Dance Craze

Is this a documentary? Sort of, it's more of a nonlinear concert film held together with some Pathe news style voiceover. It's still a wonderful window though, into early 80s UK youth music culture, or more succinctly, Ska. As a viewer you're thrown right into the mix, on stage with The Specials as Terry Hall asks if we're having fun. I say we're, he's talking to a crowd over 45 years ago, but it feels like he's talking to you right now. The camera stays loose yet focused as Madness hit the stobes and vanish in a maelstrom of tightly controlled flailing limbs. A very young Buster Bloodvessel sweats over a smartly dressed saxophonist as Bad Manners get bouncy. The Bodysnatchers, The Selecter, The Beat, everyone sounds bloody brilliant. Alan Snelling who mixed this knew what he was doing. We hear the crowd between songs, but the bands are front and centre throughout. They're the perceived stars, but really for me, it's the camera operators, they're fantastic. This must've been an absolute joy to edit. The footage is stunning. It's not all the same venue, I think there's about half a dozen, given away largely by the clothes changing, but it feels like it could all be one absolutely perfect night. Although archive cutaways of a theatre stage during Madness's take on 'Swan Lake' might break the rhythm, it still works. Madness are brilliant. They really don't get the credit they deserve. They go toe to toe with The Specials throughout, although Bad Manners make sure they're not left out. There's an odd interlude where the Pathe guy is back with some footage of stuffy Britain trying to swing with the latest dance crazes and The Shadows. The point being I suppose the conformity of respectable white society and what Ska was trying to break free from. If you don't like Ska, don't bother, but if you think you do like Ska, this will convince you you love it!

Dance Craze was released in February 1981, the idea originally came from American director Joe Massot (who shot the Wonderwall film), when he met Madness during their first US tour. Originally he was going to make a film about the band but when his son informed him of the wonderful world of 2-Tone, Massot expanded his original plans to include the whole movement.

The film was shot during 1980 and followed Madness, The Specials, The Selecter, The Bodysnatchers, The Beat and Bad Manners on tour throughout the UK. Sadly the film sticks to concert footage and there are no backstage interviews with the bands, this was a real opportunity missed as a documentary style film would have been a wonderful document of the 2-Tone movement. The film gives it's audience no time to catch their breath, cutting from one song to the next in the bat of an eye, this is where backstage footage could have vastly improved the movie.

In all there are 27 songs (counting 2 versions of Nite Klub), of which 6 come from Camdens finest, and 5 from the Specials. A soundtrack LP was issued on 2-Tone Records to coincide with the release, although some of the tracks are different recordings than those featured in the film. Half way through the film there is a somewhat odd intermission, black and white footage featuring old dances such as the Locomotion, the Twist and so on appears, maybe fitting in with the films theme, but hardly appealing to the 2-Tone audience who would pay at the door.

The film eventually opened in Sheffield on February the 15th 1981, by which time the initial 2-Tone boom had, inevitably, died down. The soundtrack album spent 15 weeks on the chart reaching a high of number 5, underlining the fact that 2-Tone was not a spent force, a fact that was further verified that troubled summer when the Specials released 'Ghost Town'.

The film was released on home video by Chrysalis in 1988 and, if not as good as it should have been, is still an invaluable document of the bands live performances, which is where most of the Ska-2-Tone bands excelled.

Essentially a concert film featuring all the major bands on 2-Tone Records ... The Specials, The Beat, The Selecter, Madness, Bad Manners and The Bodysnatchers. There's a tiny bit of stock footage from British news reels about teenagers and dancing, but essentially the film just switches back and forth between these bands giving each a song or two at a time. That's really a good things since most of these bands put on incredible shows.; This music is firmly in my wheel house and I really loved this film.

Nineteen-seventies Britain timeline was an extremely bleak affair indeed; Trade Unions strikes, high inflation, ever increasing unemployment, power cuts and the Three-Day Working Week of Energy (Power) shortages, cuts and blackouts, the 1978-1979 Winter of Discontent, Trade Unions, Government conceding rule and being forced a General Election to the ruse of further Conservative rule in the guise of Margert Thatcher (1925 - 2013): this still does not comprehend deep-seated envy and prejudices with social-polarising and Nationalistic unrest of Xenophobic and racial and cultural indifference; In spite of the anguish, intolerance and social-unrest there came a guiding light, a differing kind of Movement, a new and refreshing musical tone that both publicised youth anxieties and in which, too, gave a fulfilling, up-lifting energetic escape from the up-and-coming, if not bleaker, nineteen-eighties; that working-class musical movement which was 2-Tone.

By the time the 2-Tone movement, via the rejuvenation of Ska and its own unique musical stant, had firmly rooted itself into British working-class youth culture its well established and musical partners had now turned to the medium of celluloid via Joe Massot (1933 - 2002) and the sweaty, dark, dank, smoke-laden, (spilt) beer dance halls, of a once Great, Britain circa 1980: Dance Craze, and its partners-in-multiculturism as The Specials, The Beat, The Bodysnatchers, The Selecter, Madness and Bad Manners firmly hit the Silver Screen.

There is only one collective noun to describe the vibe and sensation seen here and that is Family; Varied backgrounds and differing cultures, on and off stage, conjoin to give a high-octane close-up feel to the proceedings. A wonderful premise of the hand-held-camera interjecting within the personal zone of the performing artists is done with fortitude by cinematographer Joe Dunton BSC, MBE and shooting the arenas with the Steadicam on Super 35mm film and then blowing the whole shebang to a cinematic sensory overload on 70mm. There's just so much going on here; bands are a playing and the crowds are a swaying full-on and to the bone; the clean, crisp sound & imagery seen here almost feels like a 3-dimensional experience, along with the highly individual bands and personalities are an atomic particle of pure energy, stamina and viga and again, sweat and more sweat. The by-words here is most certainly youth and youthful; and most definitely not wasted.

This growing generations musical-mentors are taking their audience to the limits of the high-rise towers and urban city council estates to the days of UB40 sign-on's with attitudes and triads of unemployment, working the factories, the class system, violence, racism, social conformity and British working-class culture; call it musical realism with a backbeat to dance and jive to.

Having the privilege of seeing the blown-up Superscope 70mm version in its first ever re-release, since its first-run in 1981, at the 2011 Bradford International Film Festival (England) with a Q&A after the event from Mr. Dunton himself and the historical memoirs and the attempts of plugging the film for a major distribution was an evening worth the wait after all the years; happily, the full assault of mass media release finally came to fruition in the Spring of 2023.

The pessimism pushing through the bleak realities of the lyrics of this particular British timeline is captured wonderfully and is a more-than-fair representative of the times of a Britain in turmoil and social decline; the future does not not look bright for those who live the realities of the sung lyric. Messer's Dunton and Massot show all that with, sadly, unfortunate negative undertones having to lead up to the event of Dance Craze one can simply forget, for just a brief moment, the trails and tribulations of cynicism rightly bought to a head by music, fun and dance.

Saw Dance Craze in the cinema and it was a lively atmosphere the BFI have done a wonderful thing with the 4k restoration catching the bands of the time at their peak and it certainly brought back many happy memories for this old chap the performances are still fresh and vibrant and a reminder of when music wasn't by manufactured acts with little talent.

Very few weak songs and it puts across the vibrancy of the concerts and the acts of that time

A must have for 2 tone fans and far better than attending a retro concert today

Documentary/concert whatever your view it's particularly pleasing to have it restored and protected.