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Britannia rules the raves again
Partying like it’s 1989? These days, as rave veteran Sarah Champion discovers, the kids are as young as 12, the drug is laughing gas, the venues are forest glades and the music is harder and faster. One thing hasn’t changed, though – trying to keep one step ahead of the police.
Is this it? We pass a Little Chef and turn off the A road into a shadowy lay-by. It’s the second to last Saturday in August, yet as dark as November with a steady drizzle. Our beams illuminate a chain of parked cars. One flashes in welcome, as if to say, ‘Yes, you’re here.’ We take a slot near the rear of the convoy. A figure in a rain jacket moves along the line, urgently barking: ‘The police have blocked the road, we’ve got to go now.’ A 100 or so shapes emerge from steamed-up vehicles, bass blasting from each. The buzz is infectious, everyone primed for action.
This is the culmination of a day’s frantic texting and posting on internet forums. I had to find out for myself whether there was any truth behind the headlines declaring a rave revival this summer. Their eyes on the drinking mayhem in our cities, the police appear to have been caught off guard in the past three months by a series of well-organised raves that arrived out of nowhere. In May Cornwall police broke up a party of 2,000 in Davidstow, seizing £3,000 in cash, drugs worth £40,000 and 12 lorries loaded with sound equipment. More raves followed. Was this another summer of love? Or a bunch of old clubbers who never went away, joined by bumper crowds due to July’s heat wave? As a veteran of the 80s scene – both as a clubber and dance music journalist – I was curious.
With tomorrow’s bank holiday signalling the last blast of the hedonist season, police have been warning of giant illegal parties kicking off. One local paper printed an appeal for anyone who has ‘seen large numbers of vehicles gathering near woods or rural car parks, fliers advertising raves, or broken padlocks on access gates’ to report it immediately. Hoping to stay one step ahead, the organisers of a gathering in Kent moved it forward to last weekend.
All we know, as we cruise through the Blackwall Tunnel at 10.30pm, is that Kent’s ‘big one’ is to happen in a forest between Canterbury and Dover. Our driver is a Lydd Airport party veteran, our photographer was at World Dance, and I grew up on raves. So we’re sceptical about what we’ll find. At 11pm a text directs us to the lay-by near Maidstone.
There a voice yells, ‘Go, go, go!’ as if we’re leaping from the trenches into battle. In clusters of five we sprint across the wet Tarmac and jump the central barrier, unnerved by blinding beams of oncoming traffic. Someone’s pointing to a gap in the undergrowth, ‘Down there, over the barbed wire.’ We scramble down a muddy bank and suddenly we’re in a cornfield, and I’m excited and laughing. Yeah, this really is something like the old days.
The night has flashbacks to the cat-and-mouse games in pursuit of ‘orbital’ acid house parties in 1988. Personally, I experienced the dawn of the movement indoors. At the Hacienda in 1989 I danced in a haze of dry ice and lasers to Chicago house tunes and the British music inspired by it (then called ‘acid house’, the term ‘rave’ not coined until the Nineties). After closing time at 2am word would spread of warehouse parties in Lancashire industrial estates or in derelict mills on the outskirts of the city (later they’d all become designer apartments).
At 14 I’d fallen for the punk and indie bands my hometown of Manchester was famed for, but my life was transformed by these events. I didn’t listen to another rock record for 10 years. I followed the party to London and out to the fields where I would find myself dancing to early trance and techno on wasteland near Dagenham or hillsides in Sussex.
A decade on and it’s suddenly like being back there. There’s a stile, a hill, more barbed wire and then we’re in verdant woodland, emerging into the most perfect party spot I’ve ever seen: a lush green hollow surrounded by trees…
Shes a bit out of touch for a music journo though if she wasn’t aware free parties had continued all through the mid-late 90s (there was a brief lull when the CJA enforcement got really harsh but they picked up again because of the law actually bringing together the hedonists and activists…
And during the early days of Blair and the dot-com euphoria the rest of society weren’t that bothered about them and treated them as low level mischief-making rather than real crime.
There were young-uns (and girls often started earlier than boys) attending the raves back in the 1990s as well… 13/14 years old etc, and music increased in BPM around 1992.
TBH I reckon if she is not be aware of this (and given the tunes she mentions as her personal anthems) she must have started early, then quit in the early 1990s to attend University and since then has spent the rest of her days editing books and competing for media jobs rather than partying!
Aye, and the early 90’s were really the best years – pre CJA, and a party most every weekend through 91, 92, and 93…Came to Scotland at the end of 93, and the party scene was really just taking off up here, so fell into a similar pattern (the 400mile round trip to a party that wasn’t even guaranteed to be on…:weee::weee::weee: – stopping the car to listen for bassline on the wind…Oh, and a club called Sativa…:weee::weee::weee:).
Wasn’t until ’93 – ’94 that the music started to splinter, and get pigeon holed too – first into breakbeat and hardcore, then endless anally retentive style variations (which IMO was a real shame – suddenly after years of a scene based on unity, and common purpose, it started to splinter into cliques, and little ‘style’ parties, where only 1 style of music was played. And people started looking down their noses at anything that wasn’t played in a particular style. Really TBH, who gives a toss what the music is, as long as the atmosphere is good, and you can dance/meet like minded people?)
Any DJ who will only play 1 style of music is just a lazy bugger IMO, and can’t be bothered to stretch themselves. You play whatever is good, and makes the party rock – who cares if you have trouble mixing it???
Best thing with PV radio is that most of the DJ’s will play tunes from any styleraaaraaaraaa. How it should be done.
Anyone remember the meets at the Pear Tree park and ride in Oxford?
