Born on October 6: Richard Jobson, the Scottish punk poet that sings and directs
Born in 1960 in Kirkcaldy (Scotland), the singer-songwriter has more than one string to his bow. He plays with words and notes as much as with images...
Clearly at ease performing Marguerite Duras' lyrics (or his own for that matter) with a minimalist orchestration, like the heartbreaking "India Song" on the album "The Ballad of The Etiquette" in 1981, Richard Jobson is as comfortable keeping intact the flame of the Skids, heroes of Scottish punk with "Into The Valley" or "The Saints Are Coming". With Stuart Adamson at its core, the Skids were also in a way the matrix of Big Country, another champion of epic Scottish rock. Both Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, Richard Jobson takes a malicious pleasure, even today, in reconciling water and fire...
Richard Jobson: writer and director
Alongside his music career, Jobson has also written and directed a number of feature films that have rarely left the borders of the United Kingdom. However, we will remember "16 Years of Alcohol" (2003), "New Town Killers" (2008) or "The Somnambulists" (2012).
When, many years later, Richard Jobson discovered the photo that illustrates this article (taken at the Café Der Hallen in Leuven, Belgium, in February 1982), he immediately remembered the frosty reception he received that evening. A public that was not very open to poetry. Which probably explains his very pretty grimace...
(AK - Photo: Etienne Tordoir)
Photo: Richard Jobson, performing as a poet at the Café Der Hallen in Leuven (Belgium) February 8 1982 (© Etienne Tordoir)