stargurl

Rave On, Rave On
By ROGER CATLIN
The Hartford Courant
January 13, 2001

One editorial decries the pernicious influence at popular dance spots for young people, warning: "Moral disaster is coming to hundreds of young American girls through the pathological, nerve-irritating, sex-exciting music."

Another warns that owners of popular dance spots "ought to stop pretending that they are running innocent operations where young people can simply relax and listen to music. Such clubs should be padlocked if their owners are found to tolerate or encourage illegal conduct. The owners should be fined or jailed."

One was written 80 years ago in reaction to the Jazz Age and was read this week as part of the sober, 19-hour Ken Burns documentary "Jazz" on public television.

The other was written this week in this paper about this town - regarding rave clubs.

Nobody's saying Ken Burns' great-grandchildren will dig up the words for use in their own documentary about the Rave Age in 2081.

But their confluence this week served notice that when there's worry about some strange fad among young people - involving weird new music, a different set of clothes and unusual accompanying lifestyle choices by some - there will be much hand-wringing by grown-ups about moral decay and the riding to hell in handbaskets.

We can chortle now - watching Burns' august, universally hailed documentary - that jazz was initially rebuked as "an unmitigated cacophony, a combination of disagreeable sounds in complicated discords, a willful ugliness and a deliberate vulgarity" encouraging "blatant disregard of even the elementary rules of civilization."

But it happened 20 years before that, with the reaction to ragtime music at the turn of the 20th century.

Since jazz, the biggest example of such a reaction occurred over rock 'n' roll, which was banned all over New England as it created a sensation amid young people in the mid-'50s. When rock first got to town, in fact, it was hard for some to identify it. A Courant headline about one of the first shows at the old State Theater in October 1955 called it a "Jam of Jazz Addicts."

Rock 'n' roll dances were banned in New Haven and Bridgeport, whose superintendent of police reported that "teenagers virtually work themselves into a frenzy to the beat of fast swing music."

A psychiatrist at Hartford's Institute of Living was quoted nationally after calling rock 'n' roll cannibalistic, tribalistic and "a communicable disease" that appealed to "adolescent rebellion and insecurity," driving teens "to do outlandish things like wear zoot suits or ducktail haircuts."

Flash-forward nearly half a century, and the costumes are baseball caps, colorful T-shirts and pants as wide as, uh, zoot suits; the haircuts are multicolor, with glitter and glow sticks.But a reflexive ban on music to control young people isn't something that occurs just every half-century or so. In just the last generation, heavy-metal concerts were banned for a while in Connecticut because of vandalism at one concert. There were plans to stop hosting rap shows after violence erupted at a New Haven Coliseum show.

In both cases, music embraced by many was threatened by the actions of a few.

When moshing first started at punk and alternative shows, looking like fights instead of testosterone-powered tribal dances, the temptation was to stop booking any acts that would invite such commotion.

Eventually club owners and concert promoters got the idea that these kids weren't hurting each other but expressing themselves in a different way. They found a way to post security at mosh pits to ensure safety while not infringing on the expression.

The targets at raves are drugs, specifically the one known as ecstasy. It's a fanciful name for a drug known technically as MDMA
(3,4-Methylene-dioxy-methamphetamine), developed for legal use in the '60s and '70s to aid in therapy sessions.

Despite the current hubbub, raves and ecstasy go back nearly 20 years. The mention of the two together in this paper go back at least to 1989, at after-hours clubs catering to fans of house music.

Use of the drug nationally has increased; because it's illegal and unregulated, it is often cut with more dangerous substances.

But the rave promoter and DJ who died on his way back to Boston from a Hartford rave last week was found to have traces of all manner of other drugs in his blood that he and a group of friends were said to have chopped up and snorted - including Percodan, the cat tranquilizer Special K and the strong cancer painkiller Oxycontin. All that and alcohol.

The lack of alcohol at most raves and after-hours clubs is something its detractors always note. How can they not serve alcohol? What kinds of clubs are these that serve just water?

(In reality, if they did serve booze, there'd be plenty more dead people.)

A 25-year-old man from Columbia who died after returning home from an after-hours club in Hartford had a long list of health problems, including a heart irregularity, enlarged liver, pulmonary edema and respiratory problems that required him to use an inhaler and caused him to choke. But the possible use of ecstasy got the headline.

Police would have you believe that drugs are the sole reason for raves or after-hours clubs. It couldn't possibly be the pulsing music, seamlessly spun by DJs, who become star-attraction artists in this emerging culture. It's so repetitive and abstract, how could people come for the music? If they weren't all hopped up, how else could you explain the weird clothes?

By suggesting in articles last summer that people may actually go to listen to music, see friends and dance, I was dubbed journalism's biggest patsy by one state police spokesman.

Steve McKay, who used to coordinate occasional after-hour dance parties at his family's historic Municipal Cafe on Main Street, says 80 percent of the kids came to socialize, dance and have fun.

