As we inch closer and closer to 2014 here’s a chance to look back nearly 20 years ago to a video from 1994 out of Toronto, Canada titled “Introducing the Rave”. The video features various people talking about raves and an event that night hosted by Pleasure Force Productions which attracted 5,000 people. One of the DJs in the video is Mark Oliver who is currently the resident at The Guvernment nightclub in Toronto.
From a segment of the video:
The best kind of rave you want to go to is in a space that you’ve never seen before, that you’ve never been to before. It is a totally new experience, it’s not the same old place, the same old club, the same old bar kind of experience. It can be a field north of the city, it can be a great empty warehouse in an empty part of the town or whatever. This is the beginning of your experience.
Just about every electronic music news website (including this one) focuses on the massive events that are in the news but there’s still an underground out there where events take place in virgin venues as described in that quote (virgin venues is the old term for new spaces never used for electronic music before). You won’t see these events with large Facebook event postings spamming your wall. You won’t see live tweets from the events or constant picture uploads to Facebook throughout the night. There’s room for those events along with the massive super clubs and massive festivals in the world today. Enjoy the global scene but get involved locally if you’re looking for that underground atmosphere that still exists.
Enjoy the present but know the past!
Here’s two additional videos from Pleasure Force Productions that has footage from their 1994/1995 New Year’s Eve event.
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