Rave with one foot in the graveBy Jemima Lewis
(Filed: 24/08/2003)
You may not have noticed - and if you are over 40 you may not care - but the most influential cultural movement of the past two decades is drawing to a close. Dance music - the genre that revolutionised the way the British dress, speak, drink, take drugs and socialise - is said to be in its death throes. Trendy young things are turning away from electronic bleeps and thumping bass in favour of traditional rock. The vast "super-clubs" which sprang up when raving was all the rage are closing down. The "super-DJs" who once reigned like gods over these temples of hedonism are packing up their vinyl and limping into retirement.
It is always sad when a great British invention bites the dust - and rave culture was one of the few things in recent memory that the British did better than anyone else. Crucially for the national ego, we did it better than the Americans, from whom we stole the idea. "Acid house", as it was once quaintly known, had its origins in the futuristic, electronic music played in the gay clubs of New York and Chicago.
It was picked up by a handful of British DJs who, after taking Ecstasy in Ibiza, gave it a blissed-out "Balearic" twist. By the time it arrived in Britain in the summer of 1988, it was as much about the ethos as the music. The "Second Summer of Love" was an Ecstacy-inspired moment of madness, when a generation of young hipsters suddenly believed they could break down social barriers and change the world through the sheer force of their love. It was like the Sixties, but with different drugs.
For the next decade, thanks to dance music, the British were the coolest nation on earth. We were also the biggest hedonists, more or less inventing the concept of recreational drug-taking. Every weekend, millions of otherwise responsible, sane young people disappeared into fields or cavernous warehouses to get "loved up" on E, share hugs and Vicks nasal sprays with perfect strangers, and dance for 24 hours. The drugs made the dancing possible; the dancing made the drugs essential. Compared to most Class As, Ecstasy seemed miraculously clean and safe and non-addictive. The British were having the time of their lives.
For a long time, other nations could only look on in envy and wonderment. The Americans didn't take to Ecstasy - or X, as they now call it - until quite recently. They tried raving without it, but it didn't work. Instead of trainers and baggy T-shirts, they wore high-heels and gold lame. Instead of pogo-ing up and down with their hands in their air, they danced nervously, with their elbows flapping, like Molly Ringwald in The Breakfast Club. How gratifying it was, for once, to be more "street" than our cousins across the water.
I should mention, perhaps, that I was never remotely "street" myself. I liked the drugs, the ideology and the music but hated the actual raving. I lacked the rhythm or stamina to dance all night. It was exhausting, like cross-country running; it made my knees ache and gave me a pain in my chest. I gave up clubbing 11 years ago, convinced that the craze would soon pass. I have been waiting in vain ever since.
It is a law of fashion, however, that all youthful cults will eventually be destroyed by their own success. The arrival of the superclubs in the late 1990s signalled the death knell for rave culture. Filled with plebs, and far too heavy-handed with the merchandising (the Ministry of Sound even brought out its own clothing range), they were conspicuously lacking in underground chic.
They tried to make up for this by hiring "super-DJs" - with super-egos - at vast expense. Paul Oakenfold, who earned £728,000 in 1999 by playing other people's records, justified this absurd sum by describing himself as an "entertainer". "Whether it's raising my hands or pointing to someone in the crowd and smiling," he mused, "it means the world."
Not to the cool kids, it didn't. The rave scene was effectively over. All that remains of it now is the yobbish hedonism of the British masses. The current embarrassing goings-on in Faliraki and Ayia Napa can, alas, be traced back to that idealistic summer of 1988. Ecstasy taught the British to let our hair down, and now we're having trouble pinning it back up.
The raver's cry of "I'm off my head" has become the proud boast of the topless teenager, drunkenly staggering from one naff club to another. Drug culture has become so ubiquitous and mundane that the idea of a little white pill changing the world seems laughable now. This, I suppose, is the fate of every generation's dreams. It's just awfully sad when it happens to yours.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/...4/ixportal.html--
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