was at a friends house last weekend – he brought out a load of late 90s hardcore (just before hardstyle became popular) – from about 1997 or so.. and from the last time he went raving…

now I liked old skool and hardcore up to about 1995 or so, but used to class a lot of the stuff after then as way too cheesy and formulaic (and indeed some of it was….)

but I heard this stuff again – and suddenly thought – this is actually better than hardstyle/hard house etc! It actually seemed to have a happy vibe to it rather than the sort of “angry stomp” of hardstyle or “urban darkness” of D&B

but also couldn’t help but think the scene in 1997/1998 [when this board first started] was a bit more optimistic/hopeful then, and even better than the origninal rave days of 1990/92 as we had learned from some of our mistakes and there was all this fun new technology about that wasn’t available back then..

Although rigs and crowds were smaller there seemed to be a friendlier, more together and up for it crowd….

Society was also in a better position, the war hadn’t been thought of then. Tony Blair was actually an enthusiastic young(ish) PM whose government actually cut the alternative “left wing” a lot of slack in his first term (compared with the Tories) – albeit probably because he needed the youth vote back then….

but there also seemed to be more opportunities and hope on the streets, jobs were easier to get and keep (even if you had a ravers’ lifestyle) and the dot-com boom gave some people their dream occupations in music and media (if only for a few months)…

there was loads of positive things happening in squats etc – stuff like the Exodus collective in their good days, we also were trying to do stuff in Reading,, and less people were totally fucked up by class A’s (although it was starting to make an impact)

in the old days the smaller rigs caused less backlash so we didn’t have to be so paranoid about cops etc (look at the proper in depth reviews we used to have on the site….)

so what happened to all this? It all seemed to go pear shaped in 2001 and downhill since 9/11 (curiously one of our best local crews broke up the week before 9/11!)… a lot of rip-offs, rig politics etc (long before the cops started clamping down) perhaps it was too much too soon, particularly with the drugs…

but anyone think we can get back to those days?