I went to Gilles Peterson and Patrick Forge’s Sunday afternoon sessions at Dingwalls a couple of times. Patrick especially played a bit more in the way of the jazz-musicians-playing-funk-&-soul thing, which is what I liked. However, as soon as a serious jazz-dance record came on the floor basically cleared apart from the few guys who could the proper footwork and regular dropping to their knees. I got the impression that they all turned up on their own and didn’t talk to each other, and like the original B-Boys waiting for the breaks they hung around sullenly around the edge of the dancefloor until their moment came.
I found it a bit exclusive in the more literal sense of the word, partly because I didn’t like their music that much because it wasn’t so easy to dance to. Also, watching them live wasn’t as fun as seeing the crews doing routines together on TV.
I believe that when breakdancing suddenly fizzled out of the hip hop scene some of those guys got into this as another form of more performanced-based dancing.
I liked the idea of Snowboy’s compilations on vinyl of tracks that were otherwise only available on CD which other DJs wouldn’t play. Not revolutionary now but it was back then.
My IDJ anecdote was back here: