They only come out at night: Is the
underground selling its soul?
Publication Title: The GLOBE and MAIL (Cover Story)
Publication Date: Saturday, Oct. 9 1993
Dateline: Montreal
Between the bank and the hair salon, Alice gyrates in a cloud of glowing violet. A
bearded man spins past her through the mist. He is wearing a purple tie-dyed
dress; strands of pearls swing from his neck. Alice remains unfazed. She knows what to
expect after stepping through the looking glass into rave country. The moment
she walked into Place Newman, an otherwise ordinary Montreal shopping mall, she entered a
dreamscape of shifting colours, throbbing music and outlandish attire. Laser-lit
and music-powered, the underground dance culture known as rave has escaped the
grey backdrop of its industrial British birthplace. Now, young people from Hong
Kong to Moscow
are flocking to secretive surrealistic parties known for their creativity and their
size. One in London
drew an ardent crowd estimated at 30,000.
To the true believer, rave is more than just a label for an
all-night dance marathon held in some unlikely location, such as an airport
hangar, library or flea market. It is an alternative Lifestyle that allows its
adherents to shed the bonds of daily existence for a Saturday-night
extravaganza cloaked in fantasy and anonymity. Rave 'has its own music, its own
dress code, its own ethos. And has a dark side.
Next to Alice ,
a young woman with ribbons in her ponytails and Tweetybird on her skirt
suddenly stops dancing, unzips her plastic Care Bears backpack and extricates a
jar of Vick's VapoRub. She smears a dot below each nostril, zips the bag back
up and resumes her frenetic dance. She is less likely to have a cold than to be
in the throes of ecstasy the street name for the drug that has come to be
associated with rave culture. Its effects are reputedly heightened by the
aromatic cold remedy.
Much confusion surrounds ecstasy, which is known to science
as methylene-dioxy-methamphetamine.
The drug is often described by its initials, MDMA. No one is
really sure whether to call it an amphetamine, a designer drug or a
psychedelic. But it is surely illegal, which is why, in addition to high energy
and great joy, most raves now feature a police presence.
The rave adventure begins with a phone call. The location is
always kept secret until about 12 hours in advance, that's when a message
appears on the organizers' phone line telling those who are mobile where to go?
which could be any place large and rentable?and those who are not where to find
the fleet of chartered buses that will take them there. A crowd has already
formed around a row of yellow school buses as Alice arrives at the preordained downtown street
corner. In her checkerboard sunglasses, neon rubber earrings and plastic orange
necklace, she blends in perfectly,. Hats straight from the pages of Dr. Seuss
bob above the crowd. A teen-aged girl sporting braids and a flower-covered
velvet bonnet swaps jokes with a young oriental man in a striped top hat. In
regular life, Alice
is a student of anthropology, and she now finds herself standing between two
interesting subjects: a man with blue hair and a teen-aged boy wearing a
propeller-topped ball cap. Unable to resist she spins the prop, whose owner
turns and smiles. Then the doors of the first bus open and she is swept aboard
. Bizarre costume is central to the rave lifestyle, and the rising demand for
the elements of a bold visual statement has spawned a network of suppliers.
Among them is XStatic, a shop just off Toronto 's
hip Queen Street West
strip where a videotape of a recent rave flickers across a TV screen over the
cash register.
The merchandise on offer ranges from ravewear (such as
striped, floppy hats and form-fitting bodices) to cassettes featuring techno,
the new, largely computerized music that drives the dancers. Lining the back
wall and free for the taking are an array of underground publications on the
latest in music and party trends.
One of the papers is called Tribe, and Mychol Holtman who
writes its "Wazup" column, offers this theory to explain why rave has
become such a magnet for restless youth since emerging from Liverpool and Manchester . "It can
be summed up in one word: unity," he says, arguing that ravers "are
reacting to the 'me, me, me: forget everyone else' attitude of the seventies
and eighties. "
Mr. Holtman feels that young people are increasingly
depressed by their lot in life, by the fact that so many of them are heading
straight from high school to the unemployment line. The rave "vibe"
provides an antidote, he says. "They reassure each other that there is
hope and love out there. " This analysis strikes a chord with Dave, a Toronto rave producer who
agrees to speak only if his last name is withheld. (Secrecy is a rave
watchword.)
