British rave scene '90-'92 RFI, C/D?

I wasn't a proper raver though, more of an interested spectator.

They were interesting times but (Like Chris) I was more of an interested observer. My main problem being that I didn't (don't) like the music in general. Dull, dull beats. The odd classic too, but mostly k-rub.

although there were still quite a few illegal parties in warehouses, even after the crackdown of castlemorton spiral tribe in summer 92(?) which was supposedly the last of the mega outdoor raves, and which shut down the convoy crusty culture which had affiliated itself to the edges of the rave scene, particularly in the south, where there was more rural land.

92 a very strange hotschpotch of people in the rave scene, from ALL social backgrounds. still primarily working class, proletarian, but suburban in the uk sense of the word, not really an inner city music. ie more essex than london, more huddersfield than leeds, more wigan than manchester, more stoke than birmingham. the proleness is overplayed by revisionist history, but yes it was a working class scene in the tradition of northern soul (many of the clubs, or at least the towns, were the same as in the northern soul days)

it was simultaneously mainstream and subcultural. for example, a record like Jonny L ~ Hurt You So would be caned all around the country and heard and known by thousands and thousands of people, but would make no dint on the world at large (some of these records you have, mary, on cdr). ie, these records would not crossover into the charts, this was primarily because people didnt really buy the records, and there were no compilations (save a few KAOS theory type things, which were a bit bizarre and would include very few actual rave tracks). people would by the djmix tapes from the events, people like sy, grooverider, mickey finn, jumpin jack frost, easygroove, carl cox, stu allen.

the interesting thing about rave is that true crossover never really happened, this was because the scene hyperventilated and then imploded spectacularly at some point during 1993, it was as though 500,000 people jumped off a cliff at once, some had built up 2 years or so too much class a action, i had been around for maybe 4 months. it was a very young scene, most people around the same age - which is why most ravers even now are still 25-30. it was interesting to see the thing get really too mental in such a short space of time. reynolds covers this well, hedonism for hedonisms sake, not even enjoyment towards the end, then paranoia, fear, overdose, the clubs shut down, the scene basically put itself into hospital.

then only darkness, cinders, some went back to house music instead of hardcore, some into retrodance, the darkness scene faltered on, until in london it eventually became jungle, and a new scene born, very anti-chemical (pro-dope though)

so, the crossover never really happened, and it remained a totally populist subculture throughout its entire duration

I said something very similar on another thread ages ago, can't remember for the life of me what thread though.

i was too young to go to the raves but i soaked up every last drop of the music i could squeeze out of TV, radio, pirate radio, mixtapes, record shops and the music press. what i do remember is something of a music press backlash occurring in 1993 partly based on the trend for sampling kids TV shows (Roobarb & Custard, Sesame's Street, Trumpton etc.) in many of the tunes that were supposedly underground anthems (tho many of them bypassed that stage altogether and just went straight into the top 10 based on the false notion they HAD been big underground anthems). as a result the scene pretty much split into two - happy hardcore and jungle, and the various factors gareth mentioned also seemed to break the whole thing up in due course.

and the breakage of the scene into happyhardcore and jungle was not due to the novelty tunes, which had dissipated by then. it was the growing moodyness of the clubs, which began to be reflected in the darkness scene. i dont think it split into happy hardcore and jungle immediately either. i think the majority of the original scene went dark, and the happy hardcore stuff appeared as reaction to that, and kind of cut itself off (also this was geographic...mainly in scotland). the implosion of the scene was quite fast, and HH clubs never really took off in much of the country, because the numbers dropped drastically, with most people moving either into house, or the emerging trance/harthouse style clubs (eg feb93, well before HH, the orbit stopped booking rave djs overnight, and went totally germany/usa/holland techno and trance).

and jungle didnt emerge immediately out of rave at all, there was a long period of darkness stuff that reynolds identifies (although i think simon misses out totally in that at the same time as this there were a lot of vibey/twinkly manix/house crew/prodhouse tunes). so as well as getting darker, there was also a more vibey reaction, which was also anti-saccharine. jungle then began to emerge from the shrunken scene

but then the majority of those tunes are 91 era tunes, which is kind of before hardcore went into overdrive

different perspectives i guess, but i'd still say the 'toytown techno/cartoon theme' element of a lot of the hits was 50% of the catalyst for happy hardcore (the other half being the pure ecstasy-driven hyperventilation of the scene thing....i think what i mean by the split is the way people i knew seemed to suddenly divide almost overnight into jungle or happy hardcore camps...so that split seemed quite immediate although i admit this is probably a warped memory and things did take a bit longer to really evolve/mutate like that

