Douglas Rushkoff - Andrew Marrs TV - William Shakespeare - Carry on Camping 1969 - Gordon B Hinckley - Misha Glenny - Britain’s Illegal Rave Renaissance TV - The Agony & The Ecstasy TV - How House Music Conquered the World TV - Avicii: True Stories 2017 - Locked Off TV - The Summer of Rave 1989 - What We Started 2017 - Fyre: The Greatest Party that Never Happened 2019 - Fyre Fraud 2019 - How Drugs Work: Ecstasy TV - Drugs Inc TV - Drugland TV - Narcos: Liverpool TV - Britain’s Underworld: Essex Bad Boys TV - Alexei Sayle TV - Equinox: Rave New World TV - High Society: The Geriatric Ravers Still Smashing Drugs: Gravers 2022 - World in Action TV - Ibiza Narcos TV -
More than anything, rave was an intentionally designed experience. The music, lighting, and ambience were all fine-tuned to elicit and augment altered states of consciousness. The rhythm of the music was precisely 120 beats per minute, the frequency of the fetal heart rate, and the same beat believed to be used by South American shamans to bring their tribes into a trance state. Through dancing together, without prescribed movements, or even partners, rave dancers sought to reach group consciousness on a level they had never experienced before. Dr Douglas Rushkoff
On the 29th April 1967 here in this cavernous space at the Alexandra Palace in north London huge numbers of young idealists, and pot-heads and acid freaks came together for what they called the fourteen-hour Technicolor dream in one of the biggest ever hippy gatherings in Britain. And every rave that came later, every happening, tens of thousands of out-of-control house-trashing parties owed something to the Ally Pally pot-heads rally. Andrew Marr’s History of Modern Britain, BBC 2007
Shall we set about some revels? William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night I iii 131, Sir Andrew
Why, what’s the matter? Does he rave? ibid. III iv 10, Olivia
Here, do you want to see what’s going on in the next field? Some sort of rave up. Come on, it’s going to go on all night. Carry on Camping 1969 starring Sidney James & Charles Hawtrey & Joan Sims & Kenneth Williams & Terry Scott & Barbara Windsor & Hattie Jacques & Bernard Bresslaw & Peter Butterworth et al, director Gerald Thomas, Windsor
I told the Relief Society of secret underground drug parties that go by the name of Rave. Here with flashing lights and noisy music, if it can be called that, young men and women dance and sway. They sell and buy drugs. The drugs are called Ecstasy. They are a derivative of methamphetamine. The dancers suck on babies’ pacifiers because the drug makes them grind their teeth. The hot music and the sultry dancing ... Gordon B Hinckley, Mormon prophet, article Ensign Fall 2000 ‘Great Shall Be the Peace of Thy Children’
But if economic globalisation has enabled this huge expansion, cultural globalisation has also played a part, advertising the pleasures offered by narcotics in regions that were opening up as markets. Rave culture, for example, and the accompanying use of drugs such as amphetamines and Ecstasy, swept across the world, reaching Japan. Misha Glenny, McMafia
Recent years have seen an institutionalised attack on the nation’s night life with nearly half of all Britain’s clubs closing down in the last decade. So what happens next? An illegal rave renaissance. Britain’s Illegal Rave Renaissance aka Big Night Out, Vice 2016
A number of incidents involving riot police and more than one fatality. ibid.
The London squat/rave scene is a secretive clandestine world. ibid.
‘They were hit for at least two hours with batons.’ ibid. rave organiser
Denbigh: ‘North Wales used to be the place for raves and it died. But it’s coming back now.’ ibid.
‘They just don’t like us having a good time.’ ibid.
Light, colour, joy, unity and excitement. This is a story about British clubbing history. The Agony & The Ecstasy I: A Perfect Storm, Sky Arts 2017
The real story is about music and dance. ibid.
‘You’ve got to come from this country to understand what rave culture is.’ ibid. Goldie
They call it acid house. Acid. The name suited the weird disruptive effect of the music which compelled people to dance. ibid.
‘We found an island that really represented rave culture. Basically, it was freedom.’ ibid. Paul Oakenfold
No words could describe that euphoria, that sense of belonging, that possibility. ibid.
The cultural seeds that were sown in the late ’80s rooted for me in early ’90s; my memories of the era are like a filtered photograph that eludes the truthful picture. The Agony and the Ecstasy II: The People vs The Establishment
‘We really felt that we were against the system; we really believed in ourselves.’ ibid. Paul Oakenfold
‘The whole rave scene was a massive rebellion against the authorities.’ ibid. D J Slipmatt
One of the longest and most expensive cases in British legal history at the time, lasting four months … All thirteen of the Spiral Tribe members were acquitted along with a woman who sold pancakes and a man who ran a cycle-powered gyroscope. ibid.
Today DJs are superstars … They shape pop culture … They have more followers than presidents. The Agony and the Ecstasy III: Rave to Riches, Paul Oakenfold
The rave scene in the United Kingdom – that’s when everything changed. ibid.
There was almost something religious about the whole thing. ibid.
Dance music became accessible, universal and international. ibid.
There is a music that has soundtracked our era. It has many forms but one beat: ‘Gotta have house music all night long.’ Whether you find your groove in house, techno or electronic dance music, our hedonistic escape into the night has become a priceless commodity. The bedrock of a business worth billions. How Dance Music Conquered the World I: The Beat, BBC 2018
It started on a few dancefloors with a few pioneers. ibid.
To make the dance music we love, technologies have been conquered. To create the sound of the future. ibid.
‘It’s the dominant genre on the planet.’ ibid.
The sound has transformed the lives of countless clubbers and left millions lost in music. ibid.
It all started with a beat: four to the floor. ibid.
Two gifted DJs in two inspirational clubs sparked something special. ibid.
‘Their spirit is feeling something to a higher power.’ ibid. Chicago DJ
To this day, the breathtaking innovation of techno’s pioneers has made Chicago a place of pilgrimage for generations of electronic artists. ibid.
In 1986 Pete Tong put together the album that introduced Chicago house to British music fans. ibid.
UK No. 1: Steve Hurley, Jack Your Body. ibid.
Britain had welcomed house and techno with open arms and they quickly warmed to the next boundary-pushing dance genre from Chicago – acid house. ibid.
The 4/4 beat behind house and techno was now being successfully recreated by British artists. ibid.
Millions of us have spent the biggest and best nights of our life clubbing. How Dance Music Conquered the World II: The Club
Narcotically charged hedonism grabbed the headlines. ibid.
Hacienda: Manchester now the had the most avant-garde nightclub in the world. ibid.
A sudden proliferation of ecstasy pills was an undeniable vital part. ibid.
These fields of Albion offered an escape. ibid.
Clubbing needed to change. To scale up and smarten up. A new generation of entrepreneurs was emerging. ibid.
In Cream, Liverpool now boasted the biggest club in Europe. ibid.
The superclubs had arrived in Britain’s cities. For the next evolution in the club scene came on the very island that had inspired our dance music culture – Ibiza. ibid.
We’re now in the era of electronic dance music – EDM. ibid.
The DJ. The mastermind behind our daily soundtrack. And our nightly escape … They are very very powerful. This is an epic story of staggering highs and crushing lows that reveal how our lives have been shaped by a vanguard of visionaries. How Dance Music Conquered the World III: The DJ
At his peak Avicii played an outstanding three hundred gigs a year. ibid.
Trance became the soundtracks to weekends all around the world. ibid.
The American mainstream was finally embracing dance music. ibid.