stargurl

From The Toronto Star, July 28.


Delinquency and music have enjoyed a long, sordid relationship.

It wouldn't surprise me if, from the very first moment our ancestors emerged from the primordial ooze, panicky elders drew links between behaviour they didn't condone or comprehend and the music of the day.

"Parents, keep your cavechildren away from log-drumming circles," soothsayers would warn, leaning gravely over boulders painted with the crude Neanderthal equivalent of the Citytv logo. "The fires are poorly supervised and young people could fall in, and there are rumours that the strange, magical fungus that grows three hills over is readily available at such events. We have no conclusive evidence one way or another, but because people seem to enjoy it, we'll assume that it's dangerous."

Look at the 20th century alone. Jazz, for reasons largely racist and elitist, was initially associated with loose-moraled musicians fond of shady clubs, boozing and smoking "tea." Rock 'n' roll, which received none of the critical respect accorded jazz and classical, meant "wild dancing," long hair, promiscuity and drugs.

The dawn of heavy metal brought concerns about exposure to dirty words, explicit sexual imagery, different drugs and subliminal commands to commit suicide and, of course, the fear that unsuspecting young people were being seduced into the service of Satan. Hip hop bore no resemblance to rock 'n' roll, and was thus distrusted and - again, for mainly racist and elitist reasons - equated with violence, crack, gunplay and the "explicit lyrics" parents suddenly demanded to be warned about. More recently, "Goth" music briefly gained boogeyman vogue because a couple of wacko kids in Columbine, Colo. were fond of Marilyn Manson, while the rap-metal hybrid popularized by bands like Limp Bizkit and Rage Against The Machine became notorious in the wake of rapes and rioting at Woodstock '99.

Without question, though, today's whipping boy is electronic music. The debacle at Destiny's World Electronic Music Festival last weekend illustrated just how ridiculously difficult it has become to stage any event that someone might construe as a "rave."

Destiny, Canada's longest-lived party-promotion company, has successfully staged the festival for seven years. The three-day event now ranks as one of the largest of its kind in North America, drawing dance-music fans from Canada and the U.S. Its organizers, who in 1998 managed the dizzying logistical feat of safely ferrying 6,000 of us back and forth from Christian Island in Georgian Bay, have always attempted to accommodate the safety and security concerns that come with an event of this scale.

Last weekend's tangled mess - court injunctions, police outrage, frustrated festival-goers stuck in lineups or without music for hours, uniformly biased press coverage - could, perhaps, have been avoided if the festival's Bobcaygeon location hadn't taken local authorities by surprise. But it's no mystery why the promoters, who've been forthcoming with the festival's locations and compliant with permits in the past, kept the site under wraps until the day it began: To keep the country's largest electronic-music festival alive, they pretty much had to.

A stubborn media and police fixation on the supposed evils of raving has made large electronic-music events impossible to mount without navigating miles of red tape and scrounging up enough cash to pay for the officers the police demand on site. A rave is not treated as just another concert by the authorities or the press; it's treated as a threat to societal order, and every financial and logistical obstacle possible is set in place to prevent it from happening. Unless, of course, like the Moby-created Area: One festival at the Docks or the upcoming Mekka festival at Barrie's Molson Park, you have a major concert promoter like House of Blues or SFX/Clear Channel and a heap of corporate money behind you and promise to wrap things up by 11 p.m.

The recent, allegedly drug-related death of 16-year-old Daniel Engson at a party served notice that the safety and security concerns surrounding raves and clubs are valid, and no one's saying we should toss 'em out the window. But those apply to any musical event; it's unfair to single out dance-music promoters for special persecution because of a few well-publicized negative incidents - or, in another example of the double-standards that apply, to severely restrict alcohol or cut it off altogether for hip-hop shows at the Air Canada Centre and Molson Amphitheatre while Black Sabbath fans could drink themselves blind for 12 hours straight at the recent Ozzfest.

Oddly, though, an all-day metal show like Ozzfest would have been treated with the same public horror as the World Electronic Music Festival 20 years ago. So while my heart goes out to the fest's organizers and the partiers who had to fight to enjoy themselves last weekend, in a way the whole affair was kind of encouraging.

If people are still threatened by the music we love and the misunderstood culture that goes with it, there's still some vitality left in this thing, after all.

Everybodies_Daddy

Bullshit.

Repetitive beats are the devil.

MCED

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Dirty Little Secrets

Hot + Dirty

Jess

i highly suggest letters of prise to the editor...

super article...

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www.neksis.com

=cyprus=

That is a very well written article, and the guy who wrote it obviously parties, as he said he attended wemf 98'

Good concept and thought on the topic...

9oh5 kick

although raves are really not that different from rock/metal/rap concerts, i think they do vary in one way: WE LOVE TO DANCE! sure metalheads will mosh away....but its not for 10 or 12 hours straight (well except @ ozzfest i guess). ravers dance the night away...drugs are drugs and alcohol is alcohol, and both will be consumed at rock concerts, and raves alike; but when kids dance for 12 hours with this stuff in them, something has to give....and that would be their body.
now i know not ALL ravers or metalheads do drugs or drink...but i would have to say that raves are the focus of paranoia (sp?!) because we dont do it safely enough. even though there is plenty of water going around... i tend to drink less when i have to pay $3/bottle. so i suggest more events with free water...even if it means ticket prices are increased...it would be better in the long run in my eyes.
and about the drugs...i believe things like dance safe are a step in the right direction for raves...they show that we want to rave as safely as possible...and that we arent wreckless idiots on a speeding train to chaos.
another thing i must point out is that idance [idancetoronto.com] (the free rave where you can make donations) helped the suits decide to lift the ban on raves in a lot of places in toronto last year. again...if we can show skeptics that we are not idiots....good things will happen....so i must say....rave safe ....until some other form of music becomes the centre of media critique.....
otay?

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-= L15T3N =-

squeegee

Mad props to the writter of this letter. And it's so true. I think when the media chills out on the word "R A V E" thins will go back to unstoppable fun.

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it's nice to be important BUT it's more important to be nice.

Everybodies_Daddy

NO!

Raves are evil. Don't go.

DJ smoot

when WERE raves unstoppable fun?

IM SO OLDSKOOL

elena mistress of rave

Everybodies_Daddy

You're my hero.

MCED

~*~pRiNcEsS juLiA~*~

wow! this article really surprised me! It's not too often when you pick up a newspaper and find something positive on raves! The media usually has something really negative to say!
This is definitely a step in the right direction!

-=pRiNcEsS juLiA=-