10 Most Obscure Punk Bands Of All Time
7. The Dancing Did
A suitably strange name for this eccentric band who formed in Evesham, Worcestershire, England, in 1979, and released a single album before disbanding. In a 1981 issue of NME (sadly unavailable online), journalist Barney Hoskyns (who later went on to found Rock's Back Pages) described the group as “pastoral Edwardian rockabilly,” which is quite a fair assessment, although by all accounts The Dancing Did put on a blazing series of anarchic live shows during their short lifetime.
The band underwent several line-up changes, and recorded for both Stiff Records and Kamera, the latter of which released the aforementioned sole album, And Did Those Feet, in 1982. The record's title references the poem Jerusalem, by radical 18th century poet and painter, William Blake, a perfect metaphor for The Dancing Did's rebellious and visceral, yet also intelligent sound.
Cited by music journalist and punk specialist, Mick Mercer, as his “all-time favourite British group” (see Mercer's book on the band for more detail), The Dancing Did could, in many, ways, be held up as the epitome of English punk – decidedly odd, confrontational yet, at the same time, curiously folksy.