Party Vibe

The Great Central Conspiracy

How mainstream media tried (and failed) to infiltrate (and attempt to destroy) the underground rave scene.

In 1970, a chap called Lew Grade built a massive TV studio complex in the centre of Birmingham for his very successful ITV regional station ATV.

Lew was well known as a flamboyant showman with roots in the old skool variety entertainment business (Bruce Forsyth stylee!) and cared for music as much as pictures – it was hardly surprising then that this studio complex contained one of the best equipped multi-track sound recording studios in the Midlands and a music production company (ATV Music), responsible for launching the careers of many of the emerging punk/ska bands of the late 70s/early 80s (and Cliff Richard J ).

They also pioneered the “anarchic youth TV show format” with pop show “Revolver” hosted by Peter Cook as a moaning old git who hated punk music – and more famously their Saturday morning childrens/teenagers show Tiswas – which interestingly enough featured all the new young bands that ATV Music had signed (particularly the Two-Tone ska outfits from the Midlands) – for all its chaos and it was as much an early exercise in marketing to the youth as S-Club!

Credit where credit is due, it was a brilliant TV show to grow up with :D, and those of a certain age may fondly remember the studio address ATV Land, BIRMINGHAM B1 2JP being read out amongst scenes of chaos by one Chris Tarrant.

(younger people – think of a more sophisticated(!) version of Dick and Dom in da Bungalow…)

Back then he was an anarchic comedy genius he’s better known nowadays for wearing a grey suit and a pained expression whilst he uses police-style psychological warfare tactics to prevent a member of the public walking away with a million pounds.

As the 80s progressed ATV became Central Television, the TV industry became even more competitive, and a new management team looked towards squeezing as much revenue as possible from their assets such as studios and equipment.

Much of the TV work had been moved to the newer Nottingham studios constructed in 1983 under Government directives to replace those in the “out of region” area of Elstree, Hertfordshire (now BBC facilities and home to Eastenders); Birmingham was increasingly becoming an expensive white elephant, although still used for live presentation and master transmission purposes.

Somewhere along the line, a Central staffer had the bright idea of hiring out the Birmingham sound recording studio and using spare admin resource to provide other production/marketing services for local musicians as had previously been done with ATV – the spin-off company Central Music was formed.

In 1989/90 the first illegal raves hit the UK, and one popular track there was Longsy D’s “This is Ska” – a mixture of Acid House and Ska samples! This was one of the first tracks produced and remixed by Central Music; the Central TV logo and the B1 2JP address is even featured on the back of the original 12”!

A couple of years later at least one Midlands rave promoter managed to get his commercial event featured on the Central ITV Telethon! There were even rumours in the broadcast press that Central were considering investing in the large commercial raves of the time, many of which occurred in the Midlands area.

Around 1991 to 1992 Central TV crews visited nearly every commercial rave in the area; gathering footage for a “music programme” and filling their video cassettes with footage of gurning ravers.

Of course, this flirtation of the underground with what was one of the most powerful British media groups was not to last.

Central Music was disbanded for reasons unknown; and somewhere along the line the corporate types realised that there were, horror of horrors, drugs at these events!

In 1992, Central transmitted an episode of the “Cook Report” ( presented by “investigative journalist” (i.e. filthy grass) Roger Cook) entitled “Ecstasy”. It was hysterically critical of the dangers of raves and drugs; and featured all the footage that had been shot at the raves used in a very negative manner. (A few friends of mine ended up on that show and were not particularly happy about it!).

Worse still, Central passed over a lot of the footage to the Police 🙁

The fall out was tremendous. The resulting negative publicity led to the many Police forces across the UK (particularly those in the Central region) clamping down on commercial raves; venues were closed and events cancelled.

Many of those raving at the time maintain it basically ended the commercial rave scene boom time of the early 1990s, and a lot of DJs had their careers cut short as their local venues closed.

It seemed that Central having failed to infiltrate and commercialise this scene, was basically attempting to discredit and destroy it!

However things didn’t go all their way. The clampdown on licensed raves didn’t destroy the scene but forced it underground –in the Midlands and Oxfordshire (whose raves bore the brunt of the stitch up) it helped build collectives like DIY, Babble and others who kept parties going to this day in their areas.

And what happened to Central? In 1996 they were taken over by even bigger corporate fish Carlton, which in turn was recently taken over by Granada Media. The Birmingham studios were asset stripped by the various corporate rivals, gutted and their equipment sold off; and are now an empty shell becoming derelict! It seems there is justice in the world after all 😀

(And, yes I know what some people are thinking about the now empty studios; unfortunately Granada still own the building and have got rentaguards looking after it….)