They’re all so young!
200000pounds, Wembley Stadium, legal… what was underground about this other than the production company’s name?
That’s not Wembley Stadium - It’s Wembley Conference Centre next door.
Possibly the music.
1994 was around about the time when there was a lot of snobbery from Mixmag and people who went to the house music superclubs. Rave was supposed to be dead and we were embarassing them.
We didn’t care.
Rezerection had a bigger rave in 1996 with 18000 people there.
I was there celebrating passing my GCSEs and the end of compulsory education.
10,000 people? Wembly Stadium? You’re “undergrounding” the wrong way…
Ah, the warm nostalgia of Orchestra Hits and Hoovers. 
God I miss Spaced but I don’t think I’ll ever tire of watching it.
Know the culture much? MAYDAY had 24.000 people in Dortmund and 35.000 people in Berlin the same year. Techno was absolutely huge in 1994, nothing remotely underground about it.
Is this the way they say the future’s meant to feel? Or just 20,000 people standing in a field…
Man, I miss that scene.
Wow! Thanks for the trip down memory lane. Was actually scanning that video for some of my mates. Haha. I truly feel blessed to have been young at that time and place.
Aaaah, how things have (not) changed : http://youtu.be/Ui967BTddSQ (camera’s pointed at the dj’s a lot, but there are shots of the audience showing pretty much the same scene in 2014)
Raving was fairly mainstream in the UK and Europe by the mid-90s. Here in the US it was still definitely underground. I’d argue that a lot of the US techno scene is still pretty underground, even our bigger clubs. This of course excludes shitty super-parties and festivals featuring the likes of Skrillx and Deadmaus, which I am not including under the “underground techno” banner.
If by the same scene you mean that there is a bunch of people in a room listening to dance music with lights, then I guess I would agree. However, my observation would be that the 2014 video certainly lacks the energy and atmosphere from the 1994 one. Most of the people are just standing about. Hardly a smile among them. In that sense I would say it’s not the same scene at all. But you’re entitled to your opinion. I’m biased anyway.
Damn. One of the red heads in the video is the bloody double of my mate Hamish, will have to find out if he was at this.
Pupils like dinner plates, trying to chew their own eyebrows. Gorgeous.
And holy crap, that post party, echoey susurration of indistinct conversation is giving me flashbacks!
Wow, memories. I went to a few massive parties in Florida around the same era…usuaya had, probably, about 5 or 6k people, and BT played a pretty epic set. I do miss that scene!
I still have a few Strictly Underground cds - they were utterly hung up on the difference between “commercial” jungle, and “underground” drum n bass.
I’ll admit to still going to shows - Above and Beyond at msg a few months ago wasn’t too far off in feel!
I was a part of setting up Mr Floppy’s in the day… I was/am more of an acid jazzer/funkster.
When I think of London, underground, and rave, I think of huge gatherings, outdoors. That was the spirit. Not this. This video captures little else than what appears to be a scene going rapidly downhill. Even in SF, where I was enjoying an outdoor party, or three, the scene was on the wane by 1994.
My fondest memory of the rave scene in the Bay Area was in 1993, when the Richmond Civic Center was host to more than 5000 people. It was an effort to cover the medical expenses of a young Irish Wicked Clan dj who was severely injured while riding in the back of a truck hauling sound equipment after a full moon party. A video tape of Malachy, in a hospital bed back home thanking everyone who attended, was broadcast in the middle of the party.
You just couldn’t have asked for a better reason to get humanity, under one roof, dancing together.
-Derek
