045 - Rave Culture And the End Of The World

Program Notes §

Guest speaker: Fraser Clark

Fraser Clark returns to the Psychedelic Salon with a brilliant talk he gave as a guest lecturer at Stanford University. In his introduction to this podcast, Lorenzo calls this one of the most important programs we have heard so far in this series.

In this talk you’re going to hear one off the most concise explanations of the evolution from beat to hippy to zippy to raver that you’re probably ever going to hear. Adopting the philosophy of the rave culture, at least the way Fraser explains it in this talk, is perhaps our species’ best hope for a sustainable, peaceful, and beautiful place to continue chugging along on our evolutionary path.

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Transcript §

00:00:00 ► §

3-Dimensional Transforming Musical Linguistic Objects

00:00:10 ► §

Elm Sheldons

00:00:12 ► §

Greetings from Cyberdelic Space. This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.

00:00:22 ► §

and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.

00:00:27 ► §

Since our program is going to be a bit longer than usual today,

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I’ll get right to the point, if that’s okay with you.

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As you know from the title of today’s podcast,

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we have Fraser Clark back with us in the salon today.

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I’m sure you’ll all remember Fraser from way back in our 16th podcast when we heard his talk titled, Monkey’s Trip,

00:00:46 ► §

A Short History of the Human Species.

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Well, today we’re in for an even more of a mind-bending ride because I’m going to play

00:00:57 ► §

a recording of a talk that Fraser gave at Stanford University in California.

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I’ll have more to say about this important talk at the end of the

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program, but I think I should let you know from the outset that I personally believe that this is

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the most important program we’ve podcast so far here in the Psychedelic Salon. The title of

00:01:17 ► §

Fraser’s talk for this guest lecture appearance is Rave Culture and the End of the World as We Know It.

00:01:30 ► §

And in this talk, you’re going to hear one of the most concise explanations of the evolution from beat to hippie to zippy to raver

00:01:34 ► §

that you’re probably ever going to hear.

00:01:37 ► §

In my humble opinion, adopting the philosophy of the rave culture,

00:01:42 ► §

at least the way Fraser explains it in this talk,

00:01:45 ► §

is perhaps our species’ best hope for a sustainable, peaceful, and beautiful place

00:01:51 ► §

to continue chugging along on our evolutionary path.

00:01:56 ► §

So now, here is Fraser Clark being introduced as the guest lecturer at Stanford University.

00:02:06 ► §

Good morning.

00:02:08 ► §

It looks like most of my class is here.

00:02:10 ► §

This is Social Dance 3, in case you’re just joining us, about social dance phenomenon.

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The subject of today’s talk is a request from some of you, because last quarter I gave a

00:02:22 ► §

talk called Zen and the Art of Waltzing.

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And I gave a version of that this morning just now that was about 50% longer.

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And that’s about the enhancement of receptivity into multidimensional experiences and the role that dancing plays in it.

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And in that talk, I mentioned trans states and I mentioned rave culture as one aspect of trans dancing.

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And to no surprise, many of you asked to hear more about rave culture and more about that phenomenon.

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And since our subject is social dance forms of North America, and this certainly is one, and a very current one,

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I thought, okay, we could do that.

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But I wanted to find someone who was more qualified than myself to talk about it.

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So I started a search, and the criterion were rather daunting, at least.

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I started looking for someone who was not just a diehard raver,

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but someone who had actually produced raves as well.

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And also beyond the San Francisco area, because here the rave scene is only about five years old,

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I wanted to find somebody who’s been a part of this version of the phenomenon since its beginning,

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which would mean that he or she would probably be English since the current version of rave culture began in England.

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And that wouldn’t quite do it either because one of the most interesting aspects of rave

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culture is that San Francisco has become a world center in a more enlightened, so to

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speak, version of the rave community.

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And some people are moving here specifically for that purpose.

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So I guess it would have to be a Brit who was there from the beginning,

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who put on raves, but who moved here because it was here now.

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And still that wasn’t enough because I didn’t want to have somebody sit down in this chair for an hour and say,

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gee, raving is really cool, and that’d be it.

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But I would want somebody who’s really given it a lot of thought

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and who has developed a philosophical base for it,

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who philosophizes on the subject as well.

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And finally, a visiting lecturer is not a teacher.

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It’s not someone to come in and hand us an answer.

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But I think should give us a broader spectrum of things to think about, food for thought.

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So ideally, a speaker should be controversial as well.

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So I know only one person in the world who fits all of these criterion.

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And if anyone here knows Frazier Clark, you know that he fits the bill.

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English, born in Scotland, actually, a seasoned veteran of the rave scene.

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And he’s been attending and producing raves since the beginning.

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Last summer, for instance, he produced the Grand Canyon Mega Rave that you may have read

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about in Newsweek last summer.

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He started the Megatripolis Rave Club in London, which is still going on.

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He’s published three magazines on alternative lifestyles and rave culture.

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He produces rave music recordings, albums, compilations, house mixes,

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including a collaboration with Timothy Leary on his own record company.

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And as far as being a raving philosopher,

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Frazier founded the Zippy Movement.

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That’s the Zen-inspired paranoiacs who dwell mostly on the Internet.

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Paranoia, by the way, is the lurking suspicion

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that someone is conspiring for your benefit.

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Back when I was young, we called this benign paranoia.

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It’s the same kind of thing.

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And the Zippy phenomenon following has become quite sizable on the Internet.

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And as far as controversial goes, Frazier not only participates in a controversial lifestyle,

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but he is also controversial within the rape community itself.

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And if any of you have been subscribing to SF Raves,

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the rather large bulletin board mailing list that I think has about 6,000 subscribers

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of the San Francisco rave scene,

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you know that about half of the posts agree with what Fraser says and about half don’t.

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And I admire that in Fraser.

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So without further details except for one, this talk will be broken down in

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two parts. For this class period, it will be Frasier’s talk, and then at about lunchtime,

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at about noon, I encourage you to stay for an open session, question and answers. And

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from past experiences, that’s when it really gets interesting, even more so. So, here he

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is, Fr, Fraser Clark.

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Morning.

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This is not my normal time for talking about rape culture or the end of the world

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at 11 o’clock in the morning.

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But I stayed up all night.

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There’s only way I could handle it.

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I agree with everything Richard said, except I would never say that raves are cool.

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In fact, they’re very hot experiences.

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I think that’s one of the key things about it.

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One of my main concepts I’m going to put across today is that rave is hippie part two, or

00:07:46 ► §

rather hippie the conclusion. And when hippie burst upon the scene in the 60s, the immediate

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fashion before that was cool. In fact, that’s the last time I’ve heard the word used until

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currently. Everybody was cool, everybody stood around, posed and poised in the perfect positions,

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very much like in a way

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you have now, and then Hippie burst upon

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the scene, Hippie came crashing through the door

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fell flat on his face, got up

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mumbled something mystical, tripped over

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something else, spilled something, he was

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hot, he was so

00:08:18 ► §

hot for life

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that he was continually messing up

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and we now have the negative

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looking back through history with the negative aspect of that.

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But at the time, and for about six years,

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it was a very exciting time to live in.

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And I was talking to Richard today on the drive in.

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He was saying that students about four years younger than yourselves

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are very interested in that time in America.

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In England, this started happening about five years ago.

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Young people started to come up to me and say, you lived through the hippie times? You were a hippie? God I wish I was there. I wish

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I’d lived then you know it’s so boring now. And my message to you is that

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the hippie, I call it zippy now and I’ll tell you why, is coming back much bigger

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than it ever was in the hippie times.

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And it’s already well on its way in England, and I see signs of it all over San Francisco.

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We are heading for a massive period of social change and excitement.

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So you haven’t missed it, not at all, and it won’t be missing you.

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Okay.

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So as I said, my credentials, I suppose, as a young man I studied psychology.

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I hoped it would help me to understand more about myself and the world I lived in.

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I took an honours degree in psychology in 1965.

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I don’t think it told me much about myself or the world I lived in. I knew a little bit more about white rats than I wanted to know.

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And I was really quite shocked by what

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they did to those poor creatures.

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I mean, I really, I’m very critical

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of the current society we live in, and I have

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been since then, and I was very critical

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of psychology too.

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I remember, I lived through the whole

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hippie fashion cycle,

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which began to die out about 1972.

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I didn’t die out.

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I had found the way I wanted to be, and I continued to be a hippie,

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and I traveled all around the world looking for a culture

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that would be kind of mature enough to say that when it contacted

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or was contacted by Western culture would be wise enough to say,

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well, we want this, and we’ll take that, and we don’t like Mind Modem, but we don’t this and we’ll take that and we don’t like mind modem

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but we don’t want your coca cola and we don’t want

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this and you know it would be

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I finally realised that wasn’t the case

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that seems like every culture has

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to go through materialism

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before it can come out the other side

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of it so I then came back to the west

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to continue

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trying to change things but from within the

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belly of the beast so I lived through the whole hippie times

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and one of my concepts

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is that rave is hippie part

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to hippie the conclusion

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I was in London when the rave scene

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exploded in Manchester

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and in London

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I was probably the first person

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over 25 to get involved

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in the scene, I was at massive raves with 25,000 people and I was probably the only person over 25 to get involved in the scene. I was at massive raves with 25,000 people,

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and I was probably the only person over 25.

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So if you accept that rave is hippie part two,

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then I must be some kind of world authority

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on this growing culture.

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I’d like to do a quick hands-up check.

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How many people here have been to a rave?

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Maybe one in 20, you say?

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How many people have a modem?

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Are they the same people, I wonder?

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How many people have been to a rave and have a modem?

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About half, okay.

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All right, that’s interesting uh i would think that

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anybody intelligent and young today would have to be interested in what rave is about i mean it’s

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controversial but clearly something is happening around there and that’s always a sign that

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something’s happening usually quite often there’s, there’s bad signs. Usually bad signs are a sign that something good is happening behind all that.

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Okay, now, this is not going to be a rational discussion

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because I could literally talk for seven days a night on rave culture.

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In fact, I’ve been doing it for seven years.

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And I could go on forever.

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So I’ve tried to squeeze it all into a 50-minute talk,

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which is totally impossible.

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I mean, we’re not just talking about a new dance style or anything.

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It’s a lot more than that.

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So I’m going to refer to this a little more than I like to do.

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That’s A, because it’s 11 o’clock in the morning and my mind is not quite crackling the way it usually does.

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And also because I really want to try and cover quite a few areas.

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And also because I really wanted to try and cover quite a few areas.

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Okay, now, the reason I became a hippie in the 60s,

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I think the reason anyone became a hippie in the 60s,

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was the feeling that when we looked as young people at the world we were living in,

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there were two competing world systems, capitalism, communism, whatever you want to call it.

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It seemed to the hippie, and it seemed to me at the time,

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that both of these cultures, both of these systems were actually bad for people,

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user-unfriendly both to the rulers and to the ruled.

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And so we are basically saying when you became a hippie, a plague in both their houses, we think there’s a more cooperative way of living and we don’t

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want anything to do with either of you

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now

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the fact that

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my attitude today is

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that one going, one

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to go, that is my

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attitude

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I also think it’s quite

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there’s a sense of urgency because with one of them going

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communism,

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the gap and the sort of potential for change that could happen on the planet with one of them going,

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if the competitive system that I think is a real danger to us at the moment is not changed, then that is going to inherit the gap.

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It’s going to fill the gap with competition.

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And I think that’s the last thing the planet needs right now.

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Now, ever since I’ve been criticizing both of those systems,

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the main thing I always hear is, well, who are you?

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How can you criticize a system that is so rich in achievement that’s sending

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rockets

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to the moon and all the rest of it? How can you

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criticize it? How could one person or a few

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dropouts criticize an entire

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system? I think since the collapse

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of the Soviet system,

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it’s now a bit easier to see how

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an entire system could be there in place

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for a very long time, and yet actually,

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as most people will now agree,

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the net result of it on people was actually probably overall negative.

