Notes On My First Rave

I'd already been at the rave for over an hour and sweated through the bulk of my underarm when I began to get the terrible feeling, a tingling in my neural receptors, that something was horribly amiss. It crept on like the first ominous waves of a bad trip. At first, it permeated the outer fringes of my consciousness. I attempted to ward off the darkly enveloping cynicism that I knew would soon follow. When I had arrived, there weren't too many people there. The place felt dead. I wrote off the lack of vibe to a lack of people and went off to find a place to dance. When the hall began to fill up and still felt dead... well, that's when those nasty vibrations started.

The rave - or, if you wanna be proper, the Sixth Element - was this year's Spring Fling at my school. That is, it was the big event that Program Board was to spend the bulk of its budget on. Sometime after booking the Sixth Element, it was announced that SonicNet, DeltaThree, and some other small corporations would be underwriting the event. We didn't have to pay for shit. The immediate upside was that there was suddenly more money in Program Board's budget. The fact that it was being paid for by such sources - presumably (and in reality) with sponsorship banners flying high - should've tipped their hand immediately.

Several weeks before the show, the campus was inundated with crateloads of nice smelling glossy postcards that, from my outsider's perspective, seem to be to the rave scene what 4" x 6" scorched xeroxes on loudly colored paper are to jambands. These are worlds classier. The cards turned up everywhere -- taped to our mailboxes, hung on the walls around campus, and dumped unceremoniously in and outside of classrooms. It was promotion, no doubt, and there's nothing wrong with that. The methods, though, are indicative of a new formalized system of "grassroots" publicity machines that seems to have evolved.

The cards' natural habitat, it should seem, are in stacks in the entryways of record-stores, or passed out outside shows to departing ravers. They are remarkably out of place on a college campus. The difference, in my mind, between grassroots publicity and more old media tactics is the audience. Grassroots publicity, it seems to me, is by the consumer for the consumer -- people genuinely interested in the music speaking to people genuinely interested in the music. Old media is about brute force: tell everybody within ear shot that a given event is occurring and hope that some of them might be interested.

Somewhere along the line, the concept of "word of mouth" seems to have morphed into "informal advertisement delivery system". It's a powerful marketing tool. Creating the illusion of a community - something larger than the event, which the event fits into - can make an event seem more genuine. This effect can be maximized by lo-fi promotion -- making things look intentionally homespun. Of course, rave flyers are normally high-grade.

By the time the night of the rave rolled around, the campus seemed to be split. Few seemed indifferent to the event. Many predicted it was going to be horribly lame. Others went into a social frenzy, preparing and grooming themselves as if it were some kind of ball. Drugs were procured, costumes assembled, beads slung on, glowsticks and bubble solution purchased. The halls of one dorm I stopped in before heading over was all abuzz with would-be ravers milling about.

"Do you have the beads?" "Where's my visor?" "Do you think this is too tight?" "Will there be a lot of people there?" "Has the acid kicked in yet?" "When the acid kicks in, we'll go." "I hope I get some good beads tonight." "Eh, I doubt anybody with good beads'll be there." "Do you have anymore of that acid?" "Yeah, here ya go." "No, I didn't mean for tonight..."

We proceeded in the general direction of Philips Gymnasium, where the rave was being held. At the door, we were greeted with a long table of students taking and selling tickets... and giving out stacks of free phone cards courtesy of deltathree.com. Passing through a metal detector, we entered a sweat-stained hallway, past trophies, and into a distinctively institutional atrium. Blaring beats came from a DJ, tucked in one corner of the mostly undecorated space. A few stray people stood around, arms folded, watching the DJ.

Multi-colored lights emanated from the doors into the gym proper, like a strange dream from an 80s movie. Inside, it looked like some sort of factory showroom. Backdrops hung from the ceilings, creating a little tent within the gym. All of the hangings were extremely clean, neatly cut, with sharp edges. They were covered with a wide array of pseudo-spiritual, terribly canned images - rivers, mountains, musical instruments, primal man - all just tasteless enough to look committee-produced. People wandered around, inspecting the tapestries, somewhere across between interested customers and museum visitors. It felt like one of those bogus Acid Tests from the late 60s that one occasionally reads about.

A cheesy light show strobed throughout the room. Few people danced. I figured this was the cause for a lack of vibe. On stage in the center of the room was the one live band they had playing at the event. I didn't catch their name. The band, who sounded like a bunch of passionless session musicians, played vaguely trancey white jazz over drum loops. Following them, a pair of DJs began to spin heavy drums and bass stuff. The bass distorted and the sheer volume of the pulse moved it into a zone somewhere beyond the range discernible audibility. With a few exceptions, people danced half-heartedly, because they were expected to.

As more people arrived, the evening still failed to spark. It never quite moved from a gathering of people into something more. Ironically enough, I suppose it was the sixth element -- some mythical cliché extra-sensory compound. As I sat in the atrium trying to decide whether or not to stay or go, I noticed a small camera crew following a pair of ravers - not students from my school - around. A scene must be at an interesting point if people are starting to make documentaries about it. People picked up the piles of bubble solution on a table by the door, the glowsticks too... but there was still something missing. What was the missing element? What would have turned it from a mere gathering into something special?

Surely all of the speculation about the intent of the promoters wouldn't preclude the event from being meaningful, though it may well have provided a handicap. The original Woodstock, put on a bunch of venture capitalists, managed to create a vibe. But that was almost unavoidable. Surely a cynical attitude couldn't help, which is precisely why I tried to stop it from overtaking my thoughts. I kept waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. That might be good. The rave in a box was successful: none of the parts were broken and everything did exactly as it was supposed to; no more, no less.

Jesse Jarnow has seen rain and he's rain... but, WHOA, here come the rain.