"If someone died of drunk driving, they don't close all the bars," McKay says. "This is about hype."

Taking over the twice-monthly after-hours events at the Muni is the Spiritual Emporium, a record store in the same building that serves as a kind of touchstone for local rave culture.

It's owner, Jeffrey J. Spring, is also a leading local DJ, spinning under the name J.J. Blades. He was working at the rave booked at the West Indian Social Club in Hartford, which is where the drug victim from Boston allegedly stopped.

This week, Spring has been bracing for an onslaught of bad publicity and the real possibility of after-hours-club shutdowns in the city.

"People are definitely reactionary to something that's in the news," he says. "There's always going to be someone at any event doing the wrong thing with negative consequences. But getting rid of music and getting rid of people dancing isn't going to get rid of drugs."

Entertaining in the city is something of a family tradition for him. "My dad was a sax player who played all over the Hartford clubs in the '60s," he says. "My grandfather used to write music around here about 50 or 60 years ago. This has been around me since I was a kid."

The dance music of today may sound different from the dance music of the '50s that was banned, or the music some tried to ban in the '20s.

But it is music, Spring reiterates. "This is the most popular kind of music in the world right now," he says. "We love the music that we do."

[This message has been edited by stargurl (edited January 17, 2001).]

bucky

We need more journalists like this guy and Mitchel.. in comparison, here is the last article the above guy wrote for the newspaper..

Glow Sticks Lit The Way On This 10-Hour Multimedia
Trip

By ROGER CATLIN
The Hartford Courant
April 24, 2000

As many in Connecticut rose to attend Easter sunrise services Sunday, thousands of young people were just heading home from an all- night rave. While certainly not the first rave in Hartford, the Saturday night ``Supreme Beings'' event at the Connecticut Expo Center was the city's biggest yet.

The spacious former BJ's Wholesale Club in the North Meadows, usually the home of boat shows, turned for one night into a teeming, thumping dance club with pulsing lights and lasers. At $30 a ticket, the mostly young crowd of 3,500 created their own multimedia,
10-hour happening, even as many aspects of it - from baggy garb to old school break dancing - represented the wholesale suburban appropriation of urban culture.


Herewith, our hour-by-hour report:
11:30 p.m. Midnight seemed a fashionable arrival time for an event lasting till dawn, but already the parking lot is full. Ravers find an orderly way to park in the gravel lot behind the center. Though there is no alcohol allowed inside the all- ages event,
there is scarcely any tailgating.

11:56 p.m. The cavernous former warehouse is divided into two rooms with just a black curtain. Yet there is a surprising lack of sound bleeding from one vast dance area to the other.

The effect at first is disorienting, as it's probably meant to be. In addition to the assault of the music, there is the blast of lights coursing across the room, a spray of lasers and large screens of constantly
changing kaleidoscopic projections. In the crowd, the colorful ravers add their own lighting accent by underscoring their broad dance moves with glow sticks - available at more than one handy concession stand, at two for $5.

12:03 a.m. Rave dancing is hardly a couples' thing. More likely, one member out of a group of friends will spontaneously burst into broad movements, for a minute at a time. Typically, there's big stepping with the feet intertwining for spins. The hands play a bigger role, usually working in tandem with glowsticks to create huge double helix designs in midair. Circles form to watch the most adventurous break dancers, some of whom spin on their heads.

12:28 a.m. About the attire: Though most dress in normal baggy pants and baseball caps, many take advantage of the opportunity to wear their loudest vinyl pants, most fanciful Pokemon backpack or most elaborate feather boas. One guy is dressed as Spider
Man. Another stands in quilted silver bell-bottoms, a disco dude of a future generation. One recurring fashion accessory seems to be bunny ears. This could be because of Easter. Or maybe not.

Lights are the main accessory. In addition to glow sticks affixed to clothing and hair, there are the tiny glowsticks that emerge, lizardlike, from mouths. There are also pulsing red button lights, twinkle lights on head visors and glowing plastic piping. Some
spin glow sticks on strings in wide arcs that never seem to bonk anyone.

The most alarming accessories are the widespread use of pacifiers and face masks, as if to protect young lungs from cigarette smoke. Some wear more elaborate gas masks. What is this all about?

12:35 a.m. One of the name acts, Rahzel from the group The Roots, performs a lackluster show. Individual performances, it turns out, are not what raves are about.

12:46 a.m. Run into Steve McKay, whose family-run Municipal Cafe in Hartford helped spawn the present rave scene. Its weekly all- night sessions of house music called The Riot attracted a far more diverse crowd of races and sexual orientation in the early
'90s. The use of the word ``rave'' itself can be traced back to huge underground parties in England in the late '80s.

``A lot of these kids are Kmart ravers, who came out here because it's such a big event,'' say McKay. He also reassures that the face masks, once associated with drug use, are now worn just for fashion.