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They would have been better off without that system.

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I think we can see that where communism is involved.

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Why is it so outrageous to think that this system could have its priorities completely wrong

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and actually be doing more harm than good both to the people at the top

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and the people underneath. I put it to you that that

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is at least a possibility. I mean, it mustn’t be fooled by the fact that there’s only two

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competing systems. Therefore, if one is wrong, the other one must be right. I don’t think

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that follows in the slightest.

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This is all about rave culture, believe me, but we’re trying to put it in the slightest. I’m trying to put, this is all about rave culture,

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believe me,

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but we’re trying to put it in a context.

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It’s not just a new dance.

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Okay.

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One other argument we have to look at is

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without competition,

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we would never have got to this

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technologically advanced stage that we’re in.

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Some people seem to think that competition

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was the necessary step towards it. Some people seem to think that competition was the necessary

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step towards it. I don’t personally believe that. I think I’ve seen people cooperating

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and more new and creative and original ideas coming out of that. In fact, Silicon Valley

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around here might just be an example of that. But luckily we don’t have to agree whether

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this past competitive stage was necessary to get to here or not.

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So what we can agree about, I think, is that whether competition was necessary to get to here or not,

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it is definitely not necessary now on a very small planet which is being very rapidly filled and polluted

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and just filled on every level from electromagnetic, the whole thing.

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If we go on competing one monopoly against another and all the rest of it,

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the planet is doomed.

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So we can see the danger of competition.

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It’s not just an ecological thing either.

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Don’t be fooled into thinking it’s just a green issue.

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I think a society that’s based so deeply in competition that we don’t even realize it.

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As a psychologist, i watch parents with

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young people and often you hear them saying things like what’s your favorite color favorite color

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we have to rank colors in some kind of competitive way red is better than blue i mean you see what

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i’m saying it’s a very very deep thing we have about competition, it’s been in there since we were

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two or three year old, what’s your favourite food

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what’s your favourite this, who’s your favourite uncle

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it’s all this favourite, it’s ranking

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it’s competing all the time

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and we’re competing with our brothers and all the rest of it

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and somehow I think the planet

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in the very few

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short years ahead has to

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somehow the culture has to change

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from a competitive one

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to a cooperative one and And I think red culture

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is exactly in that place.

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We now have, since Oklahoma and the Unabomber, I think it’s

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becoming more clear that this system, this current competitive system

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is so competitive that it’s beginning to tear itself apart.

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From the right wing, from the left wing, people are clearly dissatisfied with it.

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They give different interpretations to it, but it’s beginning to tear itself apart.

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And it’s a very, I mean, besides increasing security because of this,

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I think we also have to look at why, what drives somebody so crazy?

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I mean, either you say the human species just is crazy,

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or you have to say, well, something is driving these people crazy.

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Why would somebody walk into a supermarket and start blowing people away?

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Why?

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What drove them crazy?

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What in society, what in our culture is driving people to the edge?

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I mean, to some extent, everybody feels some of the pressure of the system.

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The weaker ones, or maybe the more open-minded ones, get driven.

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The more idealistic ones get driven.

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I’m not trying to justify terrorism,

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but we have to look at why people are driven to that.

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And it’s competition, basically.

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You know, Karl Marx once predicted that capitalism would have to fall,

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and that when it did, the capitalists would compete to sell the rope

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to the victors to hang them with.

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And there are definitely signs of that today.

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It seems like we cannot, the system, even though we see what’s going wrong, we can’t stop it.

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Nobody seems to be in charge.

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I’m not a conspiracy theorist, by the way.

00:18:59 ► §

I don’t think there’s a cabal of trilateral commissioners up there at the top controlling it. I think

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they think. I think they’re trying to, just like everybody else is trying to. But I think

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the system, the culture itself is what’s driving it, and there’s no individual can actually

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do something about it, which is the problem.

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Okay, what the world needs today is a new cooperative culture. Ideally, we need to see

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the appearance of a cooperative meme. A meme is like a cultural

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virus that you see it on TV

00:19:27 ► §

or you see it through the media, and you

00:19:29 ► §

begin to move in that direction.

00:19:32 ► §

So we need a cooperative

00:19:33 ► §

meme that has to rapidly spread

00:19:35 ► §

across the planet very quickly

00:19:37 ► §

and very quickly become the dominant

00:19:39 ► §

cultural meme.

00:19:44 ► §

In a way, we have to make that cooperative attitude, a new lifestyle has to become fashionable.

00:19:50 ► §

Now, every time I use the word fashionable in America, I can see that it’s making the

00:19:53 ► §

wrong connotations. In the 60s, I don’t care if somebody started meditating or dancing

00:20:03 ► §

because they read about it in a magazine.

00:20:06 ► §

As long as they start meditating or dancing, I don’t care why they started.

00:20:11 ► §

The point is to get people to that point.

00:20:14 ► §

And that’s where fashion and that’s where the zippy thing, when we came up with it quite consciously,

00:20:18 ► §

we aimed it at the media and we wanted to spread a new message quickly.

00:20:23 ► §

It’s the quickest way to change the maximum number of people in the minimum amount of time.

00:20:29 ► §

Am I talking too fast, by the way, with my Scottish accent?

00:20:32 ► §

Are you all managing to follow?

00:20:34 ► §

Yeah? Okay.

00:20:37 ► §

There are so many things that need changing,

00:20:39 ► §

and many, many people are doing good selfless work.

00:20:41 ► §

The trouble is that this one’s saving the robins,

00:20:45 ► §

that one’s saving whales,

00:20:47 ► §

this one’s trying to cut down this one.

00:20:49 ► §

It seems in one level there’s more fragmentation

00:20:52 ► §

because there are so many good people

00:20:54 ► §

doing so many separated causes.

00:20:57 ► §

Somehow we have to bring everybody together

00:21:01 ► §

into one cultural thing,

00:21:03 ► §

which is about an overall paradigm shift in the culture.

00:21:07 ► §

And if we could do that,

00:21:08 ► §

if somehow all good people could somehow be on the same side on some issue,

00:21:13 ► §

and I think that’s a cultural thing,

00:21:15 ► §

and I think brave culture offers a way to do that.

00:21:18 ► §

So somehow we have to get to one single overall paradigm shift,

00:21:22 ► §

and if society can make that jump,

00:21:24 ► §

then all the other issues will just automatically solve themselves.

00:21:29 ► §

The robins will be saved in Mill Valley

00:21:30 ► §

and all these other things will happen if we can change at the centre.

00:21:34 ► §

Now, if the human species really is capable of adapting to the present crisis,

00:21:39 ► §

then there should already at this late stage be a sign

00:21:42 ► §

of a new cultural meme,

00:21:45 ► §

a new cultural movement happening within the overall culture.

00:21:48 ► §

It should already be possible to see that if we really are going to change in time.

00:21:54 ► §

And I think you can begin to see now where I’m going.

00:21:58 ► §

It should be not just here, but it should be spreading widely and rapidly

00:22:04 ► §

in all the western democracies

00:22:05 ► §

brave culture is doing that it should certainly involve youth it would almost certainly have its

00:22:12 ► §

own new style of music and its own new form of dancing as every great social movement does so

00:22:18 ► §

these if we look for some real change happening then these are the things we should be looking for

00:22:23 ► §

it should also in my opinion be linked with a love of nature,

00:22:27 ► §

since so much of the problem is ecological.

00:22:29 ► §

So it should be a new youth phenomenon.

00:22:32 ► §

It should be taking people out to the countryside.

00:22:34 ► §

It shouldn’t be only doing it within clubs.

00:22:37 ► §

It should be encouraging a large number of people gathering together

00:22:41 ► §

in large numbers away from the city.

00:22:44 ► §

Now, if you look for any sign of it in mainstream culture here in America, large number of people gathering together in large numbers away from the city.

00:22:48 ► §

Now, if you look for any sign of it in mainstream culture here in America,

00:22:50 ► §

I don’t think you’ll find it.

00:22:54 ► §

Beavis and Mutt Brain, what is he called?

00:22:59 ► §

They still seem to rule Generation X, cynicism, apathy. This seems to be the established late punk youth culture

00:23:04 ► §

that’s being presented in the mainstream. Totally

00:23:07 ► §

negative stuff and totally bad for everyone, I’m quite certain. The punk thing, which is

00:23:12 ► §

now, which is really dead in England. I mean, when the rave thing hit England, it was immediately

00:23:18 ► §

clear to me that that was the end of the punk thing. And one of our phrases in England was

00:23:22 ► §

to the punks, if there’s any here was, why is everybody wearing black?

00:23:27 ► §

haven’t you heard the funeral’s

00:23:29 ► §

been cancelled?

00:23:32 ► §

but some of them

00:23:32 ► §

still haven’t heard it

00:23:33 ► §

anyway

00:23:34 ► §

the best that punk has to offer, and I’m not here to

00:23:38 ► §

knock it, is

00:23:39 ► §

despite the best it has to offer, really all it’s doing

00:23:42 ► §

is refusing to be part of the overall

00:23:44 ► §

corruption and the materialism but refusing to be part of the overall corruption and the materialism.

00:23:46 ► §

But refusing to be part of it is not going to change anything, certainly not in time.

00:23:52 ► §

So, rave culture, exploding through all the Western democracies, every single one of them, and quite a few others.

00:23:59 ► §

And it shows every sign of capturing America over the next year or two I would say as the

00:24:05 ► §

dominant cultural

00:24:07 ► §

meme

00:24:08 ► §

it will replace the kind of late punk

00:24:11 ► §

grunge thing which is current

00:24:14 ► §

at the moment, one of the exciting things

00:24:16 ► §

about rave culture is that there are no stars

00:24:18 ► §

the rave scene has now

00:24:20 ► §

been going on in England for 8 years

00:24:21 ► §

and I don’t think there’s one

00:24:24 ► §

DJ name who’s sort of universally known anywhere.

00:24:26 ► §

Now if you think of rock and roll, within eight years of rock and roll beginning,

00:24:30 ► §

there were established superstars whose names are still known today.

00:24:35 ► §

This is not happening within rave culture.

00:24:37 ► §

And that’s a very, very healthy thing to remember,

00:24:40 ► §

that it’s the cooperative side of it that I think is the most important.

00:24:44 ► §

Remember that it’s the cooperative side of it that I think is the most important.

00:24:52 ► §

In England now, where the economic collapse, which I think is happening in the Western system,

00:24:59 ► §

I actually think the Western system is on its knees, although it’s very hard to quite see it over here.

00:25:04 ► §

But in England it’s much more clear that the economic collapse has gone quite far.

00:25:10 ► §

And people in the rave scene there are now being forced to cooperate.

00:25:14 ► §

System collapse is good for you because it forces everyone to cooperate.

00:25:17 ► §

If you want to put on a party, somebody’s got the records.

00:25:18 ► §

Somebody knows a venue.

00:25:20 ► §

This one can find a generator.

00:25:27 ► §

Everybody’s forced to chip in what they have. The yuppie myth of somehow one person having all the technology and able to do it all himself

00:25:31 ► §

is not nearly so possible there. And so it’s forcing cooperation

00:25:35 ► §

on people a lot. In England they call it a

00:25:39 ► §

depression. England and Europe are supposed to be in rather a long term

00:25:43 ► §

depression. But I think it’s important to realize that the word depression is what the people at the top,

00:25:48 ► §

the people who think they have something to lose, they’re depressed.

00:25:52 ► §

But in England now you’ll meet thousands of young people who really would accept

00:25:58 ► §

that they’re never going to have a proper job ever.

00:26:02 ► §

I mean, it’s just gone beyond that.

