{"id":4630,"date":"2021-06-26T19:04:09","date_gmt":"2021-06-26T19:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4630"},"modified":"2021-06-27T14:19:10","modified_gmt":"2021-06-27T14:19:10","slug":"raves-from-the-grave-lost-90s-subculture-is-back-in-the-spotlight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/archives\/4630","title":{"rendered":"Raves from the grave: lost 90s subculture is back in the spotlight"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Driven by a \u2018groundswell\u2019 of young devotees and fortysomething nostalgia, a series of events is celebrating the youth movement<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A photograph from the Full On. Non-Stop. All Over. book capturing the 90s rave scene. Photograph: Matthew Smith\/Book: Full on. Non-Stop. All over.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

James Tapper<\/a> Sat 26 Jun 2021 18.00 BST<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is perhaps one of the most ignored subcultures in modern British history, but rave music and the free party movement of the early 90s is coming back into focus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trinder\u2019s film will be released to coincide with the anniversary of the Castlemorton Common festival,<\/a> a week-long free event that was a watershed in the battle between the government and what ministers called \u201cnew age\u201d travellers and ravers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was multiple different scenes and cultures that came together in one key moment,\u201d said Trinder, who has interviewed dozens of people involved, including the organisers of sound systems and free parties such as Spiral Tribe, Bedlam and DiY. \u201cThat combination made it very immediate and special, and possibly scared the powers that be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Urban ravers had run out of places to go after the flurry of acid house parties in 1988 and 1989, which had been effectively shut down by the Pay Party Unit, a police taskforce, he said. In response, some set up illegal free parties in disused warehouses and squats that were harder to police \u2013 \u201cempty spaces created by the post-Thatcherite death of industry\u201d, Trinder said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The key moment was the 1990 Glastonbury festival, when the free party sound systems encountered travellers, the inheritors of 1960s hippy culture, who would travel around the UK to free festivals. They too had seen their lifestyles criminalised. The low point for them was the notorious so-called Battle of the Beanfield <\/a>in 1985 when about 1,300 police clashed violently with 600 travellers near Stonehenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey all met at Glastonbury 1990 and it was a lightbulb going off,\u201d Trinder said. \u201c\u2019You\u2019ve got this amazing new music and excitement and mad new clothes and you\u2019ve got nowhere to go. But we\u2019ve got the tents, the countryside, and the guts to take a site in the middle of nowhere.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A scene from the notorious week-long free festival at Castlemorton Common in Worcestershire in 1992 Photograph: Alan Tash Lodge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The flurry of free parties became the topic of a tabloid storm that culminated at Castlemorton Common in May 1992. Police in Wiltshire had refused to let the Spiral Tribe convoy stop in the county, so it continued into Worcestershire to Castlemorton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was the high-water mark of the movement,\u201d Trinder said. \u201cThe amazing thing is the incredible diversity \u2013 there is every colour, creed, race, age, subculture all in one field. City people, country people, travellers, punks, ravers, posh people from the fancy school down the road. It was probably the last unifying youth movement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trinder, 49, was a DJ on the fringes of the free party movement before he became a film-maker. \u201cI always thought \u2018why does no one talk about that period when this was the lead on the Nine O\u2019Clock News<\/em>\u2019,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Others agree. Tom Latchem, a former TalkSport presenter, launched ROAR: The Rave Channel<\/a><\/em> last year to interview some of the DJs and music-makers at the heart of hardcore and jungle, from Fabio and Grooverider to Jumping Jack Frost and Luna-C.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere wasn\u2019t anything like it,\u201d Latchem said. \u201cNot many people were talking about it and I\u2019ve spoken to DJs who had never really done any kind of interview at all. It was all at risk of being lost.\u201d Now the podcast is being archived in the British Library. Other podcasts have sprung up in the past year, including Rave to the Grave<\/em> by Vivian Host.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Matthew Smith, a photographer from Bristol who documented many of the free parties, has created an archive of photographs from the period. His new book Full On. Non-Stop. All Over<\/em>is published tomorrow and looks at the post-rave club culture that emerged after Spiral Tribe and others were forced out of the UK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt the end of the day people love to go out and celebrate and be with each other,\u201d he said. \u201cI just wanted to remind people what it was like before smartphones took over.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Museum of Youth Culture will stage an exhibition at the Herbert Art Gallery in Coventry next summer. Rave and electronic music will be a major part of it, according to Jamie Brett, the museum\u2019s creative projects manager. \u201cRave culture is our most well-covered collection, from 1988 to 1994,\u201d he said. \u201cLockdown has made people very nostalgic \u2013 we\u2019ve had 4,000 people … contribute material.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interest is not only coming from fortysomethings who are nostalgic for their youth, according to Latchem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s surprising how much is coming from people under 30,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of young producers making old school hardcore and jungle now, people like DJ Semah<\/a>, who\u2019s just 14 and got into hardcore after hearing a Prodigy track on a CD he found in his parents\u2019 garage. Now he\u2019s releasing his own tunes.\u201d Illegal raves are being staged for the young, he added. \u201cThere\u2019s a real groundswell happening.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/2021\/jun\/26\/raves-from-the-grave-lost-90s-subculture-is-back-in-the-spotlight<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Driven by a \u2018groundswell\u2019 of young devotees and fortysomething nostalgia, a series of events is celebrating the youth movement James Tapper Sat 26 Jun 2021 18.00 BST It is perhaps one of the most ignored subcultures in modern British history, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[568,676,674,673],"class_list":["post-4630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1","tag-castlemorton","tag-observer","tag-raves","tag-subculture"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4630"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4637,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4630\/revisions\/4637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}