I first encountered raves at University in about 1990, I went out of curiosity and because I found the music interesting. The first couple I went to were actually quite scary as I had never seen anything like it; thousands of people dancing, intense music and light/lasers the like of which you just didn’t see at other events. From these first events, I then went to Glastonbury festival through the early 90’s; the rave seen was really developing in at this time, mainly in the market areas of the festival. It felt lawless, exciting and quite subversive which really appealed to me.
By 1993 I went from going to raves, to organising raves. For people of my age this was our Punk Rock; for people in the 1970’s Punk Rock changed everything and still shapes music today, I was too young for this at the time. The emerging rave seen of the early 1990s and the electronic sounds of house and techno were also changing everything. It was hard to resist!
You cannot separate the Rave scene from the use of the drug Ecstasy. about 80% of the people at these parties were using Ecstasy and this created a wild, but warm and friendly environment. Barriers were broken down, people started communicating so the people were very open; which was a massive difference to the alcohol influenced mainstream club scene.
The people at the parties wore casual clothes Jeans, baggy t shirts etc; lots of bucket hats and smiley t shirts. People were dancing and just having fun; there were some issues with people overdoing it and the welfare provision at these early parties was fairly limited as was the drugs education; this all developed later. The people were generally, under 30, very mixed in terms of genders; it was quite a white scene in terms of ethnicity, but this could have been due to where we were growing up/ going to University.
You could never really see the DJ’s but they were central to the whole experience. For Women, the rave scene represented a welcome break from drunk blokes hitting on them as the scene had a more respectful vibe, the music and dancing was central as opposed to the pick up joints that most clubs were at the time. Equally, for the Gay clubber, the rave scene was very tolerant compared to mainstream society. These were all good things.
Yes I was at events where the Police turned up; their reaction depended on their capabilities – I was at some parties that were so big that the Police didn’t have the manpower to shut them down; in this event they just contained the event by preventing people from accessing by closing roads; I was also at smaller events where the Police seized the generator or sound system to stop the parties.
it was a mixed experience; rarely did the Police try to arrest anyone other than the party organisers, although these people were often hard to identify! The Police would target drug dealers; this was understandable as significant amounts of money were being made, often by organised crime groups.
It was all very secret and very exciting; locations were kept secret until the very last minute to avoid Police detection; often parties were accessed through phone numbers where a meet location was confirmed and from there you would follow in a convoy of cars. It was very unpredictable, sometimes you would find the party, sometime you didn’t!
As the events became more organised, you could buy tickets and the whole experience was more professional. The “free party” scene ran through the 90’s but was eventually thwarted by the Criminal Justice Bill and the Conservative government introduced legislation which allowed them to crack down heavily on the organisers.
