peters and Dave Sharp of the Alarm if they listened as much to ?Out of Town? as I suspect they did in their Seventeen days. You can clearly hear a good amount of the exuberance that would so define the early material and stage shows of the Alarm through the early 1980s on this cut. The best remembered song from "Days In Europa" was the anthemic ?Working for the Yankee Dollar?. The single version is also included on this release and will have you crooning away in the rousing chorus. Speaking of rousing choruses, the B-side ?Grey Parade? absolutely blew my doors off even though, as a Yank, I could only understand about every third word! Big Country and Stuart Adamson nuts will go wild hearing the future sound of Big Country forming in ?Vanguard?s Crusade?. Lyrics for the first ten songs are included. And don?t worry a thing about the album cover; there is nothing ?Nazi? at all about The Skids. The bottom line: You have to be an honest judge of your personal musical interests when deciding whether to buy this CD. If you are a trendy ?hits only, please? person, this disc will only be useful for signaling rescue aircraft if you are ever lost deep in the woods on a sunny day. If you are a true fan of music and are intrigued with seeing how bands influence each other and evolve the genre, then this disc will be a sure thing. I grew up listening to a radio station that promoted itself as ?Daring to be Different? by playing the B-sides and other album tracks just as much as the ?hit? songs while hobnobbing with the bands. This is how my ravenous interest in Big Country got started. If you think Big Country?s only song was ?In A Big Country?, then stop reading this review now and move on to something else. But IF YOU KNOW BETTER, then BUY THIS CD! You will pick up on tons of cool bits that the masses are oblivious to while enjoying one of the few best things that late 1979 had to offer."

Skids: Gone but not Forgotten

David Stobie | Calgary, Alberta Canada | 03/17/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I stumble across the Skid in 1980 as I discovered the Virgin label. Since that time and up to the present I listen to them and rediscover the potency that originally attracked me. Little has been said of this band who in part became Big Country (remember the guitar in the title track?). However to dismiss earlier Skids albums is a mistake. Scared to Dance(1979)is the first North American release with its edgy punk riffs and rhythms. Days In Europa (1979) showed a maturation of their sound with shades of Hendrix tossed in. Absolute Game (1980) is probably their most accessable release with plenty of air-guitar potential. But the darkest and the least accessable is Joy(1981). This release is the reason for this discussion. Without a doubt it is the most difficult, deepest and ultimately most rewarding of all the Skids albums. Foreshadowing the celtic-rock revival that was to come many years later, Joy finds its influences and spirit in the land. Listen to the fusion of Blood and Soil, the aching voices playing against the hammering of drums and screeching guitar. Punk angst meets island anguish in the haunting A Challenge. The strongest track is the last on side one. Iona with its strings, bodhran and fairlite (M. Oldfield)has all the ingrediants of traditional celtic music. Fear of Fire starts with as carousel of voices that give way to Brothers with its rhythmic bass and Scottish accents. The tatto of J.J. Johnsons drums carries the music as we hear the old Skids surface again. A rendition of Waltzing Matilda echoes with the fear and destruction of Gallipoli well before Mel Gibson had been thought of. The Men of the Fall is perhaps the gentlest of all the tunes and provides a beautiful rhythm of bass with crescendos of drums and a sparkle of saxaphone that segues with The Sound of Retreat. The album finishes with rousing Fields - is there any doubt at this time? Throughout the album (yes I have vynal still) the recording is superb. If you made it this far then buy it. So grab a six of MacEwan and play Joy at the end of the night. Cheers all and enjoy.
My question to all:is Paul Wishart related to Peter of Runrig fame? 10 points to the winner."

Bigger, Better, Brilliant

PlusOne | Ireland | 01/21/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Thanks to my wife I got Days in Europa in my Christmas stocking. This CD is choc full of perfectly formed guitar riffs and solos and now that it includes bonus tracks this album is a revelation even to a long standing Skids fan like myself. This is because according to the liner notes the album was remixed and released with an alternative cover shortly after its original release in 1979. My cassette version is obviously the latter and is minus Pros and Cons but includes the single mix of Masquerade. The most refreshing thing about this album apart from the remastering is that it is the original mix which makes it eminently collectible. You cannot deny the power of classic anthems like The Olympian or Thanatos while the original album's closer Peaceful Times is sublime, complete with backwards drums, guitars and backing harmonies and a lead vocal narration not unlike a serman from the pulpit - and sounding uncannily like the Band Aid song Feed the World some six five years earlier. Stuart Adamson was a true guitar hero even at the age of 20 and has influenced the likes of The Edge. This is very obvious in Out Of Town where the middle eight uses the same chords as the middle eight in Two Hearts Beat as One, and the atmospheric intro to Another Emotion is a not unlike the intro to Where the Streets Have No Name. If you like good guitar oriented rock this album is a must have."