Share your old rave stories

Yeah but ive only regulary posted for the last 4/5 months.

Im actually pretty shocked by this
.
HERETIC!

[Statto]

Christ you sound like a boring bastard, no offence like

that's probably true yes

Here's my story :P pretty boring/embarrasing, but hey..

I discovered hardcore and acid house when I was at school in around 1998, at the age of 13.
It started of as just a fascination about raves, smiley faces and the like.
Probably brought about by me discovering cannabis, and tunes like 'searching for my rizla' being played by mates.
I started to read as much as I could find about 85-94.
Around year 2000, I discovered ecstasy, this made me love euphoric hardcore tunes even more, a lot of really cheesy ones,
and some better ones from manix, rufige kru etc. and some chicago house.
My bedroom started to look like a rave, covered in flyers, stupid posters and smiley faces.

At the time, the only terms my mates used to describe drum and bass was jump up and darkside.
I liked both, but used to love the 'darkside' i'd hear from krust, ed rush, grooverider, metalheadz.

Around the same time, I started to go to raves. My first impressions of 'old school' raves that played hardcore tunes
like 'flashback' at the que club in birmingham, was awful. No vibes, awful soundsystem, and a mix of people that just didn't work for me.

Drum and Bass raves at the time where always seemed proper moody for a 15/16 year old youth like myself.
Half the times I went to dnb nights, I never even heard the tunes, just sat with a load of mates in the chillout rooms.
I'd always listen to the tunes, sets downloaded from napster, at home, in my headphones, everywhere i went.

My favourite raves at the time where techno raves, big venues to grimey little clubs.
The drugs where strong, there was no moodyness, probably the closest I got to experiencing the 'rave' vibe i'd read about.

I had no interest hunting down techno tunes at the time, I knew a handful, like The Bells by Jeff Mills, I just liked dancing to it in clubs.
My ideas of the genre were confused even further by resident DJs like Surgeon, who used to play everything and anything in his sets.
I remember when he used to drop what I later found out to be 'basic channel' tunes, I used to think he was playing straight up dub tunes.

I started to buy vinyl a couple of years later (2002), and discovered 2nd wave reinforced, photek, paradox etc.
Got a car with a mint soundsystem which i still miss now. Lived from 2002-2005 constantly booming those drumfunk tunes, amen tunes in my car.
Went to a technicality all nighter, loved it, discovered the subverts.

2005 to now - sold my car, went to uni, became extremely jaded and have a hangover.

1991-2: Oakland, Ca. noticed some friends tripping on some new drugs and going to warehouse parties, followed one into a crazy scene: ppl tripping out riding freight train cars between parties in west-east Oakland, this one roommate of mine was so blazed on e that he could hardly get out of bed, his nervous system was fried.. i wasn't into the sounds, i was more into industrial/punk at the Gilman St. scene at the time, didn't do the pills because i was scared of frying my brain (took acid though, wtf?).. laid out until i moved back to San Francisco and heard a full on dnb set in 1997 that grabbed me by the balls and didn't let up until 2002 or so, mellowed out a little because the scene was a bunch of jugheads, but i still really dig the sound and have been keeping it going with a lot of help from the SC crew.

Nice Kris, interesting to read how people got into it.
Mine goes like this.

1995/96:
Aged 12 or so, discovered hip hop, Nas, Fugees, Coolio etc, got heavily into it.

1997:
Big year, got into dance music, bought a Ministry of Sound Annual (back when it was good), bought Fat Of The Land, got into some trance like Ferry Corsten, Energy 52, also got interested in speed garage after a few CD's I bought. Also got hold of a jungle massive CD and another called Ultrasound Jungle, didnt look into it more yet.