"There's no work. Kids are depressed. With the rave
scene, they can go out and have a good time and forget about their
problems," he says, adding that the experience can also benefit young
people from unstable homes. "That sense of family is there for people who
lack it. I think they get a lot of love and affection in the rave scene.".
Such sentiments, especially combined with psychedelic lights
and wild costumes, not to mention drugs, may sound familiar to those who
remember the hippie era. "It's a total peace movement," confirms
Dave. "It's the same thing as the sixties. "
Canadian rave got its start two years ago with four
techno-starved British expatriates. Over coffee at a Toronto cafe, disc jockey and rave producer
Sean L recalls that they "were basically just looking for a place to go
ourselves, because there was nothing here. " Given their common background
and affection for the music of Bob Marley, the four adopted the name Exodus,
planned their first rave and distributed several hundred flyers in downtown
bars to advertise it.
To their amazement, about 400 people showed up for the
debut. It was an embryonic outing, far less elaborate than those to follow, but
the novices responded to a mood and music unknown even in the avantgarde clubs
many of them frequented. "I don't suppose there was one person there who
didn't go home thinking, 'Wow, that was something else,' " Sean says. Thus
encouraged, Exodus began to arrange weekly raves, and soon other production
groups emerged. As it grew in popularity, rave began to spread, popping up from
Halifax to Vancouver .
To its devotees, Saturday nights would never be the same. The doors of Place
Newman open just as the bus pulls up to unload its youthful cargo. On the way
in, Alice is frisked for weapons and drugs by a
woman wearing a puffy pseudo-fur I coat, orange bandanna and the special
sneakers favored by Montreal
ravers. (They've been elevated several inches by a stack of extra no less .)
She surrenders her $15 ticket and sprints toward the heart of the mall, pausing
where the rave merchants have set up shop. One table is labeled
"Toys" and covered with glowing whistles and plastic troll dolls. The
other overflows with lollipops and chewing gum. She selects two miniature boxes
of gum (50 cents), tips their cargo into her mouth and heads down the corridor
as colored spotlights sway back and forth overhead, dragging circular puddles
of purple across the floor. Then the music takes hold of her.
The music of rave comes in several forms, with
"techno" and "house" the best known. Asked to describe
them, Sean says that house is " mellower, slower?a bit more
rhythmatic," while techno is harder and faster, "more abrasive, I
guess." It has an extra 50 or 60 beats a minute, features a very heavy
bass line and sparse vocals, and "it's always very loud?the louder the
better. "
RAVE may be a British export but its music was born in the
U.S.A. House appeared first, taking shape in Chicago
dance clubs in the early eighties and mutating into techno after it hit Detroit . Not that the
mutation has stopped. The sound changes so rapidly that disc jockeys, dedicated
to staying abreast of the latest trends, are often bigger stars than the
performers they play.
They cultivate a personal style captured on cassettes sold
with their names on the label. A rave is a 'one off' occasion," explains
Dave Crook, a Toronto disc jockey originally from Manchester, "and the
only way they can describe what kind of music there's going to be is by putting
the deejay's name on it?it's like putting the band names on a concert
flyer. The beat buffets Alice 's body as green light scribbles across
her face and glowing bars of neon criss-cross in time to the music. Fog rolls
outward from the speaker laden stage in front of the Brico hardware store, and
multicoloured ceiling lights stain the mist green, red, yellow and blue.
Suddenly, the colour vanishes as blinding sheets of white light stutter across the
smoke, cutting Alice 's
dance movements to photo stills. Then she is plunged back into colour-slashed
dark. Rave electrician Neil Robertson says that many of these cosmic laser
effects are done with mirrors. "They can project light onto mirrors, which
create a 3-D image in the room. The mirrors are really small, maybe five
inches, and can be used to make the image of maybe a pyramid. "
"Laser animation" is another rave specialty. A moving image of laser
light is projected against the wall, and that's something you don't see in the
clubs, " he says.
