The Purifiers

Richard Jobson is a Scottish singer-songwriter and film-maker, best known as a television presenter, film director, producer and screenwriter. Jobson grew up in Ballingry, Fife, the son of a miner and a worker at Rosyth Dockyard, attending St. Columba's R.C. High School, Dunfermline. He was... formerly lead singer with the art-punk rock group, The Skids. Jobson's singing style with the Skids was highly distinctive, and he wrote the lyrics, while Stuart Adamson wrote most of the music. Scared to Dance, the first Skids album, featured the hit 1979 single "Into the Valley", the group's most successful single. Jobson appeared on BBC Television's Top of the Pops singing it. The album also featured "The Saints are Coming" whose lyrics about storms and drowning came back to light after the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina. In September 2006 it was announced that Green Day and U2 were to record a cover version of the song for charitable purposes. Jobson said that he had written the song about the death of a friend in the British Army. Much of Scared to Dance features local references, and also Jobson's fascination with the two world wars.
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