1:10 a.m. Mixmaster Mike follows Rahzel with a display of record spinning that is part Beastie Boys, for whom he is DJ, and part plate- spinning. He makes the primordial howl of Jimi Hendrix's guitar suddenly turn
to R2-D2 blips.

2:15 a.m. Host Scotty Marz of the sponsoring Kingsize USA announces that the Jungle Brothers, one of the name acts, won't be playing tonight. He asks, ``Have you ever been to a nicer party?'' It's true; one kid
actually asks, ``Do you mind if I smoke a cigarette here or do you want me to move somewhere else?''

2:45 a.m. For all the assumptions that drugs are at the root of the rave culture, there seems no evidence of it. There's less pot smoke than at recent rock shows in clubs. If there are drugs like Ecstasy around, they're not readily discernible. Sure, some kids are dancing wildly, but that doesn't necessarily
mean they're on drugs.

3:10 a.m. John Peters of Mass Concerts says he won't make money on the event, which had production costs in six figures, with $13,000 spent for sound equipment alone. ``The rave crowd are sticklers on sound,'' he
says. But he hopes enough people will get a good enough impression to enable a more successful event next time.

3:30 a.m. DJ Rap comes on. But rather than singing as she does on a recent album, she just spins, which is about as interesting as watching a switchboard operator. The final hours begin to crawl.

4:15 a.m. While dancing still is breaking out in the slowly thinning crowd, some exhausted kids sprawl out on the concrete floor for a snooze amid the hubbub. Doesn't mean they're on drugs; it's after 4 a.m.

5:45 a.m. Break dancers move at a slower pace, beginning to resemble beetles on their backs trying to right themselves. Did only 10 minutes go by?

6:02 a.m. Someone opens up a garage door in room one, to show the sunrise. Crowd reaction is vampire-like.

6:10 a.m. DJ still going strong in the second room suddenly comes to a halt when overhead mercury vapor lights blink on. Police and security make themselves known for first time, as they herd the crowd out.

6:15 a.m. Out in the parking lot, bright and early Easter morning, windshield wipers strain under the weight of more than a half dozen glossy, hard-to-read brochures for future events.

Next up: a ``Harmonic Convergence'' Saturday at Bradley Plaza Hotel in Windsor Locks; should be caught up with sleep by then.

Subsonic Chronic

Shit this guy rocks

Subsonic Chronic

Oh yeah,
email your praise for him here:

catlin@courant.com

Roches

read the fine details of what he describes at that party.

what would you think if you saw that here?

right now a lot of people would make fun of it.

the scene they have is worth fighting for; OURS IS NOT.

they're describing a huge, commercialized massive, and still i read about things that may well bring me to tears if i ever see them again at a toronto party (fortunately i doubt i will): dust masks, friendly attitudes, baggy pants.

i'd just like to point out to those who don't remember, to the newbie elitists who have invaded, raped and murdered my culture:
this was the scene i loved.

[This message has been edited by Roches (edited January 22, 2001).]

stargurl

I strongly believe that we have something worth fighting for. Yes, things may have changed, but our scene is still worth it. After iDance, some of the pressure was off.. but winning the battle does not mean that you will ultimately win the war.

If you don't think our scene is worth fighting for, why are you there? The scene hasn't changed: we have. The parties themselves haven't changed much. However, the definition of what is accepted as elite or popular by the general audience has. It is not the newbies who are elitist. It's the bitter old ravers who have been through all the trends and back again, trying to find what they have lost but failing because they are jaded.

Yes, things change. But *you* bring the vibe to the party. Every individual determines what they will wear and how they will act at a party. Why would a dust mask, baggy pants, or friendly attitude make you cry? I miss the days of trying to one-up each other by having the brightest hair most beads biggest pants cutest toys most signatures in your book handouts to give biggest smile, whatever.

Now, the way to outdo others is through buying expensive designer clothing. With the cost of these clothes, I could buy two pairs of pants: or I could pay my rent. I'll take the rent, please. I'll take adding more books to my bookshelf. I do not need some designer label on my clothing to tell me that it is good.

Nobody has invaded, raped, and murdered our culture except US. Like it or not, we are the ones that have changed. What has changed in the party itself? The dj is still up there playing music. There is still a crowd on the dancefloor in front of them. There is still overpriced water and long lineups. We are the ones who have changed. The general raving populous has hung up their funfur, hidden their books in a drawer and acquired a common attitude of jadedness.

The definition of jaded is to wear out, as by overuse or overindulgence; to become weary or spiritless; worn out, wearied; dulled by excess...

Oh yes, it is a term that fits quite well.

You can keep your designer pants. You can keep your attitudes. I will see you on the dancefloor with a smile on my face.

plur,
Aimee

bucky

VERY well said stargurl!!!