Percolated By A Dislocation Dance

Percolated By A Dislocation Dance

THE BEAT GOES ON

NEW YORK-Dislocation Dance sit in a row, the very picture of exhaustion on this their second week in the U.S.A; like they're at a wake waiting for a banshee to raise their spirits. They watch the news on TV— the voice turned down—with an air of fatigued indifference, though what's being shown is the start of a skirmish between their country and the Argies. They listen to WBLS, coming to life only when a particularly well-produced piece of disco funk catches an ear. A Dancer writes postcards to a mum and a lover, another Dancer answers my queries as to the current state of Manchester's night life with monosyllables "umm...yeah closed...uh huh." The dress code ranges from the all pressed slacks and Marks & Spencer's pullover look to quietly polite mock New Romanticism.

Lanky Richard Boone— owner of New Hormones records, current Dancers (and exBuzzcocks) manager—is discussing business with Louise Greif, whose apartment I'm sitting in. The stupefied and neutral atmosphere is bugging me to the max; I'm well drunk anyway, having just come from a private performance by fun funkers Future Force, where the wine was flowing fairly freely. I begin to think somebody is having me on . These zombies are the guys whose ebullient new swing had had me jumping around my hone just the night before? Nah.

Several hours later at the Mudd Club and I'm feeling like a reject from a Rod Serling screenplay: a transformation had taken place the moment they reached the stage. That vital energy, the oiled pleasure and fresh-faced tongue-pulling found on their records (and not in conversation) had come to life, breathing joyous release on the dusty drinkers and arty scenemakers.

This Dislocation Dance are the other alternative from England. Away from the busy manipulations of cute dead Brownies like ABC or Haircut 100 and the "come back 1979 all is forgiven" po-faced predictability of so many Factory and Rough Trade art-essts, Dislocation Dance give the smiley thumbs-up not because they are pretty but because their music is a forked tongued certainty, because it matters as music. It synthesizes (not as in the machine) the strands of sounds others disregard. Ask Dislocation Dance who they like and they'll give you a long list, but ask them the real question—whose music do they use to make their own—and some great names start popping: Sinatra, Bacharach, Ornette Coleman, Herb Alpert, John Barry (!). Dislocation Dance can and do sound like all these people; this is the music that crosses all the borders, spanked into place by a purely melodic trumpet, swung by the breath of classical jazz formulations and improv jazz easygoing wind-ups, and sticking like glue through melodies that are flabless and flexible. You and your grandad could agree on this. Whilst "rock music" is about building fences between a universal acceptance of pure music, between people, between false revolts that cloud the issues by implying that the right of youth has ever changed, Dislocation Dance fall over these restrictions, ignoring them, trembling them with a need to connect with and for everybody. You as well.

This is the party! Dislocation Dance are: Ian Runacres— keyboards/guitar/vocals; Dick Harrison—drums; Paul Emmerson—bass; Andy Diagram — trumpet/vocals. Born in Manchester, from the roots of the Manchester Music Collective (a sort of hotline where musicians could find one-off or longer gigs), which Paul Emmerson was running, they've gone through many line-up changes 'til settling down with the current one, about a year and a half ago. They've since played support roles on major tours by the late, great Girls At Our Best and Orange Juice. Their first release was on a very loose sampler compilation of the ever-changing Manchester scene (2,000 copies—no Joy Division replicas puh-leese), and have since had an EP, Slip That Disc (including a fantastic supper club cover of "We Can Work It Out"), a long player Music Music Music (that has grown on me slowly but surely to the point where I am now firmly gripped) on the New Hormones indie label.

In conversation Dislocation Dance deny the old with the certain snideness only youth can bring. "Rock groups usually portray themselves with seriousness, solemnity and stupidity" they reveal. "People want cozy, easy answers." These boys don't offer any. They are part of no pop movement. "The fashion bit helps," they'll admit, but "we've been enjoying the music for far too long for that to matter." Dislocation Dance make "radical entertainment, hedonistic as in thoughtful fun," are "exploring new areas and playing very well now with a new lease on life." Their trick is taking a musical theme and switching it from one instrument to another, 'til it's bouncing through the speakers and resurrecting the attitude in an attitude dance.

Already Dislocation Dance are being—if not dismissed— labeled and filed as a novelty band. If it is a novelty, it's an old one—stretching back through the '40s. Many bands not in the "rock hierarchy" use it today as well, but this is different, a delightful new face treating it with the love and affection the swing genre deserves. Place Dislocation Dance close to the Lounge Lizards: something old and something new. At the same time.

Iman Lababedi

ELEPHANT GRAVEYARD!