i knew a few people around using the term 'jungle' back in '93 (maybe even '92) but i wasnt really sure what they meant at first...they were referring to any rave tracks with a ragga element, sample etc including musical elements as well as vocal so DMS 'Vengeance' counted as much as Brothers Grimm 'Exodus' - both on Production House records! this was before people like Roni Size really started coming through so the definitions were a lot more flexible and admittedly confusing at that time. but looking back everyone talks about Shut Up & Dance, Lenny D'Ice, Smith & Mighty being the jungle blueprints and some of A Guy Called Gerald's stuff from '93 was getting called jungle - but it was more along the lines of Metalheadz, Reinforced (whe they went dark), V and Ibiza rather than the dancehall-sampling stuff

half-truth from me...i was thinking about Mixmag's attitude with regards to the infamous Prodigy baiting - they promised XL, Liam and co a big feature but then it got turned into a big 'have The Prodigy killed rave?' thing. its a shame Record Mirror folded at this time as i think they were being a lot more supportive and approving of the rave scene then Melody maker and NME, not sure about Sounds - wasnt reading any of those last 3 at that time.

That's not really my memory of it: I remember being struck by the age range. It's possibly true that the older people I saw wouldn't describe themselves as 'ravers' and so if you *do* meet a raver it's from the younger lot...?

stevem is right in that breakbeathardcore was referred to as 'jungle techno' certainly as far as back as early 92 and probably 91, but jungle as a tangible entity, separate from rave wasnt until late 93

robin your experience sounds similar to how 12 years olds now get their parents to buy them skate, metal and punk clothes...and you see 8 years olds in Slipknot or Nirvana T-shirts even if they've never even heard the music properly or really understand the difference between said acts. i'm not really opposed to this but it is quite funny. it would be like me wearing a Metallica shirt when i was a kid basically...and indeed when i was around 11 or 12 i was wearing the most awful clothers ever, mostly influenced by rave culture (yes, tie-dye shirts, fluorescent sweatpants, hooded tops with stupid psychedelic patterns on them...absolutely terrifying stuff. the difference was i didnt wear bands as brands until around 16 but maybe i was uncommon in that respect)

I think it's a pretty safe bet that they DO. But then again, I haven't talked to many eight year old kids recently about music, so what do I know?

I think if I was 11 or 12 now then I'd be well into Slipknot and co, just as when I was 11 years ago I remember walking to school listening to tapes with virtually all these tunes on (bought in WHSmiths and Woolies and so forth so the music must've gone pretty fucking overground) and loving it, as did loads of my mates. Ironically, I think if I'd been old enough to actually go to a rave at the time I would've hated the music, the scene and everything it stood for.

now that, in retrospect, the superclub (94-00?) era seems to have waned, that perhaps can be looked at differently, but at the time it seemed a gradual and incremental conquering of britains nightlife, so much so that it became the default option (whereas rave seemed to exist in parallel, it didnt change mainstream nightlife in the way that house/club culture did because you had to drive specifically to either oddball warehouses or, later on, small towns in the middle of nowhere)

well i didnt really know 'Ooh I Like It' at that time but i HATED 'Hurt You So' like i hated all high pitched pinky perky rave stuff, i did love a lot of tracks that were similar musically tho

you see 8 years olds in Slipknot or Nirvana T-shirts even if they've never even heard the music properly or really understand the difference between said acts.
I think it's a pretty safe bet that they DO. But then again, I haven't talked to many eight year old kids recently about music, so what do I know?

i think what i meant to say there was 'they don't CARE what the difference is' - they see it as loud energetic music and they are loud energetic kids hence the appeal' i'm sure thats how i wouldve felt, i remember thinking Iron Maiden were cool and also Def Leppard, but i cant remember if i ever thought/cared about the difference much

"and a pinch of irony and self-deprecation".

"sounds delicious"

"you should see what's for pudding"

I still think glo-stix are risible. Ravers would have been better if they wore BATWINGS.

Rave still lives but in a much reduced form. There's still a lot of sound systems out there. If you come over again during a summer we'll have to take you out there.

Well there were plenty of private school educated people *I* knew who were in the scene. Not me. (I'm saying private not public cause I don't know if they were as posh as you, Mark!)