00:26:04 ► §

The system cannot

00:26:06 ► §

contain those kind of people anymore.

00:26:08 ► §

So they’re never going to have a proper job.

00:26:10 ► §

And yet, I’ve never seen such

00:26:12 ► §

an outbreak of creativity, even in the

00:26:14 ► §

hippie times. So I’m a bit of an expert

00:26:16 ► §

on that. But I’ve never seen such creativity

00:26:18 ► §

as I see in England

00:26:19 ► §

now, when I left. I’ve been away

00:26:22 ► §

six months now, but everybody’s

00:26:24 ► §

running around producing their own little magazine,

00:26:26 ► §

organising the social protest, putting on parties, exhibition, painting.

00:26:31 ► §

They’re all really busy.

00:26:33 ► §

They’ve got a very small stipend from the government

00:26:36 ► §

because they have a welfare state there.

00:26:37 ► §

So if they live on health foods and so on, they can live quite healthily.

00:26:43 ► §

And they’re being very, very creative.

00:26:45 ► §

It’s like, as the system lets go, somehow people’s creativity,

00:26:50 ► §

the people’s creativity comes out.

00:26:53 ► §

Their imagination and their creativity are freed in some way.

00:26:59 ► §

Now, I said before that after university,

00:27:02 ► §

I spent a lot of time traveling the planet,

00:27:04 ► §

looking for a culture which would take the best.

00:27:07 ► §

That didn’t work.

00:27:08 ► §

After about two decades I realised that materialism is a stage which you have to pass through

00:27:13 ► §

before you can reject it, and so I came back to work here.

00:27:17 ► §

What we did was we sat down and we analysed what the sum total of the problems were,

00:27:23 ► §

and they’re pretty much like I’ve outlined although we went into a lot more detail

00:27:26 ► §

the second thing we then tried to work out

00:27:28 ► §

was where the

00:27:30 ► §

most hope for a change

00:27:32 ► §

could appear

00:27:34 ► §

and we decided it was within youth

00:27:36 ► §

culture, that was

00:27:38 ► §

the freest

00:27:39 ► §

the least government controlled if you like

00:27:43 ► §

there’s also where you can clearly

00:27:44 ► §

find the most idealism

00:27:46 ► §

the most energy, the most commitment

00:27:48 ► §

the least commitment to the current competitive culture

00:27:51 ► §

then we calculated just what the new average lifestyle

00:27:55 ► §

should be to be adopted

00:27:58 ► §

and spread very quickly across the planet in order to change things

00:28:01 ► §

what would that new lifestyle be

00:28:03 ► §

and then let’s try and make it fashionable remembering fashionable could be good or bad i don’t care why somebody starts doing

00:28:10 ► §

something if he does it because it’s fashionable as long as he starts meditating dancing or doing

00:28:14 ► §

the other things i don’t care whether fashion made him do it in fact we have to use fashion

00:28:19 ► §

if we want to change a lot of people in a very quick time so we worked out what that new lifestyle

00:28:24 ► §

should be which was the zippy basically and we set out to try and make that fashionable

00:28:29 ► §

through the media and so on. Now it’s not very hard to work out. We need a new lifestyle

00:28:34 ► §

to rapidly become fashionable that makes young people want to, first of all, lower their

00:28:40 ► §

consumption levels and their expectations. I mean, start lowering your consumption levels anyway because

00:28:46 ► §

they are going to be lower

00:28:47 ► §

over the next decade or so, the way the

00:28:49 ► §

prison system is going, so you might as well

00:28:51 ► §

prepare for it now.

00:28:54 ► §

He also wants to make

00:28:55 ► §

cooperation and gentleness fashionable

00:28:58 ► §

again.

00:29:00 ► §

He also wants to make large

00:29:01 ► §

gatherings in the open air fashionable

00:29:03 ► §

again.

00:29:05 ► §

I also should encourage everybody to work together,

00:29:08 ► §

both with each other and with others who are not part of the movement.

00:29:11 ► §

We don’t want a confrontational attitude,

00:29:13 ► §

since that will just spread the problem further.

00:29:17 ► §

Now the zippy, I’d better give a definition of zippy.

00:29:19 ► §

A zippy is someone,

00:29:21 ► §

basically we talk about two hemispheres of the brain,

00:29:24 ► §

Richard referred to this.

00:29:25 ► §

I call the left brain the techno-person hemisphere,

00:29:31 ► §

and that’s to do with long-term planning, group commitment, budgeting properly,

00:29:37 ► §

all the things that you learn in business school.

00:29:40 ► §

The other hemisphere is what we call the hippie hemisphere.

00:29:44 ► §

And basically, a zippy is trying to harmonize these two hemispheres,

00:29:48 ► §

both in his own personal life, first of all.

00:29:50 ► §

Not first of all, but that’s one part of it.

00:29:53 ► §

The other part is trying to harmonize the hemispheres of his planet

00:29:56 ► §

between techno and organic.

00:29:58 ► §

Somehow we have to get back to a proper balance between these two things.

00:30:04 ► §

And that’s what the zippy is. Notice that Zippy is not somebody who’s achieved this

00:30:07 ► §

Zippy is somebody who’s noticed and recognized the imbalance

00:30:12 ► §

and is working towards creating that balance in himself

00:30:15 ► §

and then in his planet. So there

00:30:20 ► §

we were with our Zippy philosophy

00:30:23 ► §

I was putting out a magazine at that time called the Encyclopedia

00:30:27 ► §

Psychedelica, and I was predicting a mass outbreak of consciousness raising among the

00:30:32 ► §

youth, and boom, just as we were printing that, the acid house party scene, now called

00:30:39 ► §

the rave scene, burst through my door. But let me back up a little bit and put this again in some context.

00:30:47 ► §

The reason

00:30:48 ► §

so many people became

00:30:50 ► §

hippies, including me in the 60s,

00:30:52 ► §

there were three components

00:30:54 ► §

to it. There was a political

00:30:56 ► §

component, there was an ecological

00:30:58 ► §

component, and there was a

00:31:00 ► §

personal, spiritual

00:31:02 ► §

component.

00:31:04 ► §

The political component I’ve kind of touched on, and that was basically that we saw

00:31:08 ► §

politics, the old competitive politics as just that, competitive and

00:31:12 ► §

destructive. The opposition is very

00:31:15 ► §

dutious to oppose. Maybe it worked 300 years ago, but it’s

00:31:19 ► §

definitely not the system we need today. So hippies are seeing a plague

00:31:24 ► §

and all that. We don’t want anything to do with that kind of competitive system.

00:31:27 ► §

The ecological component was this.

00:31:30 ► §

When, if you remember, Tim Leary advised everybody to turn on, tune in, and drop out.

00:31:36 ► §

Drop out of the sick system, which was becoming a threat to the planet.

00:31:40 ► §

That was basically the point.

00:31:42 ► §

So when you made the decision, as I did in 1965 after

00:31:46 ► §

I took my honours degree in psychology, to become a hippie, really it was a brave personal

00:31:52 ► §

decision to basically reduce my own personal level of consumption by about 70%. I decided

00:32:00 ► §

I won’t have a fancy sports car. I won’t have my own private motor launch.

00:32:05 ► §

I’ll give up that lifestyle.

00:32:06 ► §

I’ll become a traveler.

00:32:07 ► §

I’ll see the world.

00:32:09 ► §

I’ll write Zen poetry.

00:32:10 ► §

I’ll live on beaches.

00:32:12 ► §

And I’ll read fine literature.

00:32:14 ► §

And I’ll go for that.

00:32:15 ► §

I’ll lower my consumption level by about 70%.

00:32:18 ► §

And that’s what I’ve done ever since, basically.

00:32:23 ► §

That was what the planet needed. And that’s what the hippie opted for.

00:32:28 ► §

I’ve lived that life ever since, until I became a zippy, basically, in the mid-80s.

00:32:33 ► §

And I had to invent the zippy concept, really, to kind of explain to myself who I was and who my friends were and why.

00:32:41 ► §

Now, I put it to you that if everybody at that time in the 60s who were armed with the same

00:32:47 ► §

information about the planet had made the same decision, if everybody had

00:32:51 ► §

voluntarily opted to reduce their consumption level and their

00:32:55 ► §

expectations, we would now be living on a very beautiful, harmoniously

00:33:00 ► §

developed planet with none of these problems we have now. But people

00:33:04 ► §

didn’t have the courage and so now I think they’re going to have to

00:33:07 ► §

live through the objective result

00:33:11 ► §

of their not making those decisions then. They’re now, I think, being forced

00:33:16 ► §

to lower their consumption level. It’s not so clear here

00:33:19 ► §

but it’s coming and it’s very clear in Europe and a lot of the West.

00:33:24 ► §

Now the personal spiritual component brings us directly to the rave.

00:33:29 ► §

The hippie conclusion was that mankind,

00:33:33 ► §

that Western man was basically stuck in his head,

00:33:38 ► §

and that the only chance for the planet,

00:33:40 ► §

because the Western system was a threat to the planet,

00:33:43 ► §

the only chance for the planet was the discovery,

00:33:48 ► §

or more likely the rediscovery,

00:33:50 ► §

of some kind of technique or some kind of technology

00:33:53 ► §

which would one by one, through all the people in the West,

00:33:57 ► §

individually, one by one,

00:34:00 ► §

put them through a process where they got out of their heads

00:34:03 ► §

and back into their heart and their body.

00:34:07 ► §

In other words, as George Gurdjieff, a great teacher in the early 20th century, said,

00:34:12 ► §

he called mankind three brain beings.

00:34:15 ► §

We have an intellectual brain, an emotional brain, and a physical moving brain.

00:34:20 ► §

And these brains are equal in every way.

00:34:21 ► §

One is not more important than the other,

00:34:24 ► §

but they should work in harmony, all three together, as a team, cooperating.

00:34:30 ► §

Now, that was the hippie analysis of what would have to happen in the West.

00:34:33 ► §

We would need some kind of strategy, some kind of technology,

00:34:37 ► §

some kind of technique to enable everybody to get this balance again.

00:34:42 ► §

Today, every high street in Britain is offering just such a commodity,

00:34:49 ► §

rave, non-stop, rhythmic, African style, shamanic dance music which is taking an entire generation

00:34:57 ► §

out of their heads and back into their hearts and their bodies. So that is actually happening to hundreds of thousands of young people all across Europe

00:35:08 ► §

and it’s now spreading into America.

00:35:12 ► §

So, this is Kate and I’m going to be talking about trans states,

00:35:19 ► §

so I thought it would be a good idea if we had an actual example.

00:35:24 ► §

Young people dance like this for hours

00:35:26 ► §

on end. I’ll be coming to that very soon. So anyway, there I was. I was editing and

00:35:32 ► §

publishing the encyclopedia and predicting a mass consciousness-raising outbreak among

00:35:38 ► §

young people when suddenly these two young guys, Scooby Doobies they were called,

00:35:46 ► §

they were a design team and they’d found the magazine I was doing,

00:35:49 ► §

which was kind of a, I don’t know what you’d call it,

00:35:52 ► §

an idealistic, small circulation, hippie-oriented magazine.

00:35:59 ► §

And they found that and they thought that was the message they wanted.

00:36:01 ► §

And they were ravers. They explained to me they were ravers.

00:36:04 ► §

And they came into my office and they were dressed very colourfully.

00:36:08 ► §

Totally unlike the punk thing that was totally fashionable then.

00:36:12 ► §

They had no rings through their noses.

00:36:14 ► §

None of this stuff.

00:36:15 ► §

They were very colourfully dressed.

00:36:16 ► §

And they explained to me that they were going to acid house parties

00:36:19 ► §

and they were raving all night.

00:36:22 ► §

And they got me to go into my very first, as they were called then, acid house party, now called raves.

