Illegal Raves | Vital Football

Illegal Raves

Buddha

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I still enjoy raving but as I've got older I've found I simply can't do it as often or as hard as I used to. Nowadays I'll probably only manage to get to half a dozen or so a year but back in the day I was raving pretty much every weekend. The last one I went to was on NYE. Actually. it's one of the things that I'm most looking forward to doing once lockdown is finished.

Of course, there have been some horrific stories in the media recently about illegal raves where there have been stabbings and rapes. When I heard these stories I was depressed, that's not the kind of thing that ever happens at the raves I attend. Indeed, (as the BBC article I'll link at the end of this post suggests) these raves during lockdown haven't been being put on by the normal party people; actually the experienced free party crews have not been putting raves on during lockdown out of respect for the Covid situation. Rather, the people who've been putting them on and attending aint your usual ravers but the kind of people who before lockdown wouldn't have been attending free parties but instead going to the nightclubs. This fits in with why there has been trouble and why I've not heard about them

This article aint bad. It explains how they came about, how the 1994 CJA made them illegal (any music "that includes sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats", ffs!) but how they've never stopped, just had to mutate to survive.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-53170021
 
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Low lifes always take advantage of a situation where they can have control without any real brains to organize. I have never been to a rave but any party or club that is going to be fun needs someone with the brains to make the event enjoyable. I am guessing the sort of people who are running stuff like this are the sort that couldn't run a bath.
 
[QUOTE="Buddha, post: 2336640, member:

This article aint bad. It explains how they came about, how the 1994 CJA made them illegal (any music "that includes sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats", ffs!) but how they've never stopped, just had to mutate to survive.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-53170021[/QUOTE]


There is a film, I think called beats all about that. Watched it on a flight once, really good.

Two of our best friends were real ravers in the 80s. Love their stories and a bit envious.
 
There is a film, I think called beats all about that. Watched it on a flight once, really good.

Two of our best friends were real ravers in the 80s. Love their stories and a bit envious.

Ah, Mark, I can assure you that I am a 'real' raver. Or at least I used to be, more 'part-time' or 'occasional' raver these days!

Sounds like your friends were some of the 'original' ravers though! I wasn't far behind them and should have been at Castlemorton (one of a few regrets in my life is that I didn't make it there!).

I got a few stories too but I won't bore you all!
 
nothing to do with Raves but I wish I had been able to go to Woodstock. Would have been 14 at the time , shame my parents wernt from the hippie generation.
 
Although not illegal, I used to often go to the all-nighters at the 1 in 12 club, in Bradford, which were held once a month in the nineties. Although already in my 40s, at the time, I didn't feel at all out of place .... the atmosphere was always very good, with a mixture of all types of folk & ages. There were different DJs in various designated parts of the large building, playing techno, house, jungle etc & in the main "leisure" hall there was a chill out zone with refreshments, settees, armchairs, beanbags or whatever to flop on .


"The 1 in 12 Club - Self-management, music and mayhem since 1981!!! A not for profit organisation relying heavily on the time donated by its unpaid members. The 1 in 12 Club is owned, managed & run by its members, founded on the anarchistic values of self-management, co-operation & mutual aid. Together we are a community of people aiming to provide an affordable, non-commercial venue for events, socialising, meetings & information. "

https://www.facebook.com/pg/1in12/about/?ref=page_internal
 
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nothing to do with Raves but I wish I had been able to go to Woodstock. Would have been 14 at the time , shame my parents wernt from the hippie generation.

Woodstock does, I reckon, have something to do with raves. A different time, different music and different fashion but a similar thing in many ways. Those early free festivals in the hippy days - of which Woodstock was the biggest and most famous - were the beginning of it all.

In the UK the Rolling Stones played a free concert at Hyde Park in the same year as Woodstock, and then the following year saw the first ever Glastonbury Festival. Other smaller festivals were also beginning to take off. Through the 1970s and early 1980s there was a free festival happening somewhere pretty much every weekend during the summer.

Once the rave scene started to take off during the mid to late '80s and then into the early '90s there was a natural marriage of minds between the ravers and the hippy free festival people (I think there may have been some resistance from some of the older hippy 'types' with regard to the electronic music but they were soon won over) and it became obvious that this was the future for free festivals - they would at least include big soundsystems pumping out a repetitive beat all night long, sometimes that'd be all there was, no actual bands at all.

Of course, I've not even mentioned ecstasy. That played a big role in the whole thing too!

It all culminated in Castlemorton, which was this island's very own Woodstock. You think you're gutted to have missed Woodstock in the US when you were 14. I was a bit older than that and it was just down the bloody road! I even had a lift there but decided not to go because - I can't even remember why it was, some stupid non-reason probably!

