Hedonism: Rave the streets

Originally this was a feature on how rave and riots were connected. It was meant to be a piece on the loose political parallels empowering the two cultures, about the youth movements having their supposed ‘revival’ over these last months.

But that turned out to be a load of balls. In dialogue with ‘Raindance Man’ (for legal reasons we can’t print his real name), head behind one of the best known British rave organisations, Raindance, I realised I was forcing rave and riots into something that they were not.

I was blindly following the magazine’s word of revivals, factions and super-sexed visions of a destructive high-energy youth.

A recent Channel 4 news-piece by Matthew Cain excited ideas of a comeback, a strong political link between the late 80s recession and this new widening economic crisis which is creating hysteria on the dancefloor and rioting on our streets: but although to a certain extent this could excuse the current situation – it’s just not the crack.

Rave and riots remain as separate entities: beats and highs versus pure-criminality, but both mentalities and their treatment by the police, the media and the ‘man’  is where the wider picture explodes.

Raindance Man is angry – in part because of my naive linking of rave and riots, but 2011 is a different place.

Although hedonism is needed; self-gratifaction is now hiding behind major issues within the music industry, within society.

While there’s an obsession with youth as a generation to blame/a generation to look at, rave and Raindance was never that way: “I wouldn’t call rave a youth movement initially, it was just an outburst of hedonism, breaking warehouses, putting on parties.”

Despite this, the youth always has and always will draw the media.

Rave may not belong solely to the 18-24 year olds yet neither did the riots despite many pointing at generation-now.

Both rave and riots have been portrayed and no doubt been controlled by the media and to some extent the police, to Raindance it’s an obstacle, it’s a side that no-one if not sees even thinks of.

“Back when Thatcher was giving it ‘right, we want it (rave) stopped’…the police were saying this is how it works ‘if you want us to stop rave, you give us more money’ you ended up with the Pay Party Unit (the section of police force dedicated to rave crime) that were given millions, they were going around in helicopters, all with new mobile phones: they were basically empire building off the back of Thatcher trying to stop it.

They could have stopped it if they wanted to but they saw an opportunity. I’ll argue the motivation for not stopping the initial rioting after the death of Duggan could be the same thing, they could have stamped on it there and then but they didn’t, seeing with the police cuts: ‘We need more money, you cant let them do the cuts’. It’s all shit done behind closed doors.

“Doing what I was doing and then seeing what happened as a result was my first eye opener into how the country runs. When they were really cracking down on the parties, Me and Wayne Anthony (author of Class 808 and promoter of the prestigious Genesis parties) ended up putting on a demonstration at Trafalgar Square in 1990.

“The whole of Trafalgar Square was wiped out with 20,000 people, that was on the Saturday – on the Sunday morning there was not a word in the press anywhere about that demonstration: there was not a fucking word about it.

“The week after there was a nurses’ demonstration they had about 5000 people and it was blanket news. We were going: “Woah, interesting.’”

As RM notes, this is empire building, this was manipulation. Another example being the infamous bank holiday Castle Morton rave in ‘92. Shock headlines and police control culminated into something much scarier to Britain’s readers.

“We came out of there and the media everywhere were whittering on about it: they were saying this was happening, telling you where it was, sending everyone there. They got the headlines they wanted and then the the law they wanted.”

The questions that rise are controversial. As police and media disatisfaction grow; the reasons behind this mass-notion gets darker. Why didn’t they stop the riots there and then? Why wasn’t rave stamped-down if it was that much of a threat? Raindance Man highlights ideas of fear: of police cuts, of the people who  gain from this: the media and the police.

While the police and media could be seen to control the situations; that can’t be the only stringent. RM determines the desentization of young people over the last two decades as a possible fault for crime, riots and the loss of the real-meaning of rave.

“Grime, rap, MTV etc. are a force for negativity. It’s coming from the big white men that run the fucking industry, the generations being forced that shit.

“I mean, when I was a kid they wanted to ban Tom and Jerry because they thought it was a bad influence,  but now you have all of these games, lyrics coming through which desensitise, leading to knife crimes.

“If the man decided to shift and push positive-happy-rave it would be better. You’ve got bland music being pushed by the man. You’ve got people like fucking Mumford and Sons. What the fuck. At least my generation had the punk scene…

“There’s an element of your generation being tranquilised, that’s what the man’s giving you.”