00:36:30 ► §

And as soon as I saw my first acid house party, I knew this was the consciousness-raising movement,

00:36:39 ► §

the beginning of this very thing that I was predicting and praying for, really.

00:36:43 ► §

the beginning of this very thing that I was predicting and praying for, really.

00:36:49 ► §

My first rave I went to was put on by Tony Colston Hayter,

00:36:52 ► §

who ran a posse called Sunrise,

00:36:58 ► §

and he was the acid house king of that time when rave burst out in England.

00:37:00 ► §

This is 1987, 1988.

00:37:03 ► §

So he was on the TV, he was being interviewed.

00:37:05 ► §

He was the famous acid house king there was 20,000 kids

00:37:08 ► §

in a field

00:37:10 ► §

and they were going for it

00:37:12 ► §

all night

00:37:13 ► §

that was the very first one I went to

00:37:15 ► §

I remember him

00:37:18 ► §

getting up

00:37:19 ► §

interrupting the music which is quite rare

00:37:22 ► §

and announcing that

00:37:24 ► §

he said,

00:37:26 ► §

they’ve hit us with 12 injunctions to stop this,

00:37:28 ► §

but they haven’t managed to stop it.

00:37:31 ► §

So I also picked up that there was a strong energy behind this.

00:37:35 ► §

It was young people determined on doing what they wanted to do,

00:37:38 ► §

as long as it didn’t harm anyone else.

00:37:40 ► §

And there was an element of rebelliousness

00:37:43 ► §

that hit us with 12 injunctionsctions and they haven’t managed to stop us

00:37:47 ► §

so I thought, I paid attention

00:37:50 ► §

what did it look like, they had

00:37:54 ► §

it was a massive field with 20,000 people dancing it, they had a big dipper

00:37:59 ► §

they had a ferris wheel, they had stalls selling champagne, hot dog stands

00:38:03 ► §

all the way around this field, my first impression was this should be surrounded by a massive

00:38:08 ► §

Woodstock hippie festival with the rave in the middle. Perfect.

00:38:14 ► §

But there were differences and

00:38:15 ► §

I don’t want to, I mean, some of this is my theory

00:38:20 ► §

not every raver would necessarily agree with what I’m saying. In fact, if you

00:38:24 ► §

stay for the question and answer,

00:38:25 ► §

you’ll probably hear a few objections.

00:38:27 ► §

So here are some of the differences between raves and the hippie thing.

00:38:33 ► §

The main thing to notice is that these ravers were yuppies.

00:38:37 ► §

I remember that very first rave,

00:38:39 ► §

I sat down with a group of young people,

00:38:41 ► §

and this girl was saying to me,

00:38:43 ► §

isn’t it great?

00:38:44 ► §

You work really hard all week

00:38:46 ► §

and then you rave really hard all weekend.

00:38:49 ► §

So she was quite happy.

00:38:51 ► §

She accepted the whole competitive system.

00:38:53 ► §

She was doing quite well within it.

00:38:55 ► §

She was adding raving at the weekend.

00:38:57 ► §

It’s her weekend thing.

00:38:58 ► §

She was not trying to change society.

00:39:02 ► §

These were yuppies.

00:39:03 ► §

They were smart.

00:39:04 ► §

They were intelligent. They were savvyuppies, they were smart, they were intelligent, they were savvy, and

00:39:07 ► §

they were entrepreneurial. If you think of Tony Colson-Hare, this was 20,000 kids, they

00:39:12 ► §

were paying about $40toworkitout.Hewastaking$800,000 in one night in a big open

00:39:20 ► §

field just outside London. The take was $800,000. So this was not a hippie-inspired thing.

00:39:25 ► §

This was young, yuppie, entrepreneurial-based.

00:39:31 ► §

Now, you probably all know about Mrs. Thatcher

00:39:34 ► §

and you’ve probably got mixed opinions,

00:39:36 ► §

but Mrs. Thatcher’s main call was for a revival in England

00:39:40 ► §

of the entrepreneurial spirit.

00:39:42 ► §

If she had really meant that,

00:39:45 ► §

then she would have been behind the whole Raver thing

00:39:49 ► §

and it would now be Britain’s greatest export to the world.

00:39:54 ► §

But somehow she tried to stamp it out, in fact.

00:39:59 ► §

If she had supported it,

00:40:00 ► §

it would now be Britain’s greatest cultural export.

00:40:05 ► §

But what

00:40:06 ► §

it boiled down to was Mrs. Thatcher’s

00:40:08 ► §

message was actually puritanical.

00:40:11 ► §

It was mean-spirited.

00:40:13 ► §

She was protecting

00:40:14 ► §

her own conservative-supporting

00:40:16 ► §

industrial barons

00:40:17 ► §

and the whole status quo. She wasn’t

00:40:20 ► §

really encouraging

00:40:22 ► §

the entrepreneurial spirit when it got right

00:40:24 ► §

down to people just doing it.

00:40:27 ► §

And so when these kids, these yuppies who were part of the system up until then,

00:40:31 ► §

saw the full power of the state turned against them, for what?

00:40:36 ► §

For dancing? Or for organizing it and then charging somebody to go into it?

00:40:41 ► §

Totally entrepreneurial?

00:40:42 ► §

They were shocked and they began to question the system.

00:40:46 ► §

And they began to be radicalized.

00:40:48 ► §

And that is the history of the rave scene ever since.

00:40:51 ► §

If she had gone along with it,

00:40:53 ► §

I think now it would be a very controllable, new kind of entertainment.

00:41:00 ► §

But she didn’t.

00:41:01 ► §

She fought it and it was radicalised

00:41:05 ► §

and now it’s quite a large element of social protest

00:41:08 ► §

or desire for social change within it

00:41:11 ► §

at its base

00:41:12 ► §

another difference with raves is that

00:41:16 ► §

the music is louder than in the hippie times

00:41:19 ► §

and it carried everywhere

00:41:21 ► §

I noticed at this first rave and ever since

00:41:23 ► §

because the music is much louder, it carries.

00:41:26 ► §

It carried across the whole field.

00:41:27 ► §

So people would leave the dance floor,

00:41:30 ► §

maybe to go and get a glass of champagne or whatever,

00:41:32 ► §

and they’d be dancing all the way over to the,

00:41:37 ► §

and they’d be standing at the champagne stall,

00:41:38 ► §

and they’d still be dancing.

00:41:40 ► §

Unlike a hippie thing where the band would be over here,

00:41:42 ► §

and you’d come over here to be quiet,

00:41:44 ► §

and you’d choose the music when you wanted it, more of a sort of spectator thing,

00:41:49 ► §

this was more everybody felt involved in it.

00:41:51 ► §

They wanted music louder so that everybody was getting the same beat at the same time.

00:41:56 ► §

That was part of the atmosphere they wanted.

00:42:01 ► §

If you look at old footage of Woodstock and so on,

00:42:04 ► §

you’ll see that most people

00:42:06 ► §

there’s probably two or three girls up near the front of the camera

00:42:09 ► §

which is why the camera was there filming them

00:42:11 ► §

everybody else is sitting about in groups puffing or just chatting

00:42:16 ► §

dancing wasn’t really a big thing

00:42:18 ► §

with the hippies

00:42:19 ► §

I dance sometimes and I really got into it

00:42:24 ► §

but it wasn’t, I dance sometimes and I really got into it, but it wasn’t a dance culture as the rave scene is definitely a dance based culture.

00:42:30 ► §

Dance is not some optional thing that you do.

00:42:35 ► §

I’ll talk more specifically about what a rave is like as opposed to a party, but when you go to a rave you don’t really sit about and have a little drinky poo and then a little dance and then you chat up the girl you’ve met

00:42:46 ► §

it’s not like that at all

00:42:48 ► §

it’s a different kind of thing

00:42:50 ► §

the other big difference

00:42:52 ► §

was when I first went to these

00:42:54 ► §

acid house parties, they were very

00:42:56 ► §

clear that they were not hippies

00:42:58 ► §

they were very insistent that this was

00:43:00 ► §

their thing, it was nothing to do with hippies

00:43:02 ► §

and I grant that

00:43:04 ► §

this rave is not an invention of old hippie that this was their thing, it was nothing to do with hippies, and I grant that.

00:43:09 ► §

This rave is not an invention of old hippie conspirators like me.

00:43:16 ► §

This really did kick off from among the youth itself, and I think that’s a big strength of it.

00:43:21 ► §

But nevertheless, from a zippy point of view, what they were doing was activating their hippie hemisphere.

00:43:26 ► §

That’s what was happening, and so I was immediately interested in it.

00:43:30 ► §

So, is a rave just a party?

00:43:31 ► §

No.

00:43:33 ► §

It’s definitely not just a party.

00:43:34 ► §

Because it depends on what we mean by a party.

00:43:36 ► §

I think we have to define what a party is.

00:43:40 ► §

To me, a party seems to belong to the industrial age when we all worked very hard five days a week

00:43:42 ► §

and then we all got off our faces on Friday and Saturday.

00:43:45 ► §

And that’s what a party meant.

00:43:48 ► §

It was kind of a way of controlling the industrialized worker ants

00:43:51 ► §

to let them let off steam on Fridays and Saturdays.

00:43:54 ► §

Now, we’ve moved to a different kind of culture altogether,

00:43:57 ► §

and we have to redefine party altogether.

00:44:00 ► §

But by party, most people think of alcohol.

00:44:04 ► §

They think of picking up a member of the opposite or the same sex,

00:44:08 ► §

maybe getting off your face, dancing a little bit, chatting a little bit, drinking a little or a lot.

00:44:15 ► §

None of these items would really happen at a proper rave.

00:44:20 ► §

First of all, alcohol is not the main lubricant.

00:44:24 ► §

A whole generation is now appearing where alcohol is not fashionable.

00:44:28 ► §

In fact, it is unfashionable.

00:44:31 ► §

And if nothing else was true about rave culture than the fact that it’s very rapidly producing a whole generation who are against alcohol, who are really not into it. If that was the only thing rave culture had achieved, I would still

00:44:45 ► §

be giving it my total vote of confidence because I would never have believed that in my lifetime

00:44:49 ► §

I would see alcohol going out of fashion. But it is. There’s a whole generation in England

00:44:55 ► §

now who just don’t drink, just doesn’t occur to them to drink. They’re smart drinks or

00:45:00 ► §

other drugs they use, but alcohol is gone.

00:45:03 ► §

or other drugs they use, but alcohol is gone.

00:45:10 ► §

Second thing I’d like to say about it is that raving is not a new dance step.

00:45:12 ► §

It’s not a dance step at all, in fact.

00:45:17 ► §

There are no steps to raving, nor do you do it with a partner.

00:45:21 ► §

You come to a rave and there’s a dance floor and there’s some seats there and you just get out there and you go for it, as Kate was doing there.

00:45:28 ► §

There are no partner. You don’t have to go up to a girl and say, would you like a dance? None of that. Everybody gets out there on their own

00:45:32 ► §

or in groups and they just go for it. And the great thing

00:45:36 ► §

about that, because there are no steps,

00:45:40 ► §

everybody can only be themselves somehow.

00:45:44 ► §

Almost as much as raving,

00:45:46 ► §

I like sitting at the edge of a rave dance floor

00:45:49 ► §

watching people raving.

00:45:51 ► §

Everybody has a story.

00:45:52 ► §

Here’s some fat girl and she’s doing it this way

00:45:55 ► §

and here’s some young black guy and he’s got his style

00:45:57 ► §

and somehow, because there are no steps,

00:45:59 ► §

you can read their story.

00:46:01 ► §

There is no way to hide when you’re out on a dance floor.

