Oh my, my pen should not be this much of a harbinger of “bad news.”

Here’s the story.

My mate MIKE SIMKINS (a founding and current member of B.F.G. and also in MEMBRANES with Group member JOHN Robb), has been a fan of Scottish punk band SKIDS 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 since they formed in the late 70’s.

SKIDS have a long but on again off again history. Vocalist RICHARD JOBSON has been the main constant with the band.

[Editor’s Note- You might remember that one of the original members of the band was STUART ADAMSON who left in the formative years and formed the highly successful outfit BIG COUNTRY 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿.]

Anyway, SKIDS were booked to play the SHILDON FESTIVAL in Durham 🇬🇧 on the 19th and their regular drummer was not available.

Enter MIKE.

He was offered by JOBSON to be “On The Skids” for this gig as drummer.

When I visited on July 10-13, MIKE was on Cloud 9 about this opportunity. He spent time each morning in the drum room of his studio working on the drum patterns for the SKIDS songs on their setlist.

Anyway, I knew right away this would make for a great post. I thought a clever play on words title would be “On The Skids.”

Ha ha. Little did I know.

I immediately thought of this cheeky title for the post and waited for receipt of pics, a video and info from LISA to get going. Here is my start to the post:

Well, things certainly went “on the skids” on the 19th.

The event was cancelled after just two bands played. There was a horrific rain storm and that was compounded by an insufficient set up of the electronic equipment by the organizers.

The situation was so bad RICHARD JOBSON could not even make it to the site.

What is rex to do since things were literally on the skids?

First, post a picture with SKIDS guitar player COLIN WHYTE and then post a SKIDS song (albeit without a video of MIKE drumming on the SKIDS.)

Here is “Olympian” taken from their 1979 LP entitled “Skids: Days in Europa”

First live:

Now, Spotify-

https://open.spotify.com/track/4E3h1EpxoTx8ueXjjBxM4F?si=YPMC4glUSTKl71UMcUZEWg

(SONG-1156)

Play Loud or Perish

July 22, 2025