Rave - History

History

In the late 1950s in London the term "Rave" was used to describe the "wild bohemian parties" of the Soho beatnik set. In 1958 Buddy Holly recorded the hit "Rave On," citing the madness and frenzy of a feeling and the desire for it to never end. The word "rave" was later used in the burgeoning mod youth culture of the early 1960s as the way to describe any wild party in general. People who were gregarious party animals were described as "ravers". Pop musicians such as Steve Marriott of The Small Faces and Keith Moon of The Who were self-described "ravers".

Presaging the word's subsequent 1980s association with electronic music, the word "rave" was a common term used regarding the music of mid-1960s garage rock and psychedelia bands (most notably The Yardbirds, who released an album in the US called Having a Rave Up). Along with being an alternative term for partying at such garage events in general, the "rave-up" referred to a specific crescendo moment near the end of a song where the music was played faster, heavier and with intense soloing or elements of controlled feedback. It was later part of the title of an electronic music performance event held on 28 January 1967 at London's Roundhouse titled the "Million Volt Light and Sound Rave". The event featured the only known public airing of an experimental sound collage created for the occasion by Paul McCartney of The Beatles – the legendary Carnival of Light recording.

With the rapid change of British pop culture from the mod era of 1963–1966 to the hippie era of 1967 and beyond, the term fell out of popular usage. During the 1970s and early 1980s until its resurrection, the term was not in vogue, one notable exception being in the lyrics of the song "Drive-In Saturday" by David Bowie (from his 1973 album Aladdin Sane) which includes the line "It's a crash course for the ravers." Its use during that era would have been perceived as a quaint or ironic use of bygone slang: part of the dated 1960s lexicon along with words such as "groovy". The perception of the word changed again in the late 1980s when the term was revived and adopted by a new youth culture, possibly inspired by the use of the term in Jamaica.

In the mid to late 1980s a wave of psychedelic and other electronic dance music, most notably acid house and Techno, emerged and caught on in the clubs, warehouses, and free-parties first in Manchester in the mid 80's and then later London . In many ways what would become known as the Rave scene, was influenced by the Northern Soul scene which throughout the late 1960's and through the 1970's and 80's had involved large groups of mainly working class kids dancing all night to rare US soul records while popping amphetamines. When Margaret Thatcher's policies in the late 70's lead to the closure of the UK's textile industry in the northwest, suddenly large mills and warehouses became empty and illegal parties were held in them. The first warehouse parties in Manchester were organised by the group The Stone Roses back in 1985, when to get around the licensing laws they would play a gigg and book a line up of DJs under the dusused arches of Piccadilly train station. These parties were then advertised as an all night video shoot, and the kids who bought tickets for £5 would have a ip piece sellotaped to the back as their fee for being extras in a video shoot, thus for several months the forces of law and order were kept at bay. Dance music was always prominent with big electro, Jazz Funk and early house tunes being played in a somewhat balearic mix alongside New Order, The Clash and The Smiths.House music caught on very quickly in the north and midlands from 1986 onwards, even being played in mainstream night clubs. In 1988 London sudden;y adopted this scene, and rebranded it, so records which a week earlier had been House Records, were suddenly Acid House and smiley badges and other marketing paraphernalia became involved.These early raves were called Acid House Parties. They were mainstream events that attracted thousands of people (up to 25,000 instead of the 4,000 that came to earlier warehouse parties). Acid House parties were first re-branded "rave parties" in the media, during the summer of 1989 by Neil Andrew Megson during a television interview, however, the ambience of the rave was not fully formed until 28 May 1991. In the UK, in 1988–89, raves were similar to football matches in that they provided a setting for working-class unification, in a time with a union movement in decline and few jobs, and many of the attendees of raves were die-hard football fans.

In the late 1980s, the word "rave" was adopted to describe the subculture that grew out of the acid house movement. Activities were related to the party atmosphere of Ibiza, a Mediterranean island in Spain, frequented by British, Italians, and German youth on vacation. The fear that a certain number of rave party attendees used "club drugs" such as MDMA, cocaine, amphetamines and, more recently, ketamine, was taken by authorities as a pretext to ban those parties altogether.

British politicians responded with hostility to the emerging rave party trend. Politicians spoke out against raves and began to fine anyone who held illegal parties. Police crackdowns on these often-illegal parties drove the scene into the countryside. The word "rave" somehow caught on in the UK to describe common semi-spontaneous weekend parties occurring at various locations linked by the brand new M25 London Orbital motorway that ringed London and the Home Counties. (It was this that gave the band Orbital their name.) These ranged from former warehouses and industrial sites, in London, to fields and country clubs in the countryside.