Raves Circa 1992

When I was 23 and 24 y.o. I went to 2 or 3 raves in Melbourne, Australia. Raves were places where techno music was played and people danced and listened to the music. At this stage raves were still fairly small affairs. A big one might have 300-400 people. Some drugs were taken. People smoked those Indonesian clove cigarettes that smell sweet.

Some raves were held in dance clubs and some in warehouses. The warehouse where I went belonged to a community TV station that went on to become the Channel 31 community TV station. It was a cool old red brick building in a short street that ran down to the Maribyrnong River in Footscray. Between the building and the river was grass and trees for about 20 metres, so it was a nice spot.

I think the two raves I attended in Footscray were called "Every Picture Tells A Story". The first time a friend was to perform on stage and sing 2 songs. His girlfriend was in charge of the "sparklers", those sticks that you light and they throw off sparks. She handed me about 20 and asked me to hand them out. We lit them first, but half way down the stick. These things were sparkling alright. So I’m trying to hand lit sparklers to people in the crowd. People are backing away as the madman tries to shove lit sparklers at them. At this point they are getting hot in my hand as they were lit about 15cm from my hand. So I just threw them on the ground in front of a bunch of people. It was pathetic. I felt bad for my singing friend. Oh well, what are you gunna do?

The second time I took an LSD trip and had what people call a "bad trip". Everything was fine and I was on the dance floor with my 2 friends. The lights changed and I lost where they were. This made me a little anxious and then the music seemed to change. It got all foreboding and scary. Then the lights began to strobe (flash on and off at a fast rate). I could see snapshots of people dancing in strange poses with bizarre facial expressions. As people walked by on the edge of the dancefloor they were lit up for a second, so it was like being in a cloud of darkness with flashes of crazy people.

As I looked at the faces flashing before me I noticed some people look animalistic. One guy seemed to look like a goat crossed with a man and then I was staring at a guy who looked like a lion crossed with a man. As I was looking at him he turned his face right at me and kind of growled or snarled at me. I was thinking: fucking hell! I turned away and was looking at another face and it just melted like it was made of plasticine. Whoh. I was feeling a bit freaked out at this point, so I stumbled off the dancefloor and through the crowd and headed outside. I felt like I needed air. It was late autumn night so it was cool and I had on light clothing. I headed down to the river to clear my head. There was a person walking on the other side of the river which I thought was strange as it was all factories. I couldn’t even tell if they were male or female just a shape walking. I stared at them until I think I realised they were walking their dog. I sat down on a bench and hugged myself from the cold. I sat there for about half an hour.