Movie Details
| Title: | Dance Craze | |
| Director: | Joe Massot | |
| Year: | 1981 | |
| Genre: | Concert Film | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 05.04.24 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 05.04.24 | Internet | This is a concert film around the 2-tone, or second wave ska scene in late 70s/early 80s UK, so bands like The Specials, Madness, The (English) Beat, The Selecter, an all-girl band called The Bodysnatchers, and Bad Manners. I watched it because it was mentioned in the book I'm reading where Fishbone bassist and co-founder Norwood Fisher mentioned an inciting incident for their band being a double feature that he saw with Decline of Western Civilization and Dance Craze. I'd never heard of Dance Craze but, thanks to the power of the Internet, I have now seen it. This is great, with the caveat common to all concert films that you have to like the music. If you think ska is dumb as hell then seeing a bunch of sweaty speed-riddled brits skanking around the stage for 70 minutes won't do anything for you. I happen to like the music so even internet archive's VHS rip with a few songs cut out (that you can see in 360p on youtube) was enough to get me rockin in my chair with my headphones on. Plus the crowd! I barely saw them in the muddy transfer but the glimpses I got were of a jam-packed throng of kids moving as one. It never struck me that this (and all future) waves of ska were so influenced by punk but in the context of the books I've been reading and movies I've been watching it's like the most glaring thing possible. It's a total mash-up of reggae rhythms with punk tempos. The singer from Bad Manners looks like a stereotypical punk skinhead, except he's singing Wooly Bully. I do wish there was some kind of interview footage with the bands in addition to their pure performances, but what are ya gonna do... sometimes you get Decline, sometimes you get Urgh! The music itself is the draw here, and it's good stuff. Ska music's alright... if you like SAXOPHONES Notes on the film aside, I came to ska with what you might call the third wave. It had a moment in the spotlight in the mid-to-late 90s with groups like No Doubt and Mighty Mighty Bosstones, and I spent a couple summers around my senior year in high school going to ska shows in DC. This was the era of The Pietasters, The Pilfers, The Scofflaws, Skavoovie and the Epitones (who did a ska-ified version of Danny Elfman's Batman theme). They were very fun shows and the first time that music made me feel like dancing. Prior to that, the industrial and hardcore stuff felt all about releasing aggression to me, which has its place in any teenager's life but wasn't exactly about feeling good. The skank is a super easy dance that your body kind of does automatically when hearing that music and you're surrounded by a crowd full of kids looking equally stupid so any self-consciousness goes out the window. For me it was a precursor to that Louis Prima GAP commercial and the swing revival. Anyway, the fashion and whatnot is pretty easy to mock these days, but I can't deny that the music is still fun to listen to and I really liked having a dozen people on stage sweating and blaring horns. It felt so organic coming from stuff like KMFDM where it was two dudes in black behind synths and a weirdo screaming into a microphone. I suppose that phase also led me to exploring dub reggae in the early 2000s with stuff like The Scientist and King Tubby. I think we could do with a fourth wave today to rebel against this pro-tools ai-music shit. Let a sweaty guy in suspenders blow your ears out with his horn while a guy in dark shades says "chk-it-up" over and over. It'd be good for people. |
