Weekender

Weekender (Joyous Joy)

So here we were

Surprise!

in an illegal warehouse rave in 1997. Like a ten year backwards Tardis trip the calling to mind came flooding back, coursing through my veins with the stimulants I had bought at the door. Dancing away at a gig always took me back to my younger days that were the boom time for rave, my thoughts always revisiting a joyous Event (capital intended) that brought in concert with one accord in a perfect amalgamation of all that I adored about dancing to this new electronic music that had got the adults in such a tizz. It all came collectively together so perfectly you could not have organised it better even if you were an events manager, the Master of the Household, at Buckingham Palace.

Once rave went overground and commercialised specialist clubs sprung up over the country, one-off events, weekenders as they were called, running from Friday night to Sunday evening, totally abandonment of our work lives, our church for our religious devotion. The venues, once ballrooms for the elderly, now became our new warehouses, thousands milling about and dancing where they were to the BPM’s, the God-like beats per minute, ranging from slow to as fast as it is possible to flail your body either around a dancefloor, in the various rooms or the murkily lit corridors, different vibes for the different multitudes. I mention the dancefloor, and alluded to different places because but really it was were you found yourself to be once you had wandered about the club. Me, personally, used the entire club, every square centimetre as my dancefloor, even dancing as I pissed in the urinals.

One particular weekender nicely coincided, as if handed down from heaven, with my 21st, the entire town, as I like to think, going to my coming of age and officially no longer a boy birthday party. Gathering together with my closest friends and proudly wearing my ‘I’m 21!’ ornamentation, just so people would know, we laughed and giggled and bantered our way to the venue. It was Atmosphere 1991, at the Floral Hall in Southport, just up the road from Skem, a line of cars all blearing out music, the tunes hot that week, all hyped for the experience to come, DJ’s and bands confirmed for the 3 day gig.

Preparing my body for the few days with a healthy dose of amphetamine and a few full strength ecstsy tabs the start soon became a blur of drug fuelled partying, pill after pill after bomb after bomb after line after line either offered to me in the toilets or simply popped into my grinning mouth

(Happy 21st buddy…Here’s a pressie fella…Have one on me you lucky man…You! Yes, you! Birthday Boy! Have a little present on us all…Hey! Party on birthday party guy!!)

as I circulated around the massive location. Even the bouncers got in on the festivities, stopping me to ask if I wanted any drugs, me saying, thinking I had been gripped taking them so blatantly,

-No, I don’t take them.

the bouncers taking me aside, acknowledging my birthday badge, and slipping two pills into my speed- stimulated gnawing mouth, laughing heartily at my expression as I walked off, the grin on my spaced out face now somehow wider.

The rest of the party became more and more of a blur of enraptured joy, the night turning to day, turning to night, then back to day, the outside flow of time unseen and unheeded in the windowless building, track after banging track pumping the various areas and sending off surges of euphoria like Mexican waves, a palpable buzz that danced around the dancefloor, mixing with the highs felt throughout every ravers’ sweating body, recreational drugs pumping through our systems, at one with your place in the world and in love, platonic but heartfelt, with all existence, no problems, no bills, no stress of working the shitty day job, no hassle off partners, still to settle down with the wife, kids and mortgage, release for the thousands pouring out from every pore, every being at one with the beats, the perspiration showering and cascading off our half exposed bodies, the drumming inside our consciousness and lifting up our souls to heaven.

As the saying goes if you remember anything you weren’t there, the remainder of the breakout passed by in a haze of strobes and mist from the strategically dotted smoke and light machines, rainbows of lightshows and ecstatic and enraptured dancing, finding a stage to prance on pretty early on and showing the crowds, the worshipping masses before me, how to really dance.

Head hanging out of the back seat car window on the journey home that cold, cloudy Winter night, air blasting into my reddened face, puke hurled out of my system and splattered on the roadway in a nice line, a telltale line of powdery vomitted bile from the pit of my hollow void of a stomach as to my progress down the road, as my body rejected the last of the stimulants, partly overdosed on too many party drugs, my grin remained. Music pumped into my mind, my body twitching to the beats from the cassette in the front, too wasted to get into full dance mode, my aching joints and muscles refusing to do anymore. Knowing I had the next few days off, I eventually relaxed into a curled up fetal self-hug and drifted off into the waking, ethereal state of mind that comes with the come down after such a long, exhaustive dance fest as my crowd and I had just experienced.

Drifting into listening to the sporadic conversation in the car, and tuning back out, again and again, a rhythm that followed my rave shot mind. The mumbled, incoherent babblings

-Fantastic night!

-The best, man…

-Really felt it tonight, really did…

were wrecked bits of what suddenly seems really important

-Loved the set all night, banging toons…

-Gonna eat for five come tomorrow and getting over this weekend…

but is, alas, only to you,

-Gonna get a mouse, truly want a mouse…

another side effect of the recreational shite we hurled into our young bodies weekender after weekender.

I would never forget that time in my life, the tunes pumping into my brain as I embraced, literally, the speakers in the club, my body pulsating to the beats, embracing these special memories like an idolised girl from your adolescence, would see smiling once again in my far off old age. The people, the innocent platonic love of thousands, thinking we were going to change the world.

Every generation, ay?

The raves, the light shows (Palace Nightclub, Blackpool, with its lasers, easily the best for all of this overground rave clubbing lark). The feeling of being at one with the universe, my spiritual conviction, my faith, convincing me, and I know countless others, that at times we danced with God.

Nights out that lasted 48 hours plus. Joy filled joyful nights of joyous joy. To say they were good times…