state of London underground

[AcidTrash]

In the other thread, the Chris Lib interview, Chris says the Fck you element has gone form the music. That is as true of acid as ever. Very little gutsy music around at the moment.(RIP Havok)

But then look at the backdrop. Think of any time since WW2 and the major musical movements are against a backdrop of economic and political upheaval. The acid techno movement was almost certainly a backlash to the Thatcherite economic reform programme which saw many in the working class wholesale disenfranchised.

ITs no coincidence that the impoverished Eastern Europes post communist dance scene utterly exploded. It was a celebration of liberty.

However, younguns today and us have had well on 16 years of economic stability, wealth and political security. We've had too much of a good thing for too long and taken it for granted that it will always be there to go back to.

While the lifestyle is fun and exciting, it also has an immense physical drain and is a huge distraction when it comes to securing your bases (ie income and housing). It's not something you do half heartedly so for a lot of people the hard choice has been all or nothing. Many have opted for the latter because the lifestyle, excpet for a privalaged few, is not sustainable.

Blowing half your wage on vinyl is also not sustainable and in an absolutely saturated and creatively spent market, where music is a commodity, committing anything less than awesome to vinyl is just not a risk worth taking.

In short, it's the economy, stupid.

But that is about to change. Everything is cyclic to some degree or other and we are about to see a lot of economic casualties. People who can no longer keep abreast of rapid changes in their diminishing finances and in such times, many will revert to their default setting... blowing it off and having fun. Much easier to do when you have nothing to lose.

At the moment, we all have something to lose but for many of us, that will change and when it does, I assure you, there will be no shortage of "fck you" music or parties to go to.

[nekro]

I The acid techno movement was almost certainly a backlash to the Thatcherite economic reform programme which saw many in the working class wholesale disenfranchised.

i think you're reading too much into this music sub-genre

[rhythmtech]

i think you're reading too much into this music sub-genre

he's not reading into it too much at all.. i was in london at the parties when it all kicked off and i can tell you it was a very political movement. look at trafalgar square as an example.

[AcidTrash]

Well this is precisely it. Show me one mass youth music uprising that hasn't been a rejection of over auuthoritarian government or a result of imbalances in civil rights.

Except maybe disco but most of the 70's should be consigned to the dustbin.

[AcidTrash]

Actually thinking about it, didnt the london acid movement/squat party scene explode as a result of the criminal justice bill?

[rhythmtech]

it exploded as a result of a lot of stuff. trfalgar square was a dockers march which converged with a CJB march and it all kicked off.

like you said, it was a case of a disenfranchised youth. many elements were thrown into the pot and it all boiled over.

[AcidTrash]

Well all the signs are presently there for another boil over just by looking at the kind of rejectionist crime we are seeing lately. All it takes is a catalyst and then it kicks off again. My bet is something will happen that causes a lot of mortgage defaults or redundancies, probably form the public sector.

It can't be too far away. Will be interesting to see what form it takes this time.

[rhythmtech]

well house prices are dropping over here by a rate of €27 a day they reckon, and interest rates are starting to soar.. only problem is that the youths are to busy sticking coke up their noses to care about anything beyond themselves.. and the rest of us are to bloody tired to fight anymore!

[AcidTrash]

Well if you look at the late eighties/early nineties, there was a massive youth unemployment problem. (the devil made work for idle hands). We've since solved that by openning up the debt market and bundling them off to do david beckham studies at grantham and newark community university. However, the credit market is freezing, the state expenditure of failed grads is unsustainable and most of these universities will probably be haemorraging students by the end of the decade. Then you might actually see some real signs of youthful exhuberence. Especially when they realise that evryone has a multimedia design degree right down to the bloke doing your plastering.

[speed-it-up]

you might actually see some real signs of youthful exhuberence.

nah, they will go to a shit rave and do ketamine

[AcidTrash]

thats soooooo 2005.