00:46:04 ► §

Whatever you do, that’s you. There’s no way to hide when you’re out on a dance floor you whatever you do

00:46:05 ► §

that’s you there’s no way to hide it with steps you can pretend you’re john travolta or do all

00:46:10 ► §

sorts of things but when there are no steps there is no no place to hide and so it’s it’s very open

00:46:16 ► §

it’s very sharing and it’s very caring as well um third thing is the beat is faster And also that each

00:46:26 ► §

And here’s where the DJ comes in

00:46:27 ► §

Each record is mixed

00:46:28 ► §

So that the music

00:46:31 ► §

Ideally never stops

00:46:33 ► §

You have a wall of sound that continues

00:46:35 ► §

All through the night

00:46:37 ► §

And it lifts you higher

00:46:39 ► §

And then it takes you down

00:46:40 ► §

And it lifts you again

00:46:41 ► §

And it keeps going

00:46:42 ► §

There’s no space between the tracks where you

00:46:45 ► §

can stop and say thank you for the dance and take the girl back or whatever those days are gone you

00:46:50 ► §

know uh the dj also he’s present it’s not like um disco in a sense the dj is there and he he he

00:47:00 ► §

watches the mood a good dj watches the mood and knows when to take people a little higher, a little faster,

00:47:07 ► §

when to lower them, take them slower, down again,

00:47:10 ► §

maybe a little bit of ambient in the middle where the rhythm is stopped

00:47:13 ► §

and people are just doing this, like waving like trees

00:47:16 ► §

and then picking it up again with the bass drum and lifting them to a new height.

00:47:21 ► §

The first time I saw this I realised he was the techno shaman

00:47:24 ► §

because of his

00:47:25 ► §

ability to lead the crowd mood.

00:47:28 ► §

I used this word

00:47:29 ► §

techno shaman and that has become

00:47:31 ► §

that’s a phrase which is stuck and you read about

00:47:34 ► §

it a lot these days.

00:47:36 ► §

So I said before, you don’t just have a little

00:47:38 ► §

drink here and then a little dance with some girl

00:47:39 ► §

you’ve met. Nothing like that. People dance to

00:47:41 ► §

rave music for hours.

00:47:44 ► §

It is shamanic, tribal

00:47:45 ► §

African style dancing

00:47:47 ► §

for hour after hour until your

00:47:49 ► §

mind is stilled

00:47:51 ► §

your conditioning removed

00:47:53 ► §

it’s very close to

00:47:54 ► §

brainwashing in fact

00:47:57 ► §

the insistent repetitive

00:47:59 ► §

use of rhythm and of light

00:48:01 ► §

it could be used negatively

00:48:03 ► §

luckily the rave culture has grabbed the techniques

00:48:06 ► §

Because they’re scientific

00:48:07 ► §

This is shamanic technology

00:48:09 ► §

It’s ancient and it’s modern

00:48:10 ► §

And young people have grabbed this technology

00:48:13 ► §

And they’re using it to produce positive change

00:48:16 ► §

You could use the same technology

00:48:18 ► §

And put out negative messages

00:48:20 ► §

This is why it’s so important with raves

00:48:22 ► §

That the imagery surrounding a rave is positive

00:48:25 ► §

Because really you’re opening people’s minds

00:48:28 ► §

You’re removing their conditioning

00:48:29 ► §

Their expectations about what life should be

00:48:32 ► §

And what they should be

00:48:33 ► §

They’re more open to taking new impressions

00:48:36 ► §

It’s very important that those impressions are positive

00:48:40 ► §

And Megatropolis, which is the club I mostly have run

00:48:44 ► §

I don’t allow

00:48:46 ► §

Any negative images in there

00:48:47 ► §

At all, visual or otherwise

00:48:49 ► §

No negative images

00:48:51 ► §

I’m very aware that artists say that

00:48:53 ► §

True art is the balance of light

00:48:56 ► §

And darkness

00:48:56 ► §

My viewpoint is we get the dark stuff

00:48:59 ► §

Six days a week

00:49:00 ► §

One day a week we should have all positive imagery

00:49:04 ► §

Then we’re still not even getting the balance Over a week So you day a week we should have all positive imagery then we’re still not even getting the

00:49:06 ► §

balance over a week.

00:49:07 ► §

You don’t see any

00:49:08 ► §

knives stuck in eyeballs or skulls

00:49:12 ► §

or any of that stuff at any of my raves.

00:49:13 ► §

It all must be inspiring, positive,

00:49:16 ► §

healthy imagery.

00:49:19 ► §

Yeah, please.

00:49:21 ► §

I’m tending to be over

00:49:22 ► §

by now, but we’ve got ages to go.

00:49:24 ► §

So if anybody needs to leave, please do so.

00:49:26 ► §

I’ll stop in about ten minutes,

00:49:28 ► §

and we’ll move into the question and answer phase if people want to do that.

00:49:34 ► §

So I’ll just talk through people leaving.

00:49:38 ► §

Okay, a little bit of history of house music and where it all began.

00:49:42 ► §

It began in most people will…

00:49:44 ► §

You can read this in magazines and books, really,

00:49:47 ► §

you don’t need me to tell you this,

00:49:48 ► §

but it began in Chicago with a new kind of

00:49:51 ► §

way of playing with the music.

00:49:54 ► §

Why it was called Acid House,

00:49:55 ► §

they claim is they used to put acid on some of the tracks

00:49:58 ► §

to burn them to create new impressions,

00:50:01 ► §

or there are various theories.

00:50:03 ► §

I don’t know, myself I think LSD

00:50:06 ► §

was involved in

00:50:07 ► §

what would you say if people started calling it acid

00:50:10 ► §

ad music, you’d probably say no no it means

00:50:11 ► §

burning the record

00:50:13 ► §

it was then picked up in London

00:50:18 ► §

and in Ibiza which is an

00:50:20 ► §

island in the Mediterranean

00:50:21 ► §

famous for its clubbing and also

00:50:23 ► §

a famous hippie centre interestingly enough I spent a lot of time in Ibiza in the 60, famous for its clubbing and also a famous hippie centre,

00:50:25 ► §

interestingly enough. I spent a lot of time in Ibiza in the 60s. It was kind of the San

00:50:31 ► §

Francisco of Europe. And then acid house parties hit London. One of the very early clubs was

00:50:39 ► §

called Shum, run by a man called Danny Rampling, and he was pretty famous for a couple of years, but I think he missed

00:50:46 ► §

the boat. When the rave scene

00:50:48 ► §

began to become more of a social

00:50:50 ► §

movement, some of the early

00:50:52 ► §

rave organisers

00:50:54 ► §

who were really just yuppies and

00:50:55 ► §

really only wanted

00:50:57 ► §

to be little rock stars, I think.

00:51:00 ► §

They wanted to be pop stars and

00:51:01 ► §

they didn’t have a big enough ambition and basically

00:51:04 ► §

the whole scene has moved beyond some of those early yuppies who started it all.

00:51:10 ► §

Tony Colson Hayter, who was the acid house king, I haven’t heard of him for a couple of years,

00:51:14 ► §

and yet he was world famous at the time.

00:51:17 ► §

So as it became a social movement and picked up political steam and so on,

00:51:21 ► §

a lot of those early yuppie types disappear from the scene.

00:51:25 ► §

They probably still go to little clubs and they play their original kind of music,

00:51:29 ► §

but they are not crucial to the scene anymore.

00:51:33 ► §

In fact, a key element in the whole development was when the Ravers crossed in England,

00:51:36 ► §

they crossed over with the New Age Travellers.

00:51:39 ► §

I don’t know how much you people know about this,

00:51:41 ► §

but the New Age Travellers at that time lived in their own trucks

00:51:44 ► §

and they used to give their own festivals in the summer.

00:51:46 ► §

They’d all come together in the open air on common land

00:51:49 ► §

and they began to get involved in the rave scene

00:51:53 ► §

because when Mrs Thatcher cracked down on holding it in warehouses

00:51:57 ► §

and all the rest of it, people started linking up with the New Age travellers

00:52:01 ► §

because they knew where the good fields were

00:52:02 ► §

and they knew how to organise festivals in the country.

00:52:07 ► §

So you began to get a crossover between the hippie and the rave cultures

00:52:12 ► §

and that produced what is really the most powerful moving part of it today.

00:52:18 ► §

The UK government has passed so many laws.

00:52:20 ► §

I suppose you all know about the Criminal Justice Act.

00:52:23 ► §

They’ve been trying to stamp out the whole rave culture for the last few years

00:52:26 ► §

for totally the wrong reasons that I’ve said.

00:52:29 ► §

But we have to ask ourselves, why are they trying so hard?

00:52:33 ► §

Why was Mrs. Thatcher and John Major, why are they passing these massive bills?

00:52:39 ► §

I mean, this bill actually allows if more than ten people get together

00:52:43 ► §

with the intention of having a party with insistent rhythmic repetition

00:52:48 ► §

of, I mean they’ve even had a political committee, a parliamentary committee

00:52:52 ► §

to define what rave music is. Why? Why are they

00:52:55 ► §

bothering to do all this? They obviously see a power

00:52:59 ► §

in this thing. Okay, that’s pretty much

00:53:04 ► §

all I want to say except that i’m going to read

00:53:06 ► §

a thing called the ideal rave which will give you an idea and it’s a little bit more inspirational

00:53:12 ► §

as a thing to end up on and then we’ll move in straight into question and answers if that’s okay

00:53:18 ► §

if you have any questions or statements you don’t have to ask questions for god’s sake

00:53:21 ► §

okay the ideal rave this is slightly slightly poetic and slightly prosaic.

00:53:26 ► §

I’ve put in some facts as well.

00:53:28 ► §

The ideal rave should be out in the open air

00:53:32 ► §

and should begin around sunset.

00:53:35 ► §

This rarely happens, but it’s the ideal.

00:53:38 ► §

People should start drifting in as the sun goes down.

00:53:42 ► §

They’d be checking out the venue,

00:53:44 ► §

finding their spot where they can leave their things.

00:53:46 ► §

Maybe they’d have a tent with them.

00:53:48 ► §

They’d be hanging up their flags

00:53:50 ► §

so their friends can find them, you know.

00:53:53 ► §

And they’d be having some food and that kind of thing.

00:53:56 ► §

By now the music has started,

00:53:57 ► §

but it’s slow and it’s drifty

00:53:59 ► §

and only occasionally rhythmic at this stage in the evening.

00:54:03 ► §

People wandering around, greeting and meeting each other,

00:54:06 ► §

settling in, checking out what other distractions are available.

00:54:10 ► §

These distractions could include massage, body and face painting,

00:54:15 ► §

stalls with social, political, ecological and personal spiritual activities.

00:54:21 ► §

We could have brain machines.

00:54:24 ► §

We could have food, smart drinks.

00:54:27 ► §

We could have modem video link-ups with other clubs on the planet at that time, and so on.

00:54:33 ► §

Anything really that’s inspiring, consciousness-raising, or positive. Anything. The great thing about

00:54:40 ► §

rave culture is it’s like the glue that can help all the other little movements and groups and

00:54:45 ► §

strategies. It’s a way for them all

00:54:47 ► §

to come together, party together

00:54:49 ► §

and meet each other and become

00:54:51 ► §

more of a unified movement.

00:54:54 ► §

You know, seeking that one

00:54:55 ► §

paradigm shift after which all the

00:54:58 ► §

little things will be resolved.

00:55:00 ► §

So that’s what rape culture can say.

00:55:01 ► §

Occasionally people will hit the dance floor

00:55:03 ► §

and loosen themselves up with some dancing.

00:55:06 ► §

But dancing at this early stage helps to get the blood flowing around your veins

00:55:10 ► §

and generally loosens people up, helps them to mix, drop their social barriers.

00:55:16 ► §

Gradually over the night the music gets faster and more and more people hit the dance floor.