The current state of music could be said to be damaging to the rave scene too – it’s ‘desentised to ignite positivity. “In the early ‘90s you had the record companies coming in, saying: ‘This dance scene is huge, we need to have a piece of it’. They tried to buy out drum’n’bass and they got completely fucked-off, then garage came along and got bought up.

“Dubstep has been bought up completely. It’s a load of bland nonsense that’s being pushed and the kids are now buying that- it’s influential. It’s another version of negativity as far as I’m concerned which leads to the street riots, its the same imagery, of ‘I’m from a working class estate’ and that negative bollocks.

“If the man decided to give back dance music it could push positivity, but it doesn’t. They’re pushing stuff that sells.”

The idea of the party could be said to have died to a mass. The watering down of dance strands such as dubstep into ‘boy-meets-girl-background music’ (RM: “You used to have to go to a disco to pull, now dubstep’s the background music.”) has seen rave become revalued.

Perhaps we all need to find hedonism again; not see it as something to avoid. This is not to say in every society rife with poverty, rioting could be solved with a massive-fucking-party but perhaps there’s something to learn from rave-ideals.

“Rave brought everybody together, it still has. It didn’t matter where you were, you could all go there and be accepted. It’s totally accepting of all the disadvantaged people in our society.

“We’ve got a Raindance regular called Dan Drysdale who’s actually blind. He comes because he’s accepted there. He’s got cerebal pallsy but he’s also got the biggest balls in the world – he comes raving and he’ gets total acceptance.”

Famously it was rave (whether it was the drugs, the music or whatever) that brought people together: black, white, the football hooliganism halted as West Ham and Millwall firms hugged to the beat. There’s a definitive community.

Maybe London should adopt this rave mentality: hedonism isn’t dangerous. Although you could argue the free-love was down to the pills and powders, Raindance Man argues for their approval.

“Raving has actually educated a lot more people than harmed. People need a release: the raving release of being their own animal. You’ve got raving generations that go through cycles of different mediums that they will use to enhance their enjoyment. There’s generations who are drug literate.

“Whatever their poison, they know how to get the best out of it. As human beings we’re all buzz monkeys. Within the raving community especially, we’re all buzz monkeys and we understand that a lot better than other people.

“There’s not a lot of victims that come from rave, few go off the rails and I’d argue they’d go off the rails if they weren’t raving anyway. Raving has educated a lot more people than harmed.”

If anything, rave could be seen as the most defiant protest of all. Ignoring the media, ignoring the criticism, partying through it, through the years.

Today it’s still fighting laws, industries but also now it’s fighting their fellow promoters and prejudices that come with this new desentised age.

“I’ve wanted to put on warehouse parties for a while and its on lockdown. You’ve got the Shoreditch trendies that control it and I’m locked out.

“I’ll go to these venues and they say no because they regard themselves above ravers on the evolutionary ladder. They think they’re cooler but musically what they’re representing is not that far from what we are.

“We’re still underground dance music and they’re using our DJs but  presenting it differently. There’s a them and us situation happening again.”

RM later showed us the flyers for his next party: one glossy for the old-time ravers, the other a matte finish for Shoreditch haunts. It’s all about appeal.

On a separate occassion speaking to Wayne Anthony; he agreed how rave’s impact then and now can’t be disregarded.

“The mainstream media may ignore the gravity of this period in history but I’m sure at some point they will recognise the general shift in our behavior.

“The youth of today are fighting for their very existence, a whole different approach than we had during Acid House.”

“Academics, scholars and historians note the influence music of the sixties played on our social development and I personally feel the origins of the rave scene, Acid House, hasn’t yet been given the true credit it deserves in history books.”

There’s still something to be learnt from the impulses of Raindance, of rave and in a warped-hippy sense of the word: community.

Hedonism shouldn’t be feared, just as the media and the police shouldn’t be either.

While we, the youth, are being accused of criminality and laziness perhaps we need to look wider at what’s really going on.

Or maybe we should all just take another fucking E.

Raindance’s 22nd Birthday is at The Coronet this October 1. For more information visit:

raindanceravefestival.com.