Anyway, Castlemorton was the thing the authorities could use an excuse for the need of the most hated piece of legislation since er, the introduction of the poll tax a few years earlier. But the 1994 CJA, as much as it was designed to destroy our travelling free festival culture, only ever managed to stop the really big sites and big festivals. The free party scene is alive and well and has been all the way through.

Although not illegal, I used to often go to the all-nighters at the 1 in 12 club, in Bradford, which were held once a month in the nineties. Although already in my 40s, at the time, I didn't feel at all out of place .... the atmosphere was always very good, with a mixture of all types of folk & ages. There were different DJs in various designated parts of the large building, playing techno, house, jungle etc & in the main "leisure" hall there was a chill out zone with refreshments, settees, armchairs, beanbags or whatever to flop on .


"The 1 in 12 Club - Self-management, music and mayhem since 1981!!! A not for profit organisation relying heavily on the time donated by its unpaid members. The 1 in 12 Club is owned, managed & run by its members, founded on the anarchistic values of self-management, co-operation & mutual aid. Together we are a community of people aiming to provide an affordable, non-commercial venue for events, socialising, meetings & information. "

https://www.facebook.com/pg/1in12/about/?ref=page_internal

I've heard lots of good things about the 1 in 12 club, Gilles. Got lots of mates who've been there and a few musician mates who've played there.

I've never been to Bradford. Would like to go one day, maybe see the Gills win at Valley Parade, get a curry and then head to the 1 in 12 to see a band. That'd be a great way to spend a Saturday, I reckon.
 
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I've heard lots of good things about the 1 in 12 club, Gilles. Got lots of mates who've been there and a few musician mates who've played there.

I've never been to Bradford. Would like to go one day, maybe see the Gills win at Valley Parade, get a curry and then head to the 1 in 12 to see a band. That'd be a great way to spend a Saturday, I reckon.

The curries in Bradford are legendary, of course !

Otherwise, the Trades Club, in nearby Hebden Bridge, is one of the best smaller venues in the country.
Hebden Bridge & neighbouring Todmorden, in Calderdale, are in (what was once referred to as Lentil Valley), due to the many hippies who arrived there in the 70s & 80s. Houses were known to have change hands for as little as a small handful of hash, apparently !
Todmorden hosts (or hosted, at least) many gay women, who moved there after the demise of Greenham Common.
Nowadays, there is a good mix of old hippies, their grown up children, gay women & lots of locals who've been changed by the "blow-ins". Todmorden is (was, at least) the place where many UFO sightings & the famous policeman abduction story happened (check out PC Alan Godfrey's story, if you're not familiar !)

All worth looking into, Buddha, if you do ever find your way up north !
 
The curries in Bradford are legendary, of course !

Otherwise, the Trades Club, in nearby Hebden Bridge, is one of the best smaller venues in the country.
Hebden Bridge & neighbouring Todmorden, in Calderdale, are in (what was once referred to as Lentil Valley), due to the many hippies who arrived there in the 70s & 80s. Houses were known to have change hands for as little as a small handful of hash, apparently !
Todmorden hosts (or hosted, at least) many gay women, who moved there after the demise of Greenham Common.
Nowadays, there is a good mix of old hippies, their grown up children, gay women & lots of locals who've been changed by the "blow-ins". Todmorden is (was, at least) the place where many UFO sightings & the famous policeman abduction story happened (check out PC Alan Godfrey's story, if you're not familiar !)

All worth looking into, Buddha, if you do ever find your way up north !

I know Todmorden! I've got several mates who come from there.

I don't get oop norf too often though. Last time I was up there - about 6 or 7 years ago - I spent most of my time around Holmfirth and Huddersfield.
 
went to a Hedge cutting competition/exhibition many years ago near Huddersfiekd. Think Jack Hargreaves was there. Loved "out of town " funny enough still watch it on you tube. Just watched one where he is fishing at Fiddleford Mill on the Stour. So relaxing
 
I know Todmorden! I've got several mates who come from there.

I don't get oop norf too often though. Last time I was up there - about 6 or 7 years ago - I spent most of my time around Holmfirth and Huddersfield.

I had a house in Cornholme, Todmorden from 1989 to 2001. I had a very good time there & met some great people.
A friend of mine lived at my place, most of the time, whilst I spent a lot of time travelling around the Med.
 
Unless you have had a boring life , most people have surely been to festivals, raving, or least heavy clubbing, tried acid, etc,
 
Unless you have had a boring life , most people have surely been to festivals, raving, or least heavy clubbing, tried acid, etc,

I'm not sure that most people have tried acid or that their life must be boring if they haven't!

But I do take your point that a hell of a lot of people will have been to festivals and/or clubs.

Not sure quite so many people will have attended the DIY illegal raves, though we're still talking sizeable numbers. It was kind of my point at the beginning, or at least part of my inspiration for posting, that these lockdown raves that have been having nasty shit happen at them recently, are, I reckon, being put on and attended by a different crowd to the regular free party crews and ravers.