00:55:21 ► §

By just after midnight the place is starting to get as packed as it’s going to be. This is different with indoor raves where most people probably

00:55:29 ► §

arrive after midnight. At my first acid house party, there were 20,000 kids going for it

00:55:35 ► §

by 2am. Massive energy. Everybody, 20,000 people all dancing to that same rhythm. We’re now participating in a tribal gathering love dance

00:55:46 ► §

to absolutely non-stop shamanic rhythmic drum rolls

00:55:51 ► §

and electronic bleeps that slightly unhinge the mind.

00:55:55 ► §

Where am I? Who am I?

00:55:58 ► §

Gradually the group mind becomes more dominant.

00:56:02 ► §

It becomes, who are we?

00:56:05 ► §

I’m part of something.

00:56:07 ► §

I’m part of something that’s actually bigger than myself.

00:56:11 ► §

I’m one of the people.

00:56:12 ► §

These are my people.

00:56:14 ► §

This is us.

00:56:18 ► §

Jack Itali, in The Political Economy of Music, said,

00:56:23 ► §

Music is prophecy

00:56:25 ► §

its styles are ahead of the rest of society

00:56:28 ► §

because it explores

00:56:29 ► §

much faster than material reality can

00:56:32 ► §

the entire range of possibilities

00:56:34 ► §

it makes audible

00:56:36 ► §

the new world that will gradually become

00:56:38 ► §

visible, that will impose itself

00:56:40 ► §

and regulate the order of things

00:56:42 ► §

by the middle of the night

00:56:44 ► §

people are taking

00:56:45 ► §

a break. Some go all the way through non-stop, of course, and never stop dancing from about

00:56:50 ► §

10pm till 8 o’clock in the morning. But people are taking a rest usually, wandering around,

00:56:57 ► §

meeting friends and new friends, lots of hugging, not much direct sexuality because of this

00:57:02 ► §

group mind entity that’s beginning to be felt by everyone present

00:57:06 ► §

people tend to meet at raves but then they get together for dates later

00:57:10 ► §

they don’t tend as a general rule to get into romantic liaisons actually during the rave

00:57:18 ► §

it’s much more a people, sex becomes more of the group mind thing

00:57:23 ► §

ok so sunrise begins to approach.

00:57:26 ► §

Now this is a crucial time.

00:57:28 ► §

This is the mythological heart of the rave.

00:57:31 ► §

When people realize that the sunrise is coming along,

00:57:34 ► §

everybody gets back on the dance floor.

00:57:36 ► §

That’s a general call to get back on the dance floor.

00:57:39 ► §

Everybody’s there dancing up a storm

00:57:41 ► §

as the music gets louder and faster and more cosmic,

00:57:45 ► §

possibly with angelic choir samplings played over the music,

00:57:50 ► §

even classical music samplings sometimes,

00:57:52 ► §

to help arouse a religious sense of awe as the sun gets closer and closer to coming over the horizon.

00:58:00 ► §

And so we dance the sun up.

00:58:03 ► §

We actually dance the feeling as you do it, it’s dancing the sun up. We actually dance. The feeling as you do it is dancing the sun up.

00:58:07 ► §

Our energy is somehow linked with the sun as it comes up,

00:58:11 ► §

with the planet we’re dancing on as it moves around.

00:58:14 ► §

Somehow you have this feeling of connection.

00:58:17 ► §

It’s like the old pagan festivals.

00:58:19 ► §

We’re all in this together.

00:58:21 ► §

This is our planet.

00:58:23 ► §

Our planet is indescribably beautiful and gigantic.

00:58:27 ► §

You get that feeling as it comes round and the sun becomes visible.

00:58:31 ► §

We are atoms of that living goddess.

00:58:34 ► §

Personally, I can’t see a better way to help people learn a love, respect and reverence for nature

00:58:39 ► §

than the classic open air, all night rave.

00:58:44 ► §

Can you imagine what it felt like with 20,000 people going for it

00:58:47 ► §

and actually feeling together

00:58:49 ► §

and the power of a people together dancing the sun up?

00:58:53 ► §

It’s an awesome…

00:58:55 ► §

It is religious, and it is life-changing.

00:58:59 ► §

The Yoga Journal, currently in the shops,

00:59:01 ► §

the current Yoga Journal,

00:59:03 ► §

has an article called Sacred Raves

00:59:06 ► §

and here’s one quote

00:59:08 ► §

These all night dance marathons look like hedonistic escape

00:59:11 ► §

but raves may just be the defining spiritual expression of a new generation

00:59:17 ► §

The Reverend Matthew Fox of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco

00:59:23 ► §

is quoted in there, he says

00:59:24 ► §

These kids are showing us how to pray in a new way in Matthew Fox of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco is quoted in there. He says,

00:59:27 ► §

These kids are showing us how to pray in a new way,

00:59:29 ► §

which is also an ancient way,

00:59:32 ► §

with fewer books

00:59:33 ► §

and more dancing.

00:59:36 ► §

That’s it.

00:59:37 ► §

Thank you.

00:59:57 ► §

Any drug overdone and in the wrong context is bad.

01:00:00 ► §

In the right context, with wisdom, is good.

01:00:03 ► §

I feel ecstasy has played a big part in it,

01:00:08 ► §

just as LSD was a big part of the hippie thing. What I’m finding now is that the more developed drivers in England anyway have moved beyond the ecstasy thing.

01:00:12 ► §

Myself, I haven’t taken ecstasy for about two years. I find it too toxic.

01:00:16 ► §

I moved over to smart drinks, some of the smart

01:00:19 ► §

drugs. Basically now I don’t take anything but

01:00:23 ► §

there are different phases and it can certainly help people to get that feeling

01:00:28 ► §

at the beginning. Does that answer the question?

01:00:35 ► §

Yeah.

01:00:36 ► §

I find this in the hippie times too. I never quite understand it. I start from the point

01:00:40 ► §

we need to save the planet. Therefore if you found something good we

01:00:44 ► §

want to spread that. We don’t want to

01:00:46 ► §

keep it in elite small groups.

01:00:48 ► §

I mean, even the underground thing.

01:00:50 ► §

I only went underground in the 60s

01:00:51 ► §

in order to recoup our forces

01:00:53 ► §

in order to go overground again

01:00:55 ► §

and take over. That was the purpose. We went

01:00:58 ► §

underground in the first place. We didn’t

01:01:00 ► §

go underground to stay

01:01:01 ► §

underground. Now, the thing about this

01:01:03 ► §

commercial aspect, if you imagine anything

01:01:06 ► §

good that comes along is going to attract a commercial aspect of it right when jesus was

01:01:12 ► §

hanging on the cross a little crowd gathered around because there was something happening

01:01:17 ► §

on friday night because there was a crowd gathered around the cross a little hot dog man comes along

01:01:22 ► §

and he sets up his hot dog stand on the edge of the crowd. Now you don’t blame Jesus for the hot dog stand. In fact, the truth of the

01:01:29 ► §

matter is, the fact that the hot dog stand is there shows you that something real is

01:01:34 ► §

going on in the center. Do you see my point? So don’t be put off by the commercialism.

01:01:39 ► §

That is bound to happen. Richard?

01:01:44 ► §

Yes, San Francisco

01:01:45 ► §

is very unique and I’m still trying to work

01:01:48 ► §

out exactly in what way

01:01:50 ► §

but my current analysis

01:01:52 ► §

is, and there may be some SF raiders here

01:01:54 ► §

who will argue, but

01:01:55 ► §

I think the San Francisco

01:01:58 ► §

rave scene was really

01:02:00 ► §

started by some expats from England

01:02:02 ► §

who brought Mark Healy and

01:02:03 ► §

a few other people who started Wicked

01:02:05 ► §

and they brought it over here

01:02:07 ► §

quite early on

01:02:09 ► §

while it was still

01:02:12 ► §

happening in England. My own feeling is that

01:02:14 ► §

it was unnaturally

01:02:15 ► §

planted here. I’m not criticising it

01:02:17 ► §

but I don’t think the culture here had

01:02:20 ► §

grown into it naturally when these

01:02:22 ► §

expats came from England.

01:02:24 ► §

Now what happened was that the rave scene here,

01:02:28 ► §

actually in those first couple of years,

01:02:31 ► §

shot well beyond any level it had ever reached in England.

01:02:35 ► §

In fact, it went further even than it’s still gone in England

01:02:39 ► §

in those first two years.

01:02:41 ► §

But after about two years, it burned itself out in some way

01:02:45 ► §

and it’s been on a wave back ever since.

01:02:48 ► §

So when I arrived here nine months ago,

01:02:51 ► §

with the very definite knowledge that this thing is growing all over the planet,

01:02:55 ► §

I suddenly started meeting people who were telling me that it’s dying out.

01:02:59 ► §

You know, first time I’ve ever come across that.

01:03:01 ► §

And I think that was because it was unnaturally transplanted here,

01:03:05 ► §

grew too fast, was kind of force-fed in a way,

01:03:08 ► §

and then it’s been slipping back.

01:03:10 ► §

Meanwhile, outside San Francisco, even in the greater Bay Area,

01:03:13 ► §

the rave scene is going through its normal progress and growth,

01:03:19 ► §

and that scene is coming up just bang on schedule.

01:03:22 ► §

So you’ve got these two things happening in San Francisco.

01:03:26 ► §

One wave coming back and the natural thing growing up.

01:03:30 ► §

So I think that explains some of the arguments I’ve been having on SF Raid.

01:03:35 ► §

Did that answer your question, Richard?

01:03:37 ► §

No, I’d say it’s about two years behind the English scene.

01:03:43 ► §

People still tend to get parties

01:03:45 ► §

here rather than what I would call a true

01:03:48 ► §

rave. A party is

01:03:48 ► §

when everybody brings their favourite record and we

01:03:52 ► §

play them one after the other. That’s a party

01:03:54 ► §

and God bless it, there’s nothing wrong with a

01:03:56 ► §

party. A rave is more of a

01:03:59 ► §

group

01:04:00 ► §

conspiracy to

01:04:01 ► §

come together and use

01:04:03 ► §

ancient and modern technologies

01:04:05 ► §

insistent rhythm and insistent beat

01:04:07 ► §

kept up at a certain tempo

01:04:09 ► §

to sort of bootstrap the entire

01:04:12 ► §

group to the next evolutionary

01:04:14 ► §

level so it’s more of a

01:04:16 ► §

conscious enterprise than just

01:04:18 ► §

a party therefore you don’t go from

01:04:20 ► §

a good trance track

01:04:22 ► §

shift over to a

01:04:24 ► §

John Travolta disco track.

01:04:26 ► §

You just don’t. It’s more of a directed enterprise.

01:04:32 ► §

Well, yeah, that’s exactly it. I kind of implied that when I was talking.

01:04:37 ► §

I say the reason for that is because it hasn’t collapsed here quite so far.

01:04:41 ► §

That’s the only reason. But it will. It is.

01:04:46 ► §

hasn’t collapsed here quite so far that’s the only reason but it will it is you know i mean to some extent it’s true that america keeps its citizens happy by kind of pillaging the rest of

01:04:52 ► §

the planet but making sure the folks at home are not having a very hard time and that sort of works

01:04:57 ► §

up to a point but this comes a point in the collapse of the system where they’re just physically not

01:05:02 ► §

capable of mollycoddling the home people anymore and I think especially in San Francisco

01:05:07 ► §

there’s so much homelessness in the streets and so many young people just

01:05:11 ► §

don’t know where their next penny is coming from. I mean it’s interesting that when we

01:05:15 ► §

opened the club here we charged the same

01:05:19 ► §

as we charge in England which is about $10 or

01:05:23 ► §

$2 off if you’re unemployed. Now, everybody in

01:05:26 ► §

England can afford that because they’ve got the welfare state, so you’ve got a minimum

01:05:30 ► §

amount of money to spend. Here, it was vastly overpriced. Now, who would have expected that

01:05:35 ► §

in America, things have to be cheaper? Strange, you know?

