I Can't Stop Raving

Jacob Gibson

  It was our Friday night ritual. After school, after work, after the rest of the world started to slow to a halt, we would just be getting started. With our veins pumping nothing but caffeine and sugar, we'd shed our daytime clothes for neon in-your-face t-shirts and nylon pants big enough to hold a compact car. Following the directions on the backs of purple and blue high-gloss fliers, we'd pack the back of a heavily modified Honda Accord and set out in search of music, longing for the sounds of a bass beat. We were young, we were energetic, and we were obsessed. We were party kids.

  On any given weekend, we would drive anywhere from 15 minutes to two hours to find the best rave. Sometimes we would end up in a warehouse in downtown Atlanta, sometimes in an oversized barn in southern Georgia, and one time even in a large field somewhere in Alabama. But even when the location changed, the scene never did. When we arrived, there would always be a menagerie of brightly colored Hondas, Acuras, and Mitsubishis in the parking lot, and a long line of other party kids waiting outside the venue. The bass usually penetrated the walls, shaking the night outside, and teasing us as we waited to make our way inside. It was midnight, and our night would be just beginning.

  It was like entering something out of a hazy midnight dream. The rooms were always completely dark, broken only on occasion by the flashing of strobe lights and lasers. Ravers wore glow-in-the-dark accessories and carried glow sticks that would fly through the darkness like maniacal lightning bugs, while smoke machines would obscure all details with large quantities of gray mist. It was all very disorienting; sight became a secondary sense, our ears took over our awareness, and we were left at the mercy of the DJ.

  In this underground (as in: not completely legit) subculture, the DJ was our Pied Piper. We traveled to hear him spin, and his music put all of us party kids under a spell. On the dance floor the music was so loud, and the bass so intense, they were tangible. Everything else in the world subsided when the throbbing sound waves entered our bones and lifted us away. Bodies packed onto the floor would pulse in tune, unconsciously, lifted by the sounds like spirits in a primal dance. The draw was overwhelming, and that's what we loved about it. Music was our drug. For four to six hours every weekend, we injected a steady flow of 20 Hz sound directly into our bloodstreams. All inhibitions were washed away, and even the white boys would dance.

  Mesmerized, we let the music carry us through the night. At an average rave the DJ wouldn't stop, or even slow down, until well after the sun came up, so we wouldn't either. Our clothes would gradually become drenched with sweat, and we wouldn't stop dancing until we were no longer physically able to do so. We pushed our bodies to the absolute limits of physical activity and sleep deprivation, and I can still remember more than one occasion where I had to limp or be carried to my car in the morning. When it was finally over, we would drive home in the early morning sunlight, not saying a word as the raver high began to wear off. The music would continue to ring in our ears, and as we stared out at the sky, we couldn't help but see the occasional flash of residual blue or green laser light. The transition back to the real world was a slow one.

  To most, rave culture is not typically viewed in a positive light. The media will tell you that all we did was pop ecstasy pills and have promiscuous sex to the sounds of abusive music. To them we are all high school dropouts whose parents failed somewhere along the way. But if that kept them out of our parties, we weren't complaining. I'm not going to say that these things weren't true for some of those who participated, but for the true party kids the rave and its music were our refuge. We were all members of an anti-pop culture, and our clothes, our hair, our piercings, and our music were our way of standing apart and standing together. We were a family of ravers with our own understanding, and on the dance floor negativity didn't exist. In an atmosphere like that, we didn't need drugs, and most of us didn't bother with them. But the general public will probably never understand our motivation, and the media will never accurately express our reasons. Hell, we didn't necessarily understand ourselves. What we did understand was the hypnotic effect of electronica, and we craved it.

  If there is a moral to this story, I guess that is it. We were part of a culture spawned from music. Some time many years ago, a techno-geek with a couple of record players and a computer started creating synthetic beats and mixing them together on equipment with as many switches, buttons, and flashing lights as a jet fighter cockpit. A new music was born, where the violins and cellos of a symphony were replaced by one man with a pair of Technics 1200 turntables. Turntablism soon became an art form, and now names like Paul Oakenfold, Aphrodite, and Moby are as well known as Britney Spears or 'N Sync. One of these DJs can pull thousands of people from all over the world to one of their parties, and when they come together at places like the Loveparade in Berlin, up to a million party kids will show up to dance.

  Unfortunately, I'm not one of those party kids anymore. It has been two years since I actively considered myself a raver. I can't keep up with the lifestyle anymore. Now that I have responsibilities and jobs and all that, it's hard to justify a weekend routine that involves dancing past the sunrise and having to set aside up to 24 hours for recovery. Even if I could handle being nocturnal, I'm not sure my body would be able to take the physical stress anymore. I'm only 20, but I already feel like I'm too old for it. I've given all my excessively baggy pants and loud t-shirts to the Salvation Army, so all I have to show for all of those crazy nights is a taste for Red Bull and a couple of holes in my ears. There are some things I just can't bring myself to let go of.

  Above all, there's still the music; it's still in my blood. Like a heroin addict with the shakes, I still get the occasional yearning for a solid, steady bass beat, and I feel that no matter how old I get I will never be able to kick that. The look of a good set of turntables still excites me, I go through CD and record stores like a kid in a candy shop, and a nice pair of gigantic speakers can always make me reach for my credit card. I can't function without a constant flow of sound, and I've even been known to sleep with the music turned all the way up.

  Oftentimes when there is no one else around, I will pull out a CD or load up a playlist of my favorite electronic music, and turn my stereo all the way up. I'll turn the bass amplification up to the highest setting and push the ten-inch subwoofers to their limits. Then I'll stand directly in the path of the waves, and close my eyes while the music shakes everything around me. The volume is overwhelming, and everything else just slips away. Visions of flashing lights make their way back into my mind, and I can feel myself on a dance floor again, moving in synch with a few of my closest friends. My heart starts to pound along with the beat, my head starts spinning, and reality takes a back seat. I guess I'll always be a party kid at heart. Music is my drug, and some habits just can't be kicked.