luka
Well-known member
You don't understand my approach cos you're not intellectual enough.
Do we really want out?
You don't understand my approach cos you're not intellectual enough.
Nah I do. been there, done that. It's just SWP on psychedelics.
luka
Well-known member
This seems a bit too jaundiced for me and also you're approaching it from the wrong angle. who is we?
luka
Well-known member
Third don't make a nuisance of yourself. You're as bad as Mr Tea.
Nah, im actually trying to move the conversation on from the tedium that is left vs right wing. You're the one who wants to be some kind of washed up verso socialite (in this thread I mean.)
I align myself in this "we" as an out gay man but to me it's basically anyone Othered by mainstream culture
I doubt raving changed cross racial relationships that much. There's some interesting writing about MDMAed up footie hooligans, how it collapsed some of those divisions but they were just stupid bollocks that probably would have disappeared anyway. I don't really think it was these changes that mattered - it was more than the moment was given over to a collective hedonism, drug fuelled, rather than the standard British nightlife mindset (drink heavily/try and find something to fuck/kick someone's head in if you fail).
like it always sounds a bit "I met a black man at a rave and he blew my mind, bro" when people talk about the coming together of different cultures in this way, just a really patronising way to portray someone's real life experience as a walk-on part in your own personal theatre
luka
Well-known member
This is what I mean though. You are assuming it only works in one direction which is very very weird.
It probably did loosen some bonds to be fair. which would have been forced to loosen in a much more confrontational way under the command economy of the 60s-70s. Weirdly Thatcherite aspect of rave in that regard, individual consumer choice n all that. Fuck Thatcher but we are Thatcher's children.
I mean I believe that people going to raves is good because raving is good but I'm not at all convinced by the idea of its major political significance, the people who would benefit from a shot of the culture are not the people you find in fields and warehouses at 10am on a Sunday morning, it's a very self-selecting pool isn't it
luka
Well-known member
My assumption was that it's not a thread about politics at all.
luka
Well-known member
They felt so threatened by it they made it illegal which suggests it did have major political significance. I wasn't there for it either but for me at the very least it's a very useful myth.
Dealing and putting on parties was entrepreneurialism in action for some folks.
Yeah I mean listen to interviews with any of the black jungle heads and you will hear about how they were playing to white people for basically the first time. Acid house, despite being made by Black Americans was pretty much seen as freakish by many london rare groove heads. Raving in its more lumpen prole form broke that stigma down. Not to overinvest things but those changes did happen to a small extent.
but white heteronormative patriarchal culture is everywhere and generally a default setting that outsiders have to resist. So for example, growing up as a gay man I have to fight against pressures to settle down and buy a house and start a family when those things aren't natural instinctive pathways for me, and when I explain it to people that this isn't how I expect my life to pan out, they have to work to understand that in a way I don't have to work to understand that this pathway is "normal"
luka
Well-known member
Yes exactly, ignoring this side of the story seems bizarre.
At the time though it did have popular reach. It did seem to tap into groups of people you wouldn't normally see out. I remember going to a local pub (to buy hash IIRC) and seeing everyone decked out in pre-rave dayglo, Wallabees and Chipe. It has that kinda cultural reach that seemed to grab everyone if only for a minute.