mine was in a random squat in London in 1990(!); I cannot remember the exact location but it was in North London somewhere; at the time even without taking that many drugs (I did not even take pills until a year later….) it was amazing just to see how the building could be transformed..

First (semi legal) Club thing – The Grid in Luton 91′

First free party Exodus (at the farm) 92′

and I remeber them like is was yesterday T !!

It must have been 1995? Along the coast from brighton, shoreham by sea, ‘the power station raves’ four rigs in a huge old power station shell. Wicked!

First party I went to was just on the outskirts of Loughborough, Leicestershire in the summer of 1995, it was down a disused railway line under a tunnel which was once part of the Great central railway. The sound systems there were Surreal sound system and BWPT which soon merged to become just BWPT of which I have now been a part of for the last 11 years.

The style was techno and that encompassed most of the techno that was around at the time, Acid, minimal, detroit etc and on the odd occasion, gabber.

Some tunes that remind me of that night and which were played during my time there are

Bandulu – Crisis A Gwarn and Prescence

DBX – Loosing Control

Jiri.Ceiver – Osiac (Cristian Vogel remix)

Neil Landstrumm – Brown By August (The whole album)

Jacktronic – The Hustler (Planetary Assault Systems remix)

Planetary Assault Systems – In From The Night

Fred – one of the Quantum Jumps tracks off the blue Analog EP.

Public Energy – Three O Three

raaa

First rave…was crazy…1991,in an almost abandonned club in the woods,near the little french city I was living in.Two guys from the UK with huge hats(!),named Paradoxx,playing this crazy old trance I was hearing for the first time,for the 12 or 13 mates we were….first MDMA pill…I could’nt stop dancing during two days….I never came back on earth…

My First Party was Aug 91 – Stroud. The second of two weeks in Stroud, the first having been outdoors. The second one (ie my first) was a classic early rave moment…

Met up with some mates in Oxford, then went down to the city centre with about 2000 other nutters – hanging around outside the theatre (can’t remember which one – near the top of cornmarket) with mounted OB juts keeping an eye on things. Then the word came and everyone legged it to their cars for the journey into the unkown. First went up to the previous weekend’s venue, only to be told that it was back in town. We drove back to the industrial estate, parked up at the road block, and walked down to the B&Q type warehouse which was absolutely rammed and throbbing from the beat.

No entry fee and top pounding tunes allnight long – I remember Charly but not a lot else, as I was very “new” to all this stuff.

However, I danced all night, and when I got home to my mum’s (in her car) with me mates, I could no stop dancing round the kitchen while I made the coffee etc. Mum asked where we’d been, and I said “er..not sure, but I think we ended up in Stroud!!”

By the way – I did a pure Caffeine tab as my first ever pill – which is probably why I can still remember the night….

Non-stop free parties from then on until now….including meeting Spirals at Ascot in November of that year, and then becoming a proper spiral junky…

Until June 93 when I started Ooops!

But then that is a whole different chapter!

Respectxmas_badger

1st party was a pay party in the summer 03 called tent heaven ‘in a field in norfolk’ as it said on the ticket. there was about 10 different tents with every sort of party musik you could think of. there was a gyro scope food stalls even a photo booth. well organised with land owners permission.

so yer 1st taste of partys and lovin it.

the next week there was a BK weekender on the n/norfolk coast which was in comparison to the previous week seemed a lot more dodgy and was my 1st Proppa Illegal.

the rest is history

yer the tent party was a mr pitts, it was tent heaven 2 i believe. he had done quite a few partys by this point

i think tent heaven2 was the peak of the pitts partys, like i say had about 10tents and1500+peeps. they were pay parties but that was fine and i had no probs with that as it obviousley cost a lot to organise (security, 1st aid marquees etc)

certainly he had taken care of putting on a good party and that purple dome thingy is quite cool
http://www.mrpitts.co.uk/nuke/html/modules.php?set_albumName=megadome&id=spi_026&op=modload&name=gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php

but then he gave that fateful interview to the edp (http://www.mrpitts.co.uk/nuke/html/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=178&sid=ebb72aba8dc5d8d052de8521e6398195), from what i hear they twisted his words and as the man said himself ‘shat all over me’. Should he have known a local rag would do this? probably. a lot has been said and i dont know the ins and outs but since then the last few pitts i have been to have had smaller crowds. inccidentlyTent Heaven 3 got busted during the day when setting up.

the BK the following week actually went of with no hassell what so ever and the OB(1 landy) were just monitoring it. it just seemed more dodgy as my only previous rave was the pitts the week before, instead of driving into a field signed car park we were parking up on the side of the road helping to push a load o haybales out the way so we could get down the twisting dirt track, instead of tents with shiney new PAs there was a huge wall of missmashed speakers with the dj mixin from an old military truck and of course they did not have permission to be there.

this was my 1st taste of a ‘proppa rave’ and havent looked back since.

I read this (and the fallout from it) – and TBH I think he stitched himself up as much as any of the Archant lot did – if he felt he had to speak to the press should have thought it through a bit more and said the minimum necessary and not commented on other events.

His ill-considered comments clearly hotted things up for everyone (including himself!)

And as his events did not get a PEL he didn’t have much more of the moral high ground than BK or any other free party crew.

OK he may have got permission from the landowner (with money changing hands) but as he didn’t get a PEL he still hasn’t gone through the proper channels 100% – however well run the event may have been – so he has no right to comment on others.

its no different from a farmer renting a field to put 300 pigs in when he doesn’t have the correct license – if the pigs start causing problems he will still get in trouble, and he can’t grass up his neighbour for having 20 extra sheep on someone elses “borrowed” land!

Incidentally it might not seem like it if you haven’t checked other areas media – but some of the Archant journos come across surprisingly sympathetic to party and youth culture (given the obvious facts that drugs, trespass and excessive noisemaking is illegal in this country, and that badly sited unlicensed parties do cause inconvenience)

I’ve even seen articles from them mentioning how good the EA music scene is and one on how to be an MC!

fair enough….. although TBH a bit of mud and hay is no problem provided people are friendly!

its a shame TBH that EA raves have got a bad rep for “riots with the police” (I bet its only a minority doing this, and its not unique to East Anglia!) and are therefore now being subject to a clampdown – from the pics I used to see they always looked like good fun..