[speed-it-up]

thats soooooo 2005.

get a grip son.
are you seriously saying the credit crunch will start a new wave of phat raves?
or are you wibbling on about some wider social context?

[AcidTrash]

Let's face it... we're all just old.

[AcidTrash]

I'm just hypotheseizing that mass music movements tend to coincide with econimic downturns and youth unemployment.

At present we have a whole host of things to keep us in on friday nights.... sky TV, internet, our own media centres... soon as that goes down the pan, we might actually wanna get out and start meeting each other in person again.

[force]

I'm just hypotheseizing that mass music movements tend to coincide with econimic downturns and youth unemployment.

True, the rave/acid house scene started and flourished in about 87/88 whilst the country was in the grip of the last recession..

[nekro]

the Trafalgar square party was to do with Reclaim The Streets and not exclusively acid techno music, RTS demos incorporated many different styles of music. i think a certain small number of ravers may have thought they were 'acid techno anarchists' but the mass majority were there just to take ketamine and didn't give a flying **** about any political agenda

[AcidTrash]

the Trafalgar square party was to do with Reclaim The Streets and not exclusively acid techno music, RTS demos incorporated many different styles of music. i think a certain small number of ravers may have thought they were 'acid techno anarchists' but the mass majority were there just to take ketamine and didn't give a flying **** about any political agenda

Sure but we're not saying any specific event triggered the dance movement, more a backdrop of economic and social conditions which were a catalyst.

[nekro]

a backdrop of economic and social conditions which were a catalyst.

such as? i think it was just a continuation of acid music into another sub-genre. you make the music sound as though it's really politicised when it isn't

[People_Mover]

On a personal note, back then I had my own agenda - to keep my job no matter what. Come to think of it, that still applies today. Selfish? No, just practical.

[AcidTrash]

The music wasnt politicised and nor was the scene but lets take a look shall we.

The second world war was the end of the empire and the end of the victorian social order. The post war industialisation and wider availability of goods created the first mass consumer society. Women during the war had been allowed to take the same jobs as men in the fields and factories and demanded that remained. During the 50's the generation which had sacrificed so much were demanding much more and weren't going to let the morality of the older generation dictate. This gave rise to the rebellion of the James Dean era and to a xcertain extent rock and roll and elvis etc.. leaping forward we have the american civil rights movement and vietnam which brought rise to the hippy mobement and its subsequent offshoots of psychedelia which gradually infected the UK.

We had an actual revolution followed by a cultrual and moral revolution and by the time the post war socialist state was begninning to cripple industry we had yet another social revlotion which brought rise to the Pistols and Punk.

Spot the pattern? Every time there is a rejection of the cultural and political status quo there is a new movement within music and youth culture.

The Thatcherite reforms were no less of an economic and social revolution. The shift from stagnant statism to free flowing individualism and some say selfishness. (see privatisation)

The opponents of which, or at least thatcherism, were always the reclaim the streets/animal right/SWP far lefty types. They were always inextricably linked to the squat "scene" and I've yet to meet an acid house DJ of the era who didnt have links with one or other organisation who were routinely waving placards or in running battles with the rozzers.
The first ravers would have been ex punks, and hippies of the Levellers/NMA pursuasion and anarchy types.

The arrival of ecstasy and mass availability of electronic gear was coincidental but tunes and pills do not a scene make. DJ's had to draw on audiences and where better to find them than at protest squats etc.

To say that the birth of rave was entirely apolitical and just a random mutation of genres based on technological advances doesnt sit well for me. That kind of thing happens all the time. its happend a dozen times since the birth of acid house.

What makes it a movement with political undertones is in evidence by the ensuing moral panics and media hype.
The great nichtomorph of the 90's.

In this case the catalyst was a drug but that drug appearing at any other time since, and the result would have looked entirely different if it happened at all.

Ideas only survive if they have a sea to swim in and such conditions only tend to be apparent in times of economic or social uncertainty.