At Place Newman, lasers are being used to create illusory
tunnels and surfaces. A ceiling of luminous green bars shoots out from the
stage, just above the heads of the dancers. Then the flat surface appears to contract,
transforming itself into a green-spoked spinning wheel. According to Alice , there is method to
this laser madness. "I think that, visually, raves are setup to enhance
the experience of being on psychedelics she explains "although I do know a
lot of people who don't use drugs who go just for the experience of being
around people who are free and happy. " Of those who have chosen to
indulge, many are on ecstasy, which is a variant of the sixties a love
drug" MDA and the intoxicant of choice for ravers from London
to San Francisco .
However, the growing attention being paid to ecstasy angers rave organizer
Dave. "There are a million kids out there who come to these things who
don't even do drugs, " he contends. "They come for the music."
His brows knit in frustration. "If I could extricate drugs from the scene,
I would. But can the Grateful Dead get the drugs out of their concerts? So why
don't we disallow the Dead?"
"When I see a 17-year-old kid who's wrecked, I get
upset. I really do. But I take care of these kids. And that's a lot more than I
can say for those [rock] concerts."
A woman in a black bodice is tending three blenders housing
"smart drinks"?liquids in cheery shades of red, orange and green.
"They're made with amino acids, fruit and caffeine," she explains
while pouring Alice 's
selection, raspberry, into a plastic cup. "They give you an energy boost.
" Across from the bar, an empty shop has been converted into the
"chill-out lounge." Young people sit cross-legged in the light of a
single candle, as a stereo set next to a tangled heap of pink and blue neon
tubing emits music totally unlike the pounding techno on the other side of the
curtain.
Called "ambient", it features a soft beat and
keyboard washes that create an oasis for the bass-weary The smell of clove
cigaettes and hashish is in the air.
By 4 a.m. Alice
has spent whatever energy her smart drink had provided. Exhausted, she
manoeuvres through the crowd and out the door. She is struck by the sudden
quiet as she steps back into the grey-black reality of the parking lot.
A police cruiser sits idling, as its occupants gaze at the
mall with apparent boredom. The two policemen have a long wait ahead. They've
been assigned to watch over the party until it wraps up in another four hours.
Bidding the officers good night, Alice
boards the bus that will take her back downtown. Across the parking lot, a
second bus pulls up with a fresh crop of costumed youth. For them, the night is
just beginning.
Lately, the police have taken a passive approach to rave
control. "When we find out about a rave party, then we'll monitor them
says Detective Sergeant Craig Hilborn of the Metro Toronto force's drug unit.
"The main concern we have is the age of the participants and the possible
use of illicit drugs."
He says there is little of the violence that would cause a
policing problem. In fact, a rave in May did end in serious violence, but not
at the instigation of its participants. Video footage of the Montreal force shutting down festivities at
the Palais du Commerce show police in riot gear beating party-goers with
nightsticks. Yet, the future of rave may be in doubt. If anything, the
phenomenon may fall victim to its own success.
In recent months, rave has left its underground birthplace
and percolated into the mainstream. Fully aware of what happened to disco, punk
and all the other subterranean movements that made this journey, hardcore
ravers are growing disillusioned.
Popularity breeds commercialism, and the purists have become
skeptical as second-generation competitors appear in the marketplace. "The
sole purpose of a lot of these people is just simply to make a killing, "
complains Sean L. "I think what happened is, people saw what was going
on?four or five hundred people dancing?and thought, 'Hey, I could do that!' But
to throw a rave you have to understand what it is; what the vibe is. "
At a recent event staged by Atlantis, one of the newcomers
in Toronto, representatives of Chemistry, an early arrival, handed patrons
their resignations?laminated cards that read: "The scene has gone
commercial been bastardized and generally gotten f----d up. That's why we've
reluctantly decided to pack it all in.... "
As the parties move away from their underground dance roots,
Sean says, there is less emphasis on the music, and more on a carnival
atmosphere with games and toys. For example, the Atlantis production featured a
maze, a game of ring toss and a giant blow-up castle with a bouncy floor. This
is rave packaged by businessmen in their 30s, he says, and their target market
is no longer the inner-city crowd who started it all. "They're appealing mostly
to high-school kids from the suburbs. The pioneers fear that in losing its clandestine
nature, rave may lose the key ingredient to its continued good health. They may
not have to wait long to find out whether they're right. This month's schedule
in Toronto
demonstrates just how quickly rave is losing its low profile. Atlantis is planning
to hold one at the CN Tower, the tallest free-standing structure in the world.
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