1998: got more into Garage, still massively into hip hop, tried mixing commercial house and new 2-step for the first time on an older mates set up, was totally shit. Also heard some newer D&B, once again, didnt look into it more:

1999: early 99 or maybe late 98, a mate of mine found a One Nation tape in an abandoned car, it was Blackmarket, Skiba and 5ive-0.
This changed everything, at the time I couldnt believe the MCing, I thought Skiba was a god. I fell in love with the tunes I heard like Terrorist, R-Type, Rock Baby.
Turned out a mate at school had abunch of older mates from the estate who had been into hardcore and jungle for years, started knocking about with them.
Listening to Kool FM, watching them mix all sorts, really liked hardcore and jungle but knew nothing about it.
Me and a mate started MCing (mainly as we couldnt mix or afford decks), that petered out in about a year.
At the end of the year my best mate got a set of decks.

2000: I started mixing round my mates all the time and we started to buy new D&B, was all about Ram, Virus, V, Dillinja etc, was exciting times when you dont know anything (unlike the geek i am now) and going to the recordshop (Parliament, Hertford) and being served by Roots of Moving Shadow, suggesting shit.
This was when it started getting serious, my mixing came along a fair bit.

2001: Finally got my own decks, Stanton STR8-80's (still have them now), I was 15.
Things just grew from here really.

2004: realised I was much prefer oldskool, mostly jungle stuff, hit ebay and discogs big time, my bank account has never been the same since.

2008, aged 23 chatting bollocks on here
No idea why I wrote all this because its not a rave story at all now, but im not letting all this romantic text go to waste

Nice Kris, interesting to read how people got into it.
Mine goes like this.

Yeah, i enjoy reading it.

Sometimes I wish I had a more romantic introduction to music, and used to wish I was older to experience the golden years. But I reckon whatever comes out of me now isn't likely to be rave related at all, just influenced by my formative years.

[Statto]

1991-2: oakland, ca. noticed some friends tripping on some new drugs and going to warehouse parties, followed one into a crazy scene: ppl tripping out riding freight train cars between parties in west-east oakland, this one roommate of mine was so blazed on e that he could hardly get out of bed, his nervous system was fried.. i wasn't into the sounds, i was more into industrial/punk at the gilman st. scene at the time, didn't do the pills because i was scared of frying my brain (took acid though, wtf?).. laid out until i moved back to san francisco and heard a full on dnb set in 1997 that grabbed me by the balls and didn't let up until 2002 or so, mellowed out a little because the scene was a bunch of jugheads, but i still really dig the sound and have been keeping it going with a lot of help from the sc crew.

I started listening to acid house around 89ish and went to my first rave in 92, I was 16.  It had changed since I first started to listen to the music.  The first time I really heard the term 'Jungle' was when Top Buzz MC Patrick was using the term 'Jungle techno'.  Other DJs who were playing the same style as Top Buzz were Fabio & Grooverider, LTJ Bukem and a few others.  The rest were playing more hardcore vibes or house.  I was in to it all.  Would listen to Jumpin Jack Frost, then Sasha, then Top Buzz one after the other on my cassette tapes.  It was great being part of the scene.  Unfortunately things started to change around late 93 early 94.  The scene started getting moody.  There were gangs going round robbing people at the free parties that had kept going and the main stream had started cashing in.  I kept going until around 2009 time.  Nothing could beat those first couple of years.  I have also read a few items about how the scene was political.  It might've been for a small amount, but I had never heard of this until recent times.  Certainly no one I ever talked to ever mentioned politics.  All we wanted to do was dance.  We would drive around the country for no other reason than to dance, have fun and meet like minded people.  It didn't matter where you came from, what class you were or what colour your skin was.  We were all just having fun.  At the illegals there was that extra buzz of getting away with something and not knowing if it was gonna get busted by old bill.  One of my greatest memories was being at a rave in thetford forest (I think it was Bees knees, bus could be wrong) and a load of soldiers starting walking through the middle of us just as the sun come up.  They were pissing themselves laughing at us.  At first I wasn't sure what would happen, but it soon became apparent they didn't care and it was carry on dancing.  I have so many memories, but they are fading.  My one big regret is not having taken some pictures.  I'm not a fan of taking loads of photos on phones etc, but I wish I had a few photos from back then.

[Statto]

hello there

*wave*