In those formative, 'post punk' years many new young 'new wave' bands played support to Dislocation Dance, like China Crisis, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, Scritti Politti, and an adolescent Mick Hucknall. A very young, radical and entrenched vegan, Tim Booth, hitched a lift in Dislocation Dance's tour bus and brain stormed names for his new band: "what do'ya think about James?" Many took a little piece of Dislocation Dance's extraordinary ability to plunder and experiment with them the echoes of Dislocation Dance's influence can still be heard in the late '90's: would there now be a Cardigans or Belle and Sebastian? In spring '82 Dislocation Dance took their subversive 'new wave/cool jazz/pop' to New York, to critical acclaim. In London, at the Heaven Club, a young Rip Rig and Panic, (with Neneh Cherry), watch Dislocation Dance invent 'jazz/punk'. Not only were Dislocation Dance the first band to introduce jazz to new wave, but also had a trumpet player that could really play. Up in Manchester a young Morrissey hung out at their label offices, making compilation tapes of Dislocation Dance, Ludus, George Formby and his pre Smiths poetry. 
Dislocation Dance were never 'rock & roll' and they never supported the rock and roll myth, despite members of the band providing backing to a rapidly declining, powdery and dough faced Nico. They had intellect instead of angst, nouveau realism instead of new romanticism: they created their art from the ordinary and played without a care in the world. Dislocation Dance were a mixed bag: a luck dip. They had one foot in anarchic post new wave 'jazz/punk' and the other in 'Parisian/cool jazz/pop'. Voted, 'band most likely to make it', in the 1983 Smash Hits Annual, (alongside Wham), they existed on the periphery of pop, but pop wasn't their compulsion. Dislocation Dance driven by a wholly different, unknown, variable and unpredictable force. In a world with such musical diversity, each genre with it's own specific subculture, it's still hard to find a home for Dislocation Dance. But one has to wonder whether things would be quite the way they are without that little spark of genius, which was Dislocation Dance. Sleeve notes to ASKCD87 - Dislocation Dance BBC Sessions, (John Peel, Kid Jensen and Janice Long). Compilation 1999 - Vinyl Japan. click a link on the left to see review/photo |
Signed to the Buzzcock's label, then Rough Trade Records in the early '80's Dislocation Dance remain a curiously important, but strangely undocumented contributor to pop history. Dislocation Dance stormed through musical genres. Eclectic and unpredictable, they crated new hybrids and blurred the boundaries between pop, dance and jazz. They were influenced by whatever they could get their hands on: Pere Ubu, John Barry, Miles Davis, Burt Bacharach, Patrice Rushton, Dr Buzzard's Savannah Band.