Wanting Sky but not able to afford it = Working Class

Wanting Sky but able to afford it = Upper working / lower middle

Not wanting Sky but being able to afford it = middle class*

(* - if you also didn't have a telly, then add two points in our super bourgeois booster round)

My Mum and Dad got Sky in August 1990 using free tokens in the super-soaraway Sun. Thems were the days when it were all free...

I think you are conflating the lower middle classes and the nouveau riche in your analysis, though.

What has this got to do with raving?

i got satellite TV on the cheap soon after - in fact this year marks ten years of satellite/cable in my household - we're holding a big rave in the bedroom to commemorate

if i understand your question, simon sez that it was bc of a crack down on the london rave in clubs scene by the authorities, and also maybe an infiltration of undesirables into the elite london club rave scene, leading things to leave london at first, then totally sweep england....

i don't know how i feel about this whole dark thing, it is an intriguing concept, i want to believe it, but...something about simon's sweeping historical narrative is too pat, too easy...

The above posts remind me of something, did the rave mentality really tranquilize the whole football hooligan scene for a few years, as sr claims?

OK now let's open this question up to the Americans:

Who in this bitch was a raver, pre-93?

once the CJB took effect their onus was on promoters to concentrate on staging events in licensed buildings rather than outdoors maybe? altho events like Tribal Gathering survived and even flourished for a while before the ultra-corporate Homelands and Creamfields type things took over. meanwhile clubs like Ministry Of Sound, Back To Basics and Cream had become hugely popular by the mid 90s, and were attracting an evermore mainstream crowd? as a safer more marketable concept superclubs took over from the rave scene at this point perhaps.

regarding the football hooligans thing, that ties in with the old Boys Own fanzine which i THINK had some tenuous connection with football and/or hooligans, either regarding the pasts of some its authors (not sure who but contributors included Nicky Holloway and Farley & Heller, possibly also Andy Weatherall - and i think at least Holloway and Weatherall were football fans and incorporated an element of that into the fanzine) and/or a faction of its readership. i could be totally wrong about that but i'm sure i read something to that effect a while ago. anyway the idea was that raving and clubbing had 'saved' some of these people from an unsavoury fate from being involved in football-related troubles in the past.

it also reminds me of the Happy Mondays anecdote - Bez and co giving squaddies at the Hacienda ecstasy tablets and watching them turn from aggressive thugs into loved up pillheads...an exaggeration perhaps but suggestive.

arg: beat me to the punch!

it went all speed-y and tacky after that, but for a while there it was very cool.

See where you are coming from with the Todd Terry Day in the Life track but that was really a different era - acid house. Todd Terry paved the way for UK producers like Shut up and Dance and 4 Hero that fused hip hop breaks with house.

By the time of 91 and 92 Todd Terry was a distant memory

Interesting that all the people I know who were into hardcore at this time followed the same musical path - electro/ breakdancing into hip hop into acid house into hardcore. It was after this that everyone went their separate ways musically - some into techno, some house, some jungle, some back into hip hop etc

Also i enjoyed this era because it was before all the rock / indie people got into dance and they were still turning their noses up at this computer music. Before Chemical Bros, Underworld etc made it cool for students to listen to music without guitars

but he came back big time a few years later, reviving the career of Everything But The Girl with the 'Missing' remix and re-releasing 'Jumpin' which was an absolutely storming track and still is. ironically he ended up making a drum n bass based album in '97/'98 but i never heard it - did anyone?

You do know that Ron runs his record store about 200 feet from where I live, right Spencer? ;-)

also, I didn't know that Mr Core started a store down there Ned. I knew that he used to work at DMC on Melrose. Doc Martin worked at Prime Cuts on Santa Monica. Barry Weaver worked at the upstairs Street Sound on Melrose.

The nicest/coolest DJ was Steve Loria who used to work at Beat Non Stop. all those places have gone way down hill.

Yus, Dr. Freecloud's. Was down further towards the coast for many years and has now moved up to the Lab near where I am.

I started clubbing in ’88 (in NE England) just after all the E started turning up. I guess acid house was 1988-89, and I remember a lot of the music having light latin-style rhythms and there being a lot of piano house, then later in the evening this switching to trancey 303-based stuff.

In 1990 it all got more intense: sirens and strobes and the kind of deep bass that goes right through you, and a cocktail of drugs to enhance the sensory overload.

In retrospect I prefer the summery joie de vivre of the acid house days to the futuristic head-fuck of rave, but that might cos I’m an old fart now.