Ravirginity

[jackshoegazer]

This photograph appeared in Issue 8 of the Chicago rave magazine, BEAN. This party, Direct Drive, was my first rave, way back in ye olde January of 1997. I'm the guy sitting on the floor. Behind me is my best friend at the time, Scott, and my girlfriend at the time, Emily, both of whom I drove with down to Chicago. My friend Ben and a couple of his friends come in another car.

We missed an exit on the drive down and ended up stuck between two limos in front of the Hard Rock Cafe, and when we finally got free, the map-point was some lady's apartment just south of downtown, and the rave itself was at the Dolton Expo Center.

We finally arrived and there were sheriffs doing security just inside the door. One of them found a half-smoked joint in the bottom of my pack of Camel Wides (yes, I smoked cigarettes back then) which I had completely forgotten about. The sheriff yelled over the music, "Okay, outside!"

Obviously I panicked, thinking of a long night sitting outside in the car while my friends raved all night. When we got outside, the cop dropped the joint on the ground and looked at me and said, "Step on it." So I did. "Okay," he said, "get in there."

So, that's me sitting on the floor. I did a lot of that that night. I would get up and make the rounds of the place, but I pretty much staked out that one spot.

I took some of the best acid of my life that night. At one point I was pretty sure that raves were designed by aliens in order to harness massive amounts of psychokinetic energy, which is what their ships run on. I also interpreted the bass coming off the speakers as heat. I had grand revelations about (biological and cultural) evolution (because the event itself was a microcosm of the history of the planet) and intuited what I thought were some pretty crazy theories about the nature of energy and subatomic particles which I later found out were pretty standard quantum mechanics stuff, like the bootstrap model and all that.

I don't remember much of the ride home, except that the guy driving us home (who I'd never met before and never saw again) almost killed us with an icy skid on the highway and that we stopped at a gas station that looked like a Swiss chalet and because the rave's music was still echoing in our heads, we all thought there was another rave in the bathrooms. It took a minute to realize that the music was in our heads.

When we got back in the car, Ben took over driving our car and he turned around and asked if we lost anything in the chaos of leaving the party. "My sanity!" I yelled. But it was a lie, a joke.

There was something magical, something alien and mystical happening on that cold Chicago night. I didn't lose my sanity that night. I didn't lose anything but a half-smoked joint. But I gained something and I'd be hard pressed to tell you exactly what that was. I often attribute my spiritual awakening to events later in the year, but really, I think all the seeds for what was to come were sown that night at the Dolton.

Comments

[ambientfusion.livejournal.com]

Brilliant post! Reminded me of my first rave back in '96 because it was very much a similar experience. Dropped acid, thought aliens were all around me, that we were really in a spaceship, almost died on the way home and had tremendous insights and revelations on the workings of the cosmos. That night was definitely the catalyst for my own spiritual awakening as well. It also lead to me becoming a DJ and opening my ears to new sounds.

This post also made me long for the days of CloudWatch. CloudWatch was an ambient rave in Baltimore back then. You'd go in your pj's, with a sleeping bag and pillows and just lounge out on the dancefloor (usually in an e puddle or mind expanding moment a la lsd) I miss those days. I saw Thievery Corporation at one of the CloudWatch parties in 1997, before they became the international stars that they are today. Roots, one of the jamaican vocalists that they work with, and one half to the group See-I, walked by my friend and I, we were in the midst of peaking and he handed us the blunt he was smoking. It was like a gift from Jah!

more on CloudWatch
http://www.joabj.com/Music/9603Ambient.html

I still go to parties to this day. Albeit not as frequently. Last good party/festival was last summer. My friends put on a psy-trance festival just outside of Asheville, NC called Equinox.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/makasu/sets/72157624869063819/

and I still have the flyer from that first rave...


Thanks for sharing!

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

I have a box of flyers from way-back-when and the flyer for my first is in there, but a quick Googling reveals:

AH-HA!



Well, the inside of the flyer, anyway. But there's more: apparently someone brought a DAT to that event and There Are MP3s of the Sets! Holy hell!

http://livesetschicago.blogspot.com/2009_09_01_archive.html

http://livesetschicago.blogspot.com/2010/01/second-room-sets-from-direct-drive.html

It's funny, our stories are not uncommon from back then, but I never hear this story after 1999-2000. There really seems to be something weird going on then.

The Archaic Revival

[ambientfusion.livejournal.com]

Awesome! It's not often you find mp3's of sets from back then. What a score. I wish I had some from all the parties I've been to and spun at. Ah well, it's all in stored in my head somewhere, just need to expand my mind to get it out.

And yes, I agree, most stories from 1996-2000 all seem to be similar but after 2000 it just drops off. I feel as if we were imbibed with something back then, call it alien, other dimensional, or whathaveyou... something special happened to us. Ah, I still think that the 90s were the peak of the rave days and we'll be lucky to see/experience something like that again.

Re: The Archaic Revival

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

http://ravearchive.com/ is great. They stream set and mixtapes from way back.

It's like what Hunter S. Thompson said about the 60's..."a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. We were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave...and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."

[jesuslovesbono.livejournal.com]

wow...that was an awfully nice cop.

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and I think that my little joint was very minor compared to everything else they have to deal with. I mean, there were sheriffs on the 'rave task force' in the ghetto of Chicago.