Sunday 3 April 2011

Where were you in 92?

Well, I was actually 10 years old. Still at Primary school, a huge fan of Red Dwarf and the Crystal Maze and an obsessive Sega Megadrive player. My brother was a lot older than me and he saw that i always used to borrow his "dance" compilation CDs so one day he gave me a cassette. It was an Fantazia tape, Top Buzz I think. I pretty much wore it out in a couple of weeks.

You see in 92, i'd never really even heard of raves let alone listened to the music. I saw what they used to show on the news about all the illegal raves and how drugs were ruining britains youth. To be honest though i thought it was pretty cool. I listened to that tape non stop. The thing I liked about it was the music never actually stopped, in those days most people didnt really understand the concept of a DJ mix. Neither did I really. I actually thought that the MC was the DJ and he was making all that music live on the spot while he was chatting down the mic. But to me that tape was the coolest thing in  the world.

So in the years following managed to get hold of some more tapes (The Ratpack were my favourite), got into the Prodigy obviously and just kept being a schoolboy fan of rave. This obviously lead to me and one of my mates getting some decks and messing around putting events on in village halls and actually built up quite a good rep. Being able to pull of a pretty good beatmatched mix was quite something to be proud of when your 14.

Anyway, when we did actually hit 14 we used to go to a 14+ Rave at the Sanctuary in Milton Keynes. We saw all the classics. Dougal, Hixxy, Fickey Finn. Even a young Andy C. This was in the days where it was the norm to have a Happy Hardcore DJ Followed by a Jungle DJ, how things have changed. The other thing was that because we didnt actually know many other people who were into raving we were pretty unaware that people took drugs, we just thought everyone was really friendly! haha. Good days.

Fast forward to today and I still love dance music just as much as I did back then. Still go raving sometimes and still djing (and trying to produce) I've been through everything including old school hardcore and Jungle. Proper heavy D+B, house, gabba techno, hard house, hip hop, a brief excursion into metal, electro and minimal house and these days pretty much just hop hop and the deeper side of dubstep. I've enjoyed every minute and have to thank my brother for giving that tape so many years ago. Dont forget your roots!

13 comments:

  1. I was 6! Wow, long time ago :) I got into jungle music when I was 11, WOW. Haven't looked back since then.

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  3. in ´92 i was inside my mum.
    I´ve read quite a bit about those 90´s raves and stuff... i´d like to experience that atmosphere sometimes...

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  4. For the first half of 92 I was growing inside a womb. I came out just in time to see the rave scene slowly disappear though. Wish I could've been around for those warehouse raves.

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  5. Glad the rave culture is coming back these days, even if the same vibes aren't there anymore..

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  6. I was 8 in '92 and also a fan of hixxy and dougal in my teens, still have some bonkers cd's lying around somewhere.

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  7. Won't even say how old I was in '92, but old enough to be fairly stuck in my musical ways. Was pretty closed minded.

    Thank god I soon met some enlightened people. Sometimes it really does require that hand up from someone to get your head on straight.

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  8. I was 3 years old, listening to cool shit like Bobby Brown and MC Hammer.


    This was a nice read though!

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  9. i was like 4 years old. would of loved to have been around in that era

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  10. where have you been since the 3rd!

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