"OK! Enough's enough I" screams Oxzy Osbourne, who's had the strangest things turning up on his porch lately. "Ever since the incident with the dove and bat, I've been getting all kinds of live and dead animals from deranged fans I" sobbed Oz. "'What part ya gonna eat off this?' read the notes, when there's any note at all! Can't take It The last we heard from Mr. Osbourne, he was being down the street, two lions, a panther and an orangutan in hot pursuit. The hunter gets captured by the game, indeed!!

Glue On My Pillow

DURHAM, NC—People suffering from a rare and deadly brain disease can now be treated with Krazy Glue, researchers at Duke University say.

Before now, extremely delicate brain surgery was the only method to treat arteriovenous malformation, a condition where the arteries of the brain become attenuated and often rupture. But lobal chop-chop is tricky business, and many patients came out of OR with the mental facilities of a toe cap.

Hoping to avoid surgery, Dr. Ralph Heinz, chief director of neuroradiology at Duke, injected 26 patients with a solution of water and Krazy Glue to strengthen the arteries. All 26 improved enough to stop worrying about ruptures, heads unstuck from the pillow later on.

The results have been so gratifying that a pop record about the disease reached the top of the record charts.

What, Sherman? Surely you've heard Blondie sing "Rupture."

Rick Johnson

All You Need Is Cash: Rock 'N' Roll Enters The Auction Age

NEW YORK-It's official-rock 'n' roll has turned into culture. You need have looked no further than the hushed atmosphere of Sotheby Parke Bernet's second floor auction room on a warm June afternoon. Leave it to the Brits to teach us the value of the sounds we so graciously introduced to them in 1955—the first serious rock auction, held last December in London, brought in almost $200,000. Which is why a glowing Wurlitzer jukebox (sold for $4,800) pumped out a stream of '50s classics, all on original 78s, accompanying the browsers who yearned for a complete edition of John Lennon's "Bag One" erotic lithographs, Robert Moog's prototype synthesizer, or any of about 50 other artifacts.

"It's an unusual sort of material for us to handle," admitted Pamela Brown Sherer, the youthful founder and head of Sotheby's New York Collectibles department. "I think that everybody realizes and understands much better the importance of the music world on all of society. A lot of people who were very involved in the outer fringes of culture now aren't considered at all unusual. We've assimilated so much of rock 'n' roll culture and none of us would want to give it up. On the contrary, we're saving pieces of that culture and even exchanging them for money as recently as 10 years later. I think that's extraordinary."

Spurred by London's overwhelming success, Sherer spent almost six months gathering material that had what she calls "personal attachment to major rock stars." It's no surprise that Beatle items dominated the acquisition, with objects ranging from a really horrific 1965 pencil drawing of Pattie Boyd by Paul McCartney (sold for $850) to John Lennon's own platinum album for Walls And Bridges, signed and dated 1974, which drew the hefty sum of $7,000. A Rolling Stones devotee snagged an autographed color photograph of the original group, including Brian Jones, for $225. A Grateful Dead poster signed by artist Alton Kelley brought $425, and a Woodstock crew t-shirt, rumored but not guaranteed to have been worn by Jimi Hendrix went for a somewhat astonishing $225.

Auction houses are. plush places, yet there's no admission charge or dress regulations, so a scattering of well-to-do music business executives mixed with ordinary fans eager to catch a glimpse of some fabled item forever outside their pocketbooks. And while the stars themselves might participate, as did Paul McCartney at the London sale, their bidding is done through representatives or on the phone. As the price for a gold disc of "Hey Jude" shot way past its $800 estimate* to ultimately reach $3,000, the curious could only guess the bidder's identity.

Somewhat disappointed that neither "Bag One" nor the Moog reached their mimimum $20,000 asking price, Sherer still judged the sale a moderate success and indicated that future rock auctions could be expected. Of course, Sotheby's is not a charity, and makes its profit from 10% buyer and seller commissions, but as Sherer says, "the reason we're selling these things is because they retain a lot of their original spontaneity—Delmonico's checks signed by John Lennon and George Harrison, or the Beatles fan club books, numbers 1-77, with signatures. You can look at them and appreciate the way they describe the era. On the other hand, once you think through the significance of any object, then you go back to enjoying it."

So clean out those closets, attics and basements, and if you discover anything comparable to Christmas cards signed by half the British invasion, or own a bunch of stage clothes worn by a star, or can prove your old guitar really did belong to Hendrix, or turn up a handwritten manuscript of a Bob Dylan tune, drop a line to Sotheby's collectibles department at 1334 York Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10021-rock 'n' roll just might have been a worthwhile investment as well as a wonderful noise.

Toby Goldstein

The Sweet Hush Of Success

SEVIERVILLE, TN-Leading economic indicators are pointing to former drug addict and rock musician Sammy Hall to become the next Elvis.

Hall, who tours 320 days a year and estimates his annual income at over $1,000,000, was once the lead singer of Florida's own Birdwatchers. At the time, ol' hallelujah-mouth says he was "using every kind of drug" and becoming suicidal until he thought it over and "walked away."