01:05:42 ► §

Are you talking about ecstasy? Are you talking about ecstasy?

01:05:46 ► §

Are you talking about ecstasy specifically?

01:05:49 ► §

No, not at all.

01:05:55 ► §

The main drug that’s used at raves is ecstasy, of course,

01:05:56 ► §

and that is an empathogen,

01:06:00 ► §

and it does encourage hugging and warm feelings.

01:06:03 ► §

My own, as a psychologist,

01:06:07 ► §

I know that it’s a very mild psychedelic. It is like most psychedelics are and almost any drug is and I but I mean I certainly don’t want to minimize

01:06:13 ► §

the effect it’s had it’s been had a very important effect on helping the birth of a culture

01:06:17 ► §

I’m not emphasizing it because I’ve seen that after a while you can I think one of the interesting

01:06:23 ► §

things about ecstasy is that it seems to be homeopathic.

01:06:27 ► §

You seem to be able, having learned how to open your heart,

01:06:32 ► §

which is what ecstasy does in a way to other people,

01:06:35 ► §

after a while it happens as soon as you hear the music.

01:06:39 ► §

You can lower the amount of drug you take.

01:06:43 ► §

I don’t think that’s true about LSD,

01:06:46 ► §

but it is true about the empathogens,

01:06:48 ► §

and it’s very true about ecstasy,

01:06:48 ► §

and that’s how I did it. I just slowly reduced the amount I was taking

01:06:51 ► §

until now I actually forget to take it.

01:06:53 ► §

Suddenly the evening’s over,

01:06:54 ► §

and I realize I haven’t had anything.

01:06:55 ► §

I’m still a little surprised.

01:06:58 ► §

But definitely ecstasy,

01:07:00 ► §

and specifically ecstasy,

01:07:03 ► §

has played a very large part in the whole race and I wouldn’t want to minimize

01:07:06 ► §

that at all

01:07:07 ► §

no

01:07:09 ► §

I don’t think they’re requisite

01:07:11 ► §

I think there are people, I know some quite hardcore

01:07:14 ► §

ravers who have never taken ecstasy

01:07:15 ► §

it’s not an absolute

01:07:17 ► §

prerequisite for sure

01:07:19 ► §

yeah

01:07:20 ► §

yeah

01:07:23 ► §

I see rave as only the first of five stages of the process,

01:07:28 ► §

and it’s kind of the shake it all loose,

01:07:31 ► §

get out of your head, back into your heart and body, stage one.

01:07:35 ► §

That’s all it’s about.

01:07:36 ► §

In most raves, planet-wide,

01:07:38 ► §

we’d probably not go beyond that first stage at this point.

01:07:41 ► §

But the next stage is the ambient chill-out room.

01:07:44 ► §

As I was saying, once you’ve opened your,

01:07:46 ► §

or once you’ve deconditioned your mind by shamanic dancing,

01:07:50 ► §

you’re then very open to what comes in,

01:07:52 ► §

and so it’s really critical.

01:07:53 ► §

At that point, you go into the ambient and chill-out room,

01:07:55 ► §

and it’s very critical what is available at that point.

01:07:59 ► §

We do, at Megatriplos, we have at least always three different areas,

01:08:03 ► §

one of which is the dance floor,

01:08:07 ► §

the other two of which are offering books and

01:08:10 ► §

magazines with new kinds of information

01:08:12 ► §

or information stalls

01:08:14 ► §

or speakers, I mean

01:08:15 ► §

me speaking at a rave

01:08:17 ► §

one of my raves is quite a normal thing

01:08:19 ► §

we discuss these issues and so on

01:08:21 ► §

so yeah

01:08:23 ► §

that is, I think,

01:08:25 ► §

that is the next stage in the ambient room.

01:08:29 ► §

Then the ambient room,

01:08:30 ► §

beyond that, the ambient room,

01:08:32 ► §

after you’ve been in the ambient room a while, you sort of

01:08:34 ► §

stumble on a door finally at the back, and that

01:08:36 ► §

leads you into the festival. By now

01:08:38 ► §

you’re meeting rainbow types

01:08:39 ► §

or whatever, these kinds of waves,

01:08:42 ► §

so they tell you about festivals in the forest.

01:08:44 ► §

And so it leads to that, so they tell you about festivals in the forest and so it leads to that

01:08:45 ► §

so you start going to festivals in the forest

01:08:47 ► §

and beyond that really

01:08:49 ► §

is the pagan world

01:08:50 ► §

so in other words, a young yuppie enters

01:08:54 ► §

high street

01:08:55 ► §

dance club, very respectable

01:08:57 ► §

disco lights, enters here

01:08:59 ► §

and is coming out here into the pagan world

01:09:02 ► §

so that’s the overall

01:09:03 ► §

process that’s going on

01:09:05 ► §

very respectable door at the front

01:09:07 ► §

but leading actually to a pagan

01:09:09 ► §

revival, by pagan I don’t mean

01:09:11 ► §

necessarily anti-christian necessarily

01:09:13 ► §

but much more nature based

01:09:16 ► §

I mean really

01:09:17 ► §

the answer to this religious thing I think

01:09:19 ► §

we’ve now put the two together

01:09:21 ► §

the goddess we worship

01:09:24 ► §

is the living planet we live on,

01:09:26 ► §

and we are part of that living planet.

01:09:30 ► §

And worshipping her is a natural thing to do.

01:09:34 ► §

It’s not some theoretical, abstract sky god we’re talking about.

01:09:39 ► §

It’s actually reverencing the Mother Earth of which we are a part of.

01:09:44 ► §

So, when I say pagan I mean that

01:09:45 ► §

yes, the guy at the piano

01:09:47 ► §

well, it was Mrs Thatcher

01:09:51 ► §

I mean that was the first stage of it

01:09:53 ► §

although the yuppies at the time didn’t really

01:09:56 ► §

quite realise that that’s what it meant

01:09:57 ► §

but when she cracked down on those

01:10:00 ► §

big acid house parties, when they were making

01:10:01 ► §

$800,000 in one night

01:10:04 ► §

putting on these massive parties

01:10:05 ► §

just outside London, as I say

01:10:08 ► §

she should have supported it, she should have

01:10:10 ► §

offered them fields to do it in

01:10:11 ► §

you know, this is, you know, and they should

01:10:14 ► §

have become millionaires, millionaire

01:10:15 ► §

rock stars just like Bill Graham or whatever

01:10:18 ► §

that should have been the pattern

01:10:19 ► §

she in fact stamped them out

01:10:22 ► §

emphasised the drug aspect

01:10:24 ► §

and various other things.

01:10:25 ► §

So that was the beginning of the radicalisation process.

01:10:27 ► §

The second important thing was when the ravers and the New Age traveller hippie types began to connect

01:10:34 ► §

because ravers were getting cracked down on in warehouses and those kind of places

01:10:39 ► §

and were having to go further into the countryside.

01:10:41 ► §

And the New Age travellers with their trucks and their experience of putting on free festivals were a natural ally.

01:10:48 ► §

And when those two came together, that’s really what the Zippy thing was about.

01:10:51 ► §

The Zippy was hippie plus techno people.

01:10:54 ► §

The Ravers, in this case, are the techno people.

01:10:56 ► §

The hippies were the hippies.

01:10:57 ► §

You bring those two cultures together and you’ve got something with energy, idealism,

01:11:02 ► §

and some money because of yuppies but also social idealism

01:11:05 ► §

and all the historical roots back to the hippies

01:11:08 ► §

so that was the key thing

01:11:10 ► §

and that’s what we’re working on here

01:11:11 ► §

we took, when we did

01:11:13 ► §

the Zippy Tour of America last year, we took

01:11:15 ► §

the rave to the annual rainbow

01:11:17 ► §

gathering, do you know about the rainbow gatherings?

01:11:20 ► §

we did the first rave there for them

01:11:21 ► §

and again, we’re trying

01:11:24 ► §

to connect the urban yuppie raver

01:11:26 ► §

with the more rurally based, ecologically aware, older hippie types.

01:11:32 ► §

And that’s the key cultural fusion that has to happen.

01:11:38 ► §

This is a classic argument.

01:11:40 ► §

It’s not quite what you’re saying.

01:11:41 ► §

So bring me back afterwards if I’ve avoided it.

01:11:43 ► §

But this classic argument about is it live music, is it synthetic?

01:11:50 ► §

Here’s my example.

01:11:52 ► §

If you have 20,000 people at a rock concert, and you have 20,000 people at a rave,

01:11:59 ► §

and you’re looking at a photograph, it’s very easy to see which is which.

01:12:03 ► §

With the rock and roll concert, you have 20,000 people all looking in the same direction,

01:12:10 ► §

all basically sitting on their bums,

01:12:12 ► §

passively, passively, 20,000 people passively consuming rehearsed entertainment

01:12:18 ► §

by four little ant figures half a mile away on a stage

01:12:22 ► §

who they take it on faith they’re actually live people, the named band

01:12:28 ► §

that they were promised playing live. So you have

01:12:31 ► §

at best, you have four people live at best

01:12:35 ► §

and 20,000 passive consumers. Switch to

01:12:40 ► §

the rave. Everybody’s 20,000 people, everybody’s looking at each other.

01:12:45 ► §

I would say, I would

01:12:46 ► §

estimate that nine-tenths of the people

01:12:48 ► §

on the dance floor don’t even know who the

01:12:50 ► §

DJ is. I would say

01:12:52 ► §

six out of ten people don’t even know

01:12:53 ► §

where the DJ is half the time.

01:12:56 ► §

Right?

01:12:58 ► §

So no star system. The music,

01:13:00 ► §

if you want to talk about live music,

01:13:02 ► §

20,000 people are live

01:13:04 ► §

participating in music live, you see, as music, 20,000 people are live, participating in music live,

01:13:07 ► §

you see, as opposed to 20,000 passive.

01:13:09 ► §

Now, I know that’s not quite the point you raised, but, yeah, really it’s bringing up all forms from the past.

01:13:16 ► §

It’s very tribal, in fact.

01:13:21 ► §

To my ear, the most exciting sound is kind of it sounds very tribal and ancient

01:13:26 ► §

you’ve got

01:13:26 ► §

and then you mix that in with techno bleeps

01:13:30 ► §

and so on and you get

01:13:31 ► §

somehow the ancient past and the future

01:13:34 ► §

at the same time

01:13:35 ► §

I find that very exciting

01:13:37 ► §

that interface

01:13:38 ► §

it’s also very exciting

01:13:40 ► §

we got this when we went to the rainbow gathering last year

01:13:43 ► §

and we took the rave there

01:13:44 ► §

it was maybe 100 miles

01:13:46 ► §

beyond the last town, beyond the last

01:13:47 ► §

house to get to this Rainbow Gathering up

01:13:49 ► §

in the Wyoming mountains. And then

01:13:52 ► §

to start off a techno

01:13:53 ► §

rave where electricity

01:13:56 ► §

has never gone before.

01:13:58 ► §

Something, a real charge I got

01:13:59 ► §

out of that. Like, you know, we’re 100

01:14:01 ► §

miles from the last electrical

01:14:03 ► §

pylon and yet here we are with UV lights. It’s very

01:14:07 ► §

primitive stuff. You’re talking about two little speakers and a mixing desk and a couple

01:14:11 ► §

of UV things doing this. Very exciting, though.

01:14:15 ► §

Really front-edge somehow. I don’t know quite how to put it into words, but very

01:14:19 ► §

exciting.

