Footage of "illegal rave" from 1989

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Frankie Knuckles was good house music. Iā€™m not a fan of the genre much, but Frankie et al I have time for.

Looks like the morning after to me; the hardcore are still dancing, and the rest are zonked out & wandering aimlessly.

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So thatā€™s it? Just some awkwardly clad people awkwardly moving to awkward music? Iā€™ve never been to a rave, even though I am that old but I also get why the hype never reached me. Itā€™s just a lame event for lame people, right. Anyway: I never understood why it was illegal to meet up as a group, listen to music and dance. Whatā€™s the story whith these illegal raves? The only thing illegal are the drugs and you can get these in every countryside discotheque. Maybe the UK police failed to control the rave drug market. Is that it? No idea.

Because it was that generationā€™s (mine) thing. And the scale and intensity blew mainstream youth culture of the water. And at the start, at least, it was ours. We did it, off our own backs. Made the music in bedrooms on cheap equipment: paired-up record decks, Atari STs and old keyboards, cobbled together the sound rigs and scouted out the spaces. No bouncers, no club owners, no corporations, no entrance fees, no reason to leave til weā€™d stopped having fun, or the police got their act together and chased us off. Iā€™ve seen raves run for weeks. The apotheosis for me was the summer of '92. Lechlade, Castlemorton, Smeetharpe, Spiral Tribeā€™s warehouse parties and the rest. That shit was fun. London Acid Techno in a dirty basement still makes my hair stand on end.

ETA: and no, you couldnā€™t get those drugs at any cow-town disco then. Ecstasy was Ā£25-30 a pop round that time. It didnā€™t drop below a tenner til the mid-90s. 1989 you had to know the right people.

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the point of them was similar to the goals of going to any legal clubā€“loud music, fun, and dancing. why they were better was they were put on by members of the scene for the scene, your participation was more valuable since you were considered part of it rather than a consumer to be exploited (well, in theory, anyway.) they were a more direct line to cutting edge music and djs rather than being filtered thru a club that had to be more conservative to sustain itā€™s business (or just ran by older people). and finally, no time constraints. they were illegal mostly due to bypassing things like permits and fire code. I think a fair amount of the promoters were basically using them to sell ecstasy and it was probably pretty easy to use drugs to pay people, but Iā€™m guessing here. The party scene I was in was later and different music, a lot of it was structured around regularly scheduled warehouse/clubs that opened after 3am when the legal clubsā€™ bars had to close. they had fully illegal bars set up and you could openly smoke weed and just be how you would be at a friendā€™s houseparty but with a way better dj and soundsystem.

Get lost, square!

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I missed this time by about half a decade, but even the commercial raves in Switzerland were a great time to be young. My preferred event used an abandoned factory areal as venue, the best floor was the ā€œprogressive bunkerā€ with a claustrophobic ceiling height and strobes at eye level.

Ha, just saw that someone made a memento video of the areal:

Good times.

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OH, OH - Shamen, any one?

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Aaaah, yes, BUT, the same time as that, THIS was also in the charts:

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That sounds much moreā€¦ heavyā€¦experimental? But very German. Reminds me of this other song I heard one time. I think they are German too, and it is what the kids are calling Industrial nowadays. (Industrial has to have guitar in it!)

Rotterdam Termination Source are OG heavy techno, which later morphed into gabba (THE SONG OF MY PEOPLE!!!) Cyber Goth is a much more recent thing. Nothing spawns sub-genres like dance music. Especially drum & bass. Iā€™ve pretty much given up on keeping track of them, mind. D&B was at its peak ;95 to '01. Case in point:

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I feel like electronica, for me at least, peaked right around 1998. But keep it up for a few more years. So 95-01 is a really good range of probably the best stuff.

But yes, there are so many sub genres of electronica, I canā€™t keep track.

By your posted link, I assume you like things like Future Sound of London and maybe Atari Teenage Riot?

ETA eh - wait, re-listening that is less D&B than I remember it. Just darker sounding like your sample.

There was one whistle. I know this because when I saw it I thought, ā€œThereā€™s the annoying one!ā€

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The illegal part was usually the whole trespassing thing. Also, no permits, little to no safety stuff on hand for an event with hundreds of people, etc.

You were fun in college

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It always confused me how Manchester NH could have such a big underground dance scene-- groups like Autechre would play NH but then skip right over Boston and Providence. I knew a lot of people who made the trek North for those shows.

Iā€™ve not been to college, you very smart person. I dropped out and lived as a punk, a squatter, a busker, built the foundations for places that are still used for concerts and party events these days, three decades later.

Haha, yeah. Terrible stuff. I say that as a fan of darkwave and industrial of the very first hour and until now. All these bands you hear at German ā€˜darkā€™ parties like And One, Wumpscut, etc. with their extreme macho allures have shaped an image that is far, far away from the experimental fun of early dark electro. 'll rather stick to my guns with Vomito Negro, Front 242 or Throbbing Gristle ranther than this teutonic marching beat :wink:

BTW, nothing to do with the distinctive Rotterdam sound of RTS which is much more extatic.

Okay. Now Iā€™ve got a better idea of what was going on. Honestly I wasnā€™t much into rave music at that time. Itā€™s only later on I found some acts of that time that appealed to me, like ATR or Autechre.
I despised the emerging Techno scene here in Germany, which had the same roots but a different character.