He went the gospel route because he feels "drugs and rock are inseparable." Hey—I thought that was one of rock 'n' roll's better points!

Hammy Sammy's big break came at a convention for the Giant Home Sales Network, a firm that sells urinal deodorant tablets and various toilet-scrubbing utensils door-to-door. "I see more positive thinking at their conventions than 'outside' in a year," he claims. Yeah, well the poor saps probably want to get rid of all that degrading crap as fast as possible.

What to do with all this newfound wealth? "I'm shopping for a personal jet now," he says. Undoubtedly so that he can fly over his mountaintop mansion and fully appreciate the swimming pool, which is shaped like a toilet seat.

Rick Johnson

5 Years Ago

The Florida Fruit Tree!

Grace Slick on Anita Bryant: "There's no way to correct that except by new DNA codes."

Old Dead Boys Never Die, They Just Get Spayed Away

LONDON/NEW YORKOne-time Dead Boy vocalist/ scartissue-monger Stiv Bators married his beloved, one Anastasia, on May 1st in London, thus breaking the dog-collared hearts of thousands of adoring punkettes worldwide. Bators may hail from Cleveland, but he sure don't wanna be no Catholic boy, so he and Anastasia were hitched in a white magic Wiccan ceremony, which included a High Priest and Priestess, candles, incense, peppermints, and a symbolic leap over a broomstick (Bators landed in the fifth row of the audience, but made a dazed and bleeding-from-a-chinwound lunge back to the altar, just in time to seize the mike to scream, "I doo doo!").

Our probing reporter caught up with the radiant bridegroom at his London flat, and inquired whether the rather mystic-crystal-revelation aspects bf the nuptials might indicate a slight compromise of the immortal punk credo Bators had puked up as a Dead Boy—"I'll beat up the next hippie I see!" Was that young, loud, and snotty boast no longer valid, would Bators now be inserting flowers into the hair of the music made by his new band, Lords Of The New Church? "Oh, wow, man," Bators reportedly replied, "This is just too far out. I mean, it's just too fuggin' heavy, oh wow, did you see that switchblade to day-glo chartreuse right before your eyes? I mean..."

Meanwhile, half a globe away, Bators' old songwriting and scar-picking Dead Boy compatriot, guitarist Cheetah Chrome, narrowly escaped serious injury when the Times Square 25/ photo booth he was using to snap promo pix of his new band, the Skels, suddenly and inexplicably exploded. "Nah, it was just a scratch," the debonair Chrome reputedly growled, "I got hurt a lot worse that time I passed out by the Parma Wendy's, didn't even know I was laying in the drivethru lane—har-har!—until the next morning, when that guy in the Camaro with the razorstudded oil pan came up for this Frosty, he told the cops he thought I was just a speed bump, har-har!..."

Mr. Chrome's previous r'nr group, Cheetah Chrome and the Music Industry Casualties (see Oct. '81 CREEM) became casualties of the music industry, ironically enough, when their record company, Genya Ravan's spunky Polish, folded, leaving the band high and dry, (Pope John Paul II, himself a native of Poland, is scheduled to say a Mass for the gallant, martyred Polish Records promo workers, at the Chelsea Hotel, later this month.) By now a veteran of the boom & bust cycle of rock 'n' roll,, the everoptimistie Chrome promises that his new Skels (as in "Skels") are "the closest thing to the Dead Boys yet." And several of the new songs cited by the irrepressible C.C., including "All The Way Down," "What's My Crime," "American Wars," and "Used To Be Fun," certainly hint at the classic Dead Boys je ne sais quoi.

Elsewhere, in yet another hot entertainment news flash involving former Dead Boys, John Travolta has once again denied rumors that ex-drummer Johnny Blitz will play him, in the revolting one's movie autobiography, Why Vinnie Can't Read. Insiders claim that Blitz blew his big chance by scoring too high on the I.Q. part of the screen test...

Richard Riegel

They Like The Scripts

DETROIT—We knew all along that cartoons were for adults. Now it's official.

A Nielsen survey undertaken in conjunction with the Detroit News found 47% of homes with no kiddies tuned in to Saturday morning cartoon shows. Only 40% of the rugrat domiciles chose the same viewing matter.

Rick Johnson

THE HOUSE THAT ' LITTLE AL" BUILT I

FLASH! Cruising through the suburbs of N.Y.C., our CREEM photographer recently discovered the million dollar estate author Albert Goldman built with the "blood money" he made from his Elvis biography! Al proves that he really Is a nice guy by publicly thanking the late King for his newfound wealth on a billboard outside the house, and once again reinforces his preference of "big" objects by referring to his love of horses I That's about as big as they come, Al I Our photographer tried to reach Al for comment, but, alas, the famous author was hiding in a horse stall outside the house.../ust like a woman I