McRave: How Greed Killed the Techno-Acid Test

by Ian Rage

. . . For the man in the suit has just bought a new car from the profits he’s made on your dreams . .. from Low Spark of the High Heeled Boys, Traffic, Island Records © 1970.

It seemed innocent enough. When English kids headed outdoors dancing under the moon to the sounds of remixed American house music in the late 1980’s, it could be seen as a backlash against the repressive dullness of Thatcherism. Along the line, someone decided to throw in a little ecstasy and more kids started showing up. Before long, thousands made the scenes.

Eventually, the media created a tempest-in-a-teapot firestorm of middle class disapproval. In it's official response, Parliament and Thatcher had little choice but to crush the burgeoning movement by declaring it a public menace. Privately, they couldn't give a damn. But, by calling in the air cavalry to assist the local law enforcement and flushing these underground raves, as they came to be known, out of the wilds and into the hands of mainstream promoters, the government hedged its bets with an overblown show of conservative zeal. This was the death knell blow to the rave scene in the U.K.

Big bucks snuffed out the English rave.

Not coincidentally, the rave phenomenon washed upon the shores of America a little more than a year ago. Like a message in a bottle, disciples from the UK imported the rave to the greenest pasture of them all - California. If money rotted the rave scene out of England, American promoters, with their predatory instincts, should bastardize the concept beyond recognition in record time.

American youth are typically ripe for most “waves” or invasions of British pop culture. Sprinkle in a little West Coast hippie nostalgia, a few heaping doses of ecstasy, a couple of gigabytes of high tech nonsense suited for brains softened from too much exposure to MTV and a few years of George Bush’s “Son of Voodoo” economics and voila! The Second Coming of the Sixties is upon us! Or is it the Saturday Night Fever Seventies revisited? It’s difficult to sort out at times.

The Nineties’ Ravers’ styles are a television and pop culture inspired potpourri of the past three decades. The influences run the gamut from Dr. Seuss to The Monkees to Sesame Street to Nintendo's Super Mario Brothers. Specifically, it is this lack of its own original cultural identity, which makes less discerning ravers susceptible to commercial exploitation by certain promoters. This naive and unsuspecting target market are sacrificial lambs jumping for the proverbial knife as these eagle eyed hucksters, frauds, charlatans, con men, scammers, grifters, street hustlers and back alley boobies stop at nothing to scavenge the dumpsters of pop memorabilia knowing how to polish a turd, wrap a pretty bow on their slick package and call it a diamond. (See Rave Nader’s Rave Alert! piece.)

The rapid acceptance of raves into American culture has far transcended its humble roots. From the great outdoors and underground warehouses, promoters are now talking about “corporate policies” to “spread the faith.” In classic Nineties’ doublespeak, words like “communalism” are intermixed with plans to organize and replicate similar buku bucks multimedia extravaganzas in other cities. Given the recent explosion of news media coverage, the monster box office potential (SF’s Toon Town allegedly took down $175,000 on New Year’s Eve at $30.00 a pop) and the integration of Silicon Valley gimmicks, it seems obvious to some observers that this latest hybrid of the rave is to be expected.

But, just how can these cyber-lounge shows be viewed as anything less than mutant yuppieism in Haight Street drag? For in the land that spawned the Disney version of reality (VR, natch) and fast food chains, “new and improved” raves should not only be expected, but, are in fact the ideological conclusion of a society whose footprints have been long since washed away from the sandy beach of time at an alarming rate. And, the mind reels, with thoughts of the franchising premiums to be made in the Japanese after market which is hot, hot, hot for anything with America’s social imprimatur. Yes. Local rave promoters are already planning to open in Tokyo within months. Bonzai all the way to the bank, baby!

So, as perversely bizarre as this twisted type of logic would translate to most, corporate decisions to franchise hamburger stands and alternatively spawned underground social gatherings are apparently not a distinctly disparate process, but rather, prefabbed on the same assembly line. Or so, at least, thought Orwell and Huxley. Who knows? Perhaps, there even might be future Ray Krocs, Sir Jimmy Goldsmiths or Henry Fords in our midst. But, more than likely, these rising monopolistic titans of the scene will resemble the Boeskys’ and Milkens’ ilk. Judging from the bad vibes at their events, being pioneers in cyber/social experimentation is for them just another day at the office. More to the point, corporate America has a new look. Eschewing pin stripes and wingtips as Eighties’ anachronisms, Generation X can now proudly don its own uniform of funky hats, bad haircuts, tattoos by numbers, pierced noses and Doc Martin boots, while schlepping off to the vault.

One can only wonder, “What is really in those so-called smart drinks?”



Copyright © 1991 by Timothy Johnson. All rights reserved.