01:14:23 ► §

The computers play right into that

01:14:25 ► §

ok this is a perfect place to end

01:14:27 ► §

I think McKenna talked about this

01:14:29 ► §

a couple of years ago, Terence McKenna

01:14:31 ► §

and I used it last year as kind of

01:14:33 ► §

what is the zippy vision of where we want

01:14:36 ► §

to go to, what is the balance between

01:14:37 ► §

technology and organic

01:14:39 ► §

ok, imagine a

01:14:42 ► §

world in the future, a planet where there

01:14:43 ► §

isn’t one inch of concrete

01:14:45 ► §

it’s covered in rainforest

01:14:46 ► §

completely 100% natural

01:14:48 ► §

a naked couple

01:14:50 ► §

walking across a clearing

01:14:52 ► §

look pretty much like us, maybe a little bit hairier

01:14:54 ► §

but naked

01:14:55 ► §

they pause, she bends down

01:14:58 ► §

lifts the flower

01:15:01 ► §

without breaking it and puts it in her mouth

01:15:02 ► §

thereby making an

01:15:04 ► §

electronic connection.

01:15:07 ► §

Men use drop-down in their eyes.

01:15:09 ► §

They plug into a sort of global computerized brain.

01:15:13 ► §

They go into a virtual reality super city.

01:15:16 ► §

They make their deals.

01:15:17 ► §

They go to college.

01:15:18 ► §

They have all the whatever they’re doing.

01:15:20 ► §

We have meetings in virtual reality.

01:15:22 ► §

But in fact, we’re all living as naked apes

01:15:25 ► §

back in the jungle

01:15:27 ► §

in other words the whole of technology

01:15:30 ► §

has been inhaled into virtual reality

01:15:32 ► §

there’s no more concrete

01:15:34 ► §

no more physical buildings anywhere

01:15:36 ► §

instead of being exhaled on the planet

01:15:38 ► §

now this to me

01:15:39 ► §

this is a zippy vision

01:15:40 ► §

because I love nature

01:15:42 ► §

and I love the super city

01:15:44 ► §

the only thing I’ve got against the super city is that it’s killing off the nature.

01:15:48 ► §

So if somehow we could put that into virtual reality, into cyberspace,

01:15:52 ► §

then we’ve cracked it also, by the way.

01:15:55 ► §

We talk about this quite a lot.

01:15:56 ► §

We’ve also cracked this thing about the sex thing.

01:15:58 ► §

You want to hear the answer to the sex thing?

01:16:00 ► §

The thing about are we meant to live as partners all our lives with just one woman one person or are

01:16:07 ► §

we meant to play the field and explore beauty wherever we can find it if you take this thing

01:16:11 ► §

we have adam and eve you go off and you live naked and alone with your partner but whenever you like

01:16:19 ► §

maybe friday nights or whenever you put on your bodysuit and you go out hunting the most beautiful women on the planet in virtual

01:16:25 ► §

space. And you have virtual

01:16:28 ► §

sex with the

01:16:30 ► §

most beautiful women in Australia and so on.

01:16:32 ► §

But we’re actually living as Adam and

01:16:34 ► §

Eve, totally

01:16:35 ► §

you know,

01:16:37 ► §

a monogamous relationship.

01:16:41 ► §

So you see the vision,

01:16:42 ► §

sometimes we call the zippy thing

01:16:43 ► §

Holocaust aversion

01:16:46 ► §

therapy. I mean, people, things seem so bad that people have almost given up trying to

01:16:51 ► §

change the planet. But if we could get them excited about where we could be and all the

01:16:55 ► §

amazing things that are possible if we get through the current turbulence and people

01:17:00 ► §

could really get excited about the future we could have, then it would be like Holocaust

01:17:04 ► §

aversion. We don’t want Holocaust.

01:17:05 ► §

We want to get through.

01:17:07 ► §

Okay, I’ll have to stop now.

01:17:09 ► §

That’s the time.

01:17:10 ► §

Thanks very much.

01:17:16 ► §

What a mind rush that was, don’t you think?

01:17:25 ► §

Before I say anything else, I want to remind you of something Fraser said early on in his talk,

01:17:31 ► §

and that is how critical it is that the culture has to change from a competitive one to a cooperative one.

01:17:39 ► §

We need a cooperative meme, he said, and I couldn’t agree more.

01:17:43 ► §

We need a cooperative meme, he said, and I couldn’t agree more.

01:17:48 ► §

Now, I know there are a lot of you ravers out there,

01:17:51 ► §

and maybe you’re thinking of yourselves by some other name right now,

01:17:55 ► §

but by whatever names you call your gatherings,

01:17:58 ► §

maybe you don’t think of them as raves anymore, but the culture you are a part of,

01:18:01 ► §

the culture stemming from what Fraser calls proper raves,

01:18:04 ► §

is a form of human energy

01:18:06 ► §

that hasn’t been seen on this planet since the dominator culture swept us up into what

01:18:12 ► §

has now become an orgy of violence. So how can a few million ravers around the world

01:18:18 ► §

have enough of an influence to help foster a change in consciousness? Well, I don’t know for sure. I’ve got one kind of

01:18:26 ► §

off-the-wall idea. What about take your parents to a ray unite? That’s right. They don’t care

01:18:34 ► §

if they’re in their 40s or their 80s. You know, even though most of the people in my

01:18:39 ► §

generation just don’t get it, we aren’t completely stupid, and you might be surprised at how many converts

01:18:45 ► §

you make. Many of us, you know, lived through the 60s, and you might be surprised how many

01:18:51 ► §

zippy sleepers there may be out there lurking in the boardrooms and the halls of power and

01:18:57 ► §

science. What have you got to lose? That’s the question you should ask both yourself

01:19:03 ► §

and them. Now, you may think this is a waste of time, but I know more than one formerly conservative Republican

01:19:10 ► §

who has now turned into a real full-fledged regular raver.

01:19:15 ► §

Actually, many more than one.

01:19:17 ► §

So, some of your parents are real movers and shakers in their own circles.

01:19:22 ► §

Why not take them to a proper rave and just say,

01:19:25 ► §

I don’t know how the world’s going to end,

01:19:27 ► §

but this is how it’s going to begin.

01:19:30 ► §

You know, at this stage of the game,

01:19:32 ► §

about the only thing we’ve got to lose is some dance space

01:19:35 ► §

due to a few seniors out there doing wheelies in their wheelchairs or something.

01:19:40 ► §

Okay, so maybe we don’t need any imagery like that right now.

01:19:44 ► §

I know you’ve been here a while and the hour is getting late,

01:19:47 ► §

but I’d like to take just a couple of minutes more and put Fraser’s talk in a little better context.

01:19:53 ► §

You might have noticed that question or two about how many people in the audience had modems and were connected to the Internet.

01:20:01 ► §

Now, today we just assume that everybody can find their way to the net.

01:20:05 ► §

But this talk was given in 1996.

01:20:09 ► §

Now, stop and think about that for a moment.

01:20:12 ► §

At the time Fraser gave this talk, the World Wide Web was only a couple of years old.

01:20:18 ► §

You know, to really grok the depth of what Fraser just said, try this little mind experiment,

01:20:24 ► §

you know, a mind game, if

01:20:25 ► §

you will. And I realize that by now, only a few of you really committed psychonauts

01:20:31 ► §

out there are still with us, and that’s okay. In fact, there may be only one person who

01:20:36 ► §

actually tries this, but that one person may be the hundredth butterfly we’ve talked about

01:20:41 ► §

in the past. So, here goes. Think back to the year 1995,

01:20:47 ► §

the year before Fraser gave this talk, and call up a few of the major events in your life back

01:20:53 ► §

there. Even if you’re only five years old, I think this will work for everybody. Now think of some of

01:20:59 ► §

the major events that year and compare them to what’s going on today. They can be anything that makes you think about who you were back then and who you are

01:21:07 ► §

today.

01:21:08 ► §

How do you feel about things that happened back then?

01:21:11 ► §

And how do you feel about the things that are going on today that have continued from

01:21:15 ► §

them?

01:21:16 ► §

For example, on January 1st of that year, the WTO was established.

01:21:21 ► §

The Republicans took over Congress and began executing their contract

01:21:25 ► §

on America. The Oklahoma bombing took place. O.J. Simpson got away with murder. DVD technology

01:21:33 ► §

was just announced, and Windows 95 was released. Now, just to be clear, there were no iPods,

01:21:40 ► §

no YouTube, or MySpace, or even Google. The web was so primitive that I really don’t even know how we put up with it.

01:21:48 ► §

Of course, in ten years’ time we’ll be saying the same thing about today’s web, I’m sure.

01:21:55 ► §

You know, an awful lot has changed in the world since the year before Frazier gave this talk,

01:22:00 ► §

and so now let’s pretend that it’s sometime in 1996,

01:22:04 ► §

and you’ve just taken a seat in a large lecture hall at Stanford University,

01:22:09 ► §

but you know then what you know now.

01:22:12 ► §

It’s a real mind warp, I agree, trying to pretend that 9-11 never happened

01:22:18 ► §

and that some insane cowboy and his crime family hadn’t begun to turn the USA

01:22:24 ► §

into a fascist Christian dictatorship.

01:22:27 ► §

You know, think back to the good old days when the big news just ahead was nothing more significant

01:22:32 ► §

than Clinton getting blowjobs in the Oval Office.

01:22:36 ► §

And now go back and re-listen to Fraser’s talk.

01:22:40 ► §

But this time, as you listen, try to imagine what you would have done differently in your life over these past ten years if you knew then what you know now.

01:22:50 ► §

And now, after listening to Fraser’s talk once again, and thus armed with what I believe to be the philosophical underpinnings needed to begin to rebuild human civilization on this little planet,

01:23:04 ► §

well now, what are you going to do about it?

01:23:08 ► §

At this point, you may not be able to answer that question,

01:23:11 ► §

but your destiny ultimately depends on you not just sitting on the sidelines right now.

01:23:17 ► §

That great holon of human consciousness has begun to stir once again.

01:23:23 ► §

In fact, that’s really why you’re here right now,

01:23:25 ► §

to participate in the great unfolding that’s begun to take place.

01:23:30 ► §

In fact, I’ve been receiving a lot of interesting emails about this

01:23:34 ► §

and other subjects we’ve been covering here in the salon.

01:23:37 ► §

It seems that all of us have been formulating more questions right now

01:23:41 ► §

than we’ve been able to find answers to.

01:23:44 ► §

I think the answers are out there.

01:23:46 ► §

They’re just waiting to be found and shared.

01:23:48 ► §

So to do a little something to continue pushing these discussions along,

01:23:53 ► §

I’ve set up both a blog and a wiki for all of you denizens of the psychedelic salon to use.

01:24:00 ► §

And you can find links to them from various parts of the MatrixMasters.com website, both in the podcast section and the Planque Norte section, as well as on the front page.

01:24:11 ► §

So please feel free to use them both whenever the mood strikes you.

01:24:16 ► §

And I’ll be saying more about these two new features of the salon in future podcasts.

01:24:20 ► §

But if you want to be one of the early users and help set the direction of the discussions on these two tools, well, now’s a good time to become involved. Thank you. pose your questions for that matter. Well, I’d better bring this to an end before this file gets any larger.

01:24:47 ► §

I want to thank Fraser for sending me a copy of this important presentation

01:24:51 ► §

and even more for his lifelong dedication to searching for better ways for humans to live and interact on this planet.

01:25:00 ► §

You know, he’s not only done the intellectual heavy lifting,

01:25:03 ► §

he’s also lived as lightly on the earth as possible.

01:25:06 ► §

That’s something not many of us can say.

01:25:09 ► §

I also want to thank my good friends Jacques Cordell and Wells, also known as Chateau Hayouk,

01:25:15 ► §

for the use of their music here in the Psychedelic Salon.

01:25:18 ► §

Thanks again, you guys.

01:25:20 ► §

And for now, this is Lorenzo, signing off from cyberdelic space.

01:25:26 ► §

Be well, my friends.