Newsgroups: alt.rave
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1992 13:04:20 -0400 
From: David Bruce Dye <dd2y+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: !! TIME article !! (long)


from TIME, August 17, 1992
pages 60,61


TRIPPING THE NIGHT FANTASTIC
Fueled by techno music and neo-hippie vibes, a wave of "raves" is putting a new
spin on the pop scene.

by Guy Garcia

The skinhead's T shirt says 'Smile -- it's the apocalypse.'  And judging from
the scene around him, maybe it is.  Several hundred young hedonists join him in
dancing wild tribal stomps as strobe lights flash and 50,000 watts of techno-
house music blast from the speakers of a New York City nightclub called the
Shelter.  On the fringes, others watch an upside-down projection of the
Flinstones cartoons or sidle up to the nonalcoholic "smart bar" for bottled
water or vitamin-enriched fruit juice.  "It's a good crowd tonight," observes
Moby, a techno deejay with a loyal following.  "I don't sense the usual
nightclub aggression."
     The high-decibel delirium is "Time-capsule One" of a weekly Friday-night
event billed as "NASA" (Nocturnal Audio and Sensory Awakening), an all-night
techno "rave" that culminates with breakfast and bungee jumping from a Hudson
River pier as the sun's first rays warm the spire of the Empire State Building.
    "It's a love circle," explains Laze, a 26-year-old graffiti artist from
the Bronx who has also attended raves in Philadelphia and Washington.  "It's
like a 1960s scene -- all the races are together, dancing, having a communal
experience.  We want to go to Woodstock and rave for a whole week."
     Ravestock?  It just might happen.  This summer, from San Francisco to
Berlin, Detroit to Paris, a wave of raves is overtaking conventional night life
with unbridled energy and a brash new sound.  Part funky fashion show, part
techno music dance-a-thon, part politically correct flea market, raves are
loopy high-tech love-ins laced with a playful sense of the absurd (and with a
dallop of illicit drugs).
     Raves mirror the national disenchantment with the traditional, the
conventional, the status quo -- whether in politics or pop music.  Their appeal
lies in their quirky spontaneity and vaults of rhythmic rapture.  By singing
the body electric in a blizzard of refracted light and pumped-up sound, ravers
embrace a collective catharsis -- and sometimes one another -- in a cuddly bear
hug.
     "It's the disco of the '90s but with a harder edge and without the
lyrics," says Eddie Hardesty, who runs Street Sounds, a techno-music store on
Los Angeles' trendy Melrose Avenue.  "It's a form of release from everyday
life."
     At the pounding heart of every rave is the galvanizing metronomic beat of
techno, a term coined to describe an intensely synthetic, hyperkinetic form of
dance music that was born in Detroit durning the mid-'80s.  A fusion of the
futuristic computer-driven sound of European bands like Kraftwerk and the
rhythmic possibilities of computer-controlled keyboards, techno caught on first
in Britain and Belgium, where it became the sound track for marathon "acid
house" parties.
     Raves can, and do, happen almost anywhere -- on moonlit beaches, in empty
warehouses and in open fields -- thanks to an underground networking system and
mobile electric generators that use telephones, flyers and maps to get the word
out with as little as 24 hours' notice.  Like the hit-and-run "outlaw" parties
that took place in Los Angeles and New York during the mid-'80s, raves are
often illegal affairs that operate one step ahead of the authorities.
     The controlled substance of choice for some technoites is Ecstasy, a
synthetic mood-elevating drug that is roughly akin to amphetamines in the
long-lasting rush it provides.  it has been illegal since 1985 but is easily
obtainable on the black market.  Others frown on drug and alcohol use,
stressing that intoxication is extraneous to the rave experience.  "The rave
scene isn't about fashion or getting high," says DJ Disaster, 26, who is
co-producing "Psycho Splash '92," a rave taking place this week in an aquatic
theme park outside St. Louis.  "It's about forgetting who's going to be
President and having a good time."
     That escapist streak is evident in rave clothing, which tends toward loud
primary colors, patterned wool caps and untucked shirts emblazoned with peace
signs, happy faces and corporate logos.  A key part of the look is "trip toys,"
or out-of-kilter trinkets and prankish paraphernalia like op-art jewelry, prism
eyeglasses and fluorescent body paint.  "A trip toy is something that will
catch people's attention and make them smile," says Niles Peacock, who attends
raves with a ball-point pen that transforms into a tiny soap-bubble blower.
"The whole purpose is amusement."
     Ravers have recycled the hippie mantra "Do your own thing" and have given
it an up-to-the-second spin.  A cross-country traveling rave called "The
Moveable Feast" will tour with circus-like tents at outdoor sites in Los
Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Washington.  "There'll
be booths where people can get information from groups like ACT UP and Rock the
Vote," says promoter Philip Blaine, 24.  "It's the positive feeling.  Where
else can you get thousands of people together with no fights or racial
tension?"
     In Europe, where the techno movement took off during the late '80s, raves
have reached mammoth proportions.  The so-called Worldwide House Nation
gathered in Berlin last month for a megarave billed as "The Love Parade."
Accompanied by about 20 trucks laden with computers, techno deejays and
powerful sound systems, 7,000 revelers danced down the city's main street,
then converged for an all-night rave.  An even larger rave is planned in
Mannheim on Aug. 29.  And raves are still going strong in Belgium and England,
where some events have attracted as many as 20,000 people.
     While techno has yet to produce a Top 10 pop hit, its audience is steadily
growing.  In Los Angeles at least three radio stations are devoting significant
airtime to the format (one, MARS-FM, restored its all-techno format after
cutbacks provoked a storm of listener protest).  Major labels like Sony and RCA
are signing up groups and putting their marketing muscle behind techno music.
Techno compilation CDs recently released by Profile Records and Zoo
Entertainment are selling briskly.
     But not everyone is thrilled to see raves enter the mainstream.  "It used
to be elite, and now it's kind of common," complains Andrea, 20, a raver who
got into the techno mode on the West Coast.  "A lot of people are jumping on
the bandwagon."  The danger is that as the scene becomes larger and more
commercial, it risks losing the cozy counterculture atmosphere that drew people
to it in the first place.  To keep that from happening, ravers will have to
find a way to maintain their subterranean spirit, even as they spread good
vibes among the masses.

-- With reporting by Sally B. Donnelly/Los Angeles and M.E. Sarotte/Bonn