All week on FACT, we’re celebrating #RaveWeek. Following a FACT mix and revealing interview from pioneering Detroit techno producer Kevin Saunderson, the long-awaited sequel to Joe Muggs’ Rubbish Raver memoir, interviews with Terry Farley and Jerome Hill, and rundowns of the greatest ever rave tapes, happy hardcore records and more, we tapped FACT’s Antony Hill for a round-up of the 20 best rave videos on the internet.
Dance like no one’s watching, they said. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how heavy a gurn you were sporting at the time), people were watching – and even worse, they were filming. It’s not just today’s generation who like shoving a camera in your face when you’re off your head – the halcyon days of rave have also been thoroughly documented through fan footage, documentaries, and yes, hilariously off-point news reports.
The key difference though, is although the cameras were there, the generation being filmed were more naive: both in their genuine excitement at being on the cusp of a new world of music and drugs, and in their reaction to cameras – put simply, this is a generation before well-practised camera faces, and certainly before fucking selfies.
In celebration of this, we asked one of FACT’s resident rave experts Antony Hill for his favourite 20 rave videos. From late ’80s documentaries to fan footage of long-discontinued raves, each and every one of them is a treat. All blurbs come courtesy of the retired ravers in the YouTube comment section – as pointed out in the past, they’re forever a bastion of positivity.
BBC News report on acid house, 1988
US News report on acid house, 1988
Featuring Duran Duran’s Nick Rhodes, The Pet Shop Boys’ Chris Lowe and, bizarrely, Samantha Fox.
We Called It Acid, ITV mini-documentary, 1988
Sunrise & Back to the Future, 1989
Summer of Rave, BBC documentary charting the development of rave music in the summer of 1989
Quadrant Park going mental to N-Joi’s ‘Anthem’, Liverpool, 1990
New Year’s Eve at The Hacienda, Manchester, 1991
Pandemonium Andromeda, Telford Ice Rink, 1991
Fantazia Summertime, Bournemouth, 1992
Fantazia One Step Beyond, Castle Donington, 1992
25,000 people, Fantazia’s largest and longest ever rave.
Rave, BBC house music documentary, 1992
Shelley’s Laserdome, Stoke-on-Trent, 1992
The infamous club where Sasha started off, and the home of Altern-8’s infamous car park PA.
The Cook Report on raves and ecstasy, ITV, 1992
ITV Central News report on Castlemorton, the longest and largest ever illegal rave, 1992
BBC 2 documentary on ecstasy and Shelley’s Laserdome, 1993
E is for Ecstasy documentary, 1992
Universe presents Tribal Gathering, 1993
One of the UK’s key rave organisers packs 30,000 people into a farm in Wiltshire.
The Criminal Justice Bill March, June 1994
Richie Hawtin and more at legendary techno club Orbit, Leeds
Pump Up The Volume, Channel 4 documentary, 2001
More Rave Week!
– FACT mix 458: Kevin Saunderson
– Inner City and the inside story of ‘Big Fun’
– Joe Muggs is a Rubbish Raver
– Terry Farley on the history of house
– Jerome Hill is keeping rave alive
– Mella Dee’s Top 10 Rave Tapes
– Makina: the scene keeping the hardcore flame burning
– The 20 best Happy Hardcore records of all time
– The A-Z of Rave
