Seeing Skin open up for the Little Angels was the first time in a gig going career that I ever really took notice of a support band. Actually it was pretty hard not to. Here were four good looking guys, long hair and six packs playing a catchy brand of hard rock with hooks and melodies that were just so instant. At that gig I found myself almost alone standing up dancing around to the music emanating from stage and, of course, I had to get the album on the back of the gig. What Skin's debut does is to bring back memories of a younger me. A time when life was less complicated, more innocent and certainly less full of responsibility and worries.

The self titled debut was full of songs that were catchy and bouncy and, if you weren't careful would have you singing Baby Bay Baby to yourself in an unguarded moment. Even thirteen years later I can put this album into the CD player and be transported back to those younger days and find myself in a world of my own. The song which really hit home was Look But Don't Touch, it stuck in your head for days, but elsewhere they had the perfect rock club song if House of Love that probably filled dance floors up and down the country, the cheesiness of Radio On Radio and Revolution, but they almost perfect pop rock songs of the era and then of course there was the requisite classic power ballad in the shape of Tower Of Strength. This was a song where you tried, in vein, to match the vocals of Neville MacDonald, and most definitely failed. Therein lay the strength of Skin. MacDonald's vocals were absolutely spot on the genre and, matched with Myke Gray's guitar hero licks and riffs it was nigh on perfect.

I remember listening on the radio to Donington 1994, a gig where the band played third on the second stage behind UK contemporaries The Wildhearts & Terrorvision and being gutted that I wasn't actually there. This was a time that American bands seemed to dominate but underneath the likes of main stage big hitters Aerosmith and Extreme the British contingent dominated the second stage and proved that the UK could equal, in terms of quality at least, whatever the Yanks were producing.

Skin's shelf life, as with son band British bands of that era, was limited. This was a time of grunge and proto nu-metal and the writing was probably on the wall for Skin and their ilk from the beginning. A scant four years later they were gone, consigned to history. But what wouldn't I give now for a reformation and for Skin to transport me once again back to those heady days of 1994.

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Track Listing

Money
Shine Your Light
House of Love
Colourblind
Which Are the Tears
Look But Don't Touch
Nightsong
Tower of Strength
Revolution
Raised on Radio
Wings of an Angel

Line Up

Neville MacDonald - Vocals
Myke Gray - Guitars
Andy Robbins - Bass/Vocals
Dicki Fliszar - Drums/Vocals