Today’s gently nagging anthem is a single by The Armoury Show, Richard Jobson’s post-Skids group. I first heard The Skids on this album, but never really took the bait. The next time I heard The Skids was on the Rhino D.I.Y. volume “Teenaged Kicks: UK pop vol. 1 76-79.” The cut “Into The Valley” was so attractive to me at that time (2002) that I listened to it for a solid week on repeat.

Really.

I was not working at the time and I would literally listen to the song on repeat for 7-8 hours while I did chores and looked for employment. So I heard it literally hundreds of times, all in a tight week of my life with no other songs played. And then it was done. To this day I have not been motivated to hear more of The Skids.

Such was not the case 25 years ago when I came across The Armoury Show on a chance MTV airing of their clip for “Castles In Spain. I remember my friend Brian was over dubbing some of my music videos and the MTV live feed looked interesting, so we turned our attention to it. It was a compelling number that had me hitting the racks in my local record stores in post-haste.

The album featured my favorite Scottish guitarist, John McGeoch, on guitar – no wonder I loved it! I loved everything he did and everything he did was in my collection! Remind me one day to write that long-simmering John McGeoch blog, will you? It’s for reasons like that that I finally passed the blogging tipping point! In any case, you should bask in the splendor of The Armoury Show performing “Castles In Spain.” It’s full of killer riffs and hooks!