Wasn’t it nice of them to set up a convenient meet spot that could take 1000’s of cars. Place used to end up totally jammed at midnight on Fridays and Saturdays…
Biggest understatement of the day matey.:groucho:
“In May Cornwall police broke up a party of 2,000 in Davidstow, seizing £3,000 in cash, drugs worth £40,000 and 12 lorries loaded with sound equipment.”
h ah ah ah ah aha ha ha
wildly misinformed as well
2,000 people? hmm tripple that and a bit more love, 12 lorries loaded with rigs? half of that….and i would hardly call a Luton a lorry…
silly bitch.
probably 40 and wears combats at home so her kids think she’s still “with it”
I like both :groucho:
AS YOU WELL KNOW THERE WAS A RIOT ON THE ESSEX / CAMBRIDGESHIRE BORDER IN GREAT
CHESTERFORD OVER AUGUST BANK HOLIDAY WEEKEND WHEN SEVERAL HUNDRED RIOT POLICE
MOVED IN TO SHUT DOWN THE FESTIVAL ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON/EVENING. THERE WAS NO
COMMUNICATION MADE BY THE POLICE TO THE ORGANISERS OR PEOPLE AT THE VENUE. THE
ONLY ANNOUNCEMENTS MADE WERE BY A HELICOPTER WHICH IS FAIRLY HARD TO HEAR WHEN
YOU HAVE A SOUND SYSTEM PLAYING LOUD MUSIC IN FRONT OF YOU.
ALL SOUND SYSTEM’S WERE SEIZED, RIG VANS & AUDIO EQUIPMENT SMASHED TO PIECES BY
RIOT POLICE. RIG OWNERS PERSONAL POSSESSIONS WERE ALSO SEIZED. PEOPLE HAVE BEEN
TOLD THE RIGS WILL NOT BE RETURNED UNTIL THE CASE HAS GONE TO COURT WHICH COULD
BE YEARS.
A LARGE NUMBER OF PARTY PEOPLE WERE INJURED AND SOME ARE STILL IN HOSPITAL TO
THIS DAY. A GIRL RECEIVED A VERY SERIOUS NECK INJURY WHERE SHE WAS ASLEEP IN HER
TENT AND RIOT POLICE PURPOSLELY TRAMPLED OVER IT. ONE PERSON MAY HAVE LOST THE
SIGHT IN HIS EYE FROM WHERE A POLICE OFFICER BATTERED HIM AROUND THE HEAD WITH A
BATTON FOR NO REASON, CS GAS WAS SPRAYED INTO CROWDS OF PEOPLE, IT WAS ALSO
SPRAYED ON YOUNG GIRLS, CHILDREN UNDER THE AGE OF 13. POLICE DOGS WERE ALLOWED
TO ATTACK GIRLS, CHILDREN AND OTHER PEOPLE. AND MANY MANY OTHERS HAVE CUTS AND
BRUISES FROM THIS AWFUL CASE OF POLICE BRUTALITY.
THIS HAS TO BE THE WORST CASE OF POLICE BRUTALITY IN THE RAVE SCENE SINCE THE
1990’S AND WE ARE NOT PREPARED TO SIT BY AND ACCEPT THAT THIS IS NORMAL
BEHAVIOUR.
SO IF YOU BELEIVE YOU WERE MISTREATED BY THE PEOPLE WHO ARE PAID TO SERVE AND
PROTECT THE PUBLIC THEN COME TO THE PROTEST OUTSIDE HARLOW POLICE STATION AT 2PM
ON SATURDAY TO SHOW YOUR SUPPORT AND HELP US FIGHT FOR THE RIGHT TO PARTY.
IF YOU WERE HIT BY A POLICE OFFICER OR SUSTAINED AN INJURY OR HAD YOUR PROPERTY
DAMAGED AND DONT WANT TO SEE THINGS LIKE THIS BECOMING A REGULAR OCCURANCE THEN
COME AND STAND UP FOR WHAT YOU BELEIVE IN.
THERE WILL BE PRESS FROM SEVERAL NEWSPAPERS PRESENT SO
THIS IS OUR CHANCE TO GET OUR SIDE OF THE STORY ACROSS, THE TRUTH.
THIS IS INTENDED TO BE A PEACEFUL PROTEST
ADDRESS:
HARLOW POLICE STATION.
POST CODE: CM2 6DA
2.PM
ESSEX.
= THANKYOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT =
= SEE YOU THERE =
= UNiTED SOUNDS =
P.S NEXT UNiTED SOUNDS PARTY VERY SOON. WATCH THIS SPACE. DEM THINK ITS OVER BUT
WERE NOT DONE YET………..
_________________
jonahug
And during the early days of Blair and the dot-com euphoria the rest of society weren’t that bothered about them and treated them as low level mischief-making rather than real crime.
There were young-uns (and girls often started earlier than boys) attending the raves back in the 1990s as well… 13/14 years old etc, and music increased in BPM around 1992.
TBH I reckon if she is not be aware of this (and given the tunes she mentions as her personal anthems) she must have started early, then quit in the early 1990s to attend University and since then has spent the rest of her days editing books and competing for media jobs rather than partying!
I know Sarah well. Top journalist and also a top author. She and many other peeps from Manchester was disillusioned by the way the the Hac and many other legendary clubs in the city were taken over by local ‘firms’ and hence the infamous term ‘Gunchester’ originated from. The Lancashire raves she is referring to were the famous Blackburn warehouse parties where traffic brought this small town to a standstill at 2/3am every weekend. Ahhhhhh. Halcyon days:bounce_fl :bounce_fl :bounce_fl
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Forums › Rave › Free Parties & Teknivals › Britannia Rules the Raves
