Party Vibe

I was around in 1991, partying then and looking back although the rave scene was new I think its not that much worse now and better in many respects.

the “back in the day” videos you see are cleverly edited to make the events look brighter and bigger than they actually were, and to pick out the best footage – which is easy to do if you know a bit about video and photography and have artistic/creative skills

As early as 1992 there was already lots of problems with gangs and robberies at commercial and free raves (even occasionally stabbings and gun violence) – if you listen to mixtapes from around that time a lot of the MC’s chat about this.

The “free” parties still had a lot of fairly hardcore gangsters using them to get paid by drugs deals (and look at the £9 charge for the warehouse party, today its often only £5!) and there was a lot of ruthless stuff what went down round those times.

this was one reason why the CJA got passed – Govt isn’t that stupid and sussed out on the extent to which the drug culture had taken over this country, how laws we were being ignored and the system was being blagged and played and the state fought back.

The CJA came and there was a harsh clampdown which lasted a few years, but where “they” fucked up was by clamping down on hippies/protesters at the same time bringing the two groups together and creating solidarity between them (which lasted for about 10 years after the CJA!)

In 1997 or so the free party scene picked up again until 2004 when the greater clampdowns started – this IMO was the best part of the scene in many areas (it became a lot more accessible particularly to the point where a group of young people could easily get a rig and do their own raves, also computers and techology have vastly increased creative opportunities)

So I would say you haven’t actually missed out on all that much 🙂

I went to (and helped out with) a few warehouse parties in London 1994/1995; the crew I was with worked closely with Debby from United Systems; and around that time also started making videos of the events; unfortunately my analogue tapes went missing during various house moves over the years before I had the chance to convert them to digital.

Of course there were many some decent ones as well and this underground scene was often way better safety wise than many commercial events but my honest reply to the young woman about what I experienced covered a much wider period of time than a couple of years and lot more events and areas than one small part of London in the mid 90s. (some friends of mine did indeed go to the events you mention and they found them good).

It also discussed the scene in a town called Reading where I lived for many years where we really did have a fun, safe and creative scene for a good few years but (perhaps because) it was overshadowed by London this might not be well known.

It was also in the context of a lot of overly nostalgic media coverage around 2006/07 about the early 1990s rave scene (including the commercial events) as a whole which was giving younger people a wrong idea of what things were really like. I have never believed in telling lies to people and covering up bad news; I leave that to politicians and mainstream journos…

Of course the 90s were fun and interesting times or none of us would have kept on partying through the era and I have a lot of respect for what Debby and Advance Party and others tried to do but these parties weren’t perfect, nothing is – and unless things went really shit in your life you are always likely to look with some nostalgia on the area in which you spent the most of your youth and grew up. Although I really am as bloody old as it says in my profile, and started right at the beginning (I was into the music in late 80s long before I ever touched drugs) my honest personal experience was that I had my best times partying during the later part of the decade and the start of the 21st century.

It is clearly influenced bby my other long standing interests in technology and music but I strongly feel that we had just the right balance of networked technology (and equipment to make music and other multimedia) around this era – the Internet was around but not to such an extent it took over everything. This website and forum (one of the few survivors from that era) is a big part of this.