ravers must die

April 27, 2004 9:35 AM

Now that the terrorists are all caught, it's time to go back to attacking the real problem in America: Ravers.

"The Ecstasy Awareness Act (H.R. 2962) would throw anyone in jail who "profits monetarily from a rave or similar electronic dance event knowing or having reason to know" some event-goers may use drugs at the event. Similarly, Section 305 of the CLEAN-UP Act (H.R. 834) makes it a federal crime - punishable by up to nine years in prison - to promote "any rave, dance, music, or other entertainment event, that takes place under circumstances where the promoter knows or reasonably ought to know that a controlled substance will be used or distributed."

ProtectLiveMusic.org has been setup to combat these proposed laws. The idea of busting anyone that promotes a concert where drugs might show up in the jackets of attendees sounds like a good safe law that would never be abused, right? On the bright side, we're now one bill away from Phish and the Dead never touring ever again. :) [via furdlog]
posted by mathowie (49 comments total)

I suppose the Crack House Law was a little misleading.
posted by the fire you left me at 9:40 AM on April 27, 2004

There was something similar passed under the last Conservative government in the UK. On the whole though, the police seem to have been too embarrased to prosecute against it. Not sure if the intention was always iron fist / velvet glove or not however.

Anyway, bet you a fiver that antediluvian rock pigs arrive cracking weak jokes about jailing ravers on general principle in mere moments. Just y'all wait until they make patchouli a controlled substance! Then you'll be sorry...
posted by bifter at 9:40 AM on April 27, 2004

[obligatory]

anything that results in less raves and less ravers, is a beautiful thing.

[\oblig.]
posted by jonmc at 9:53 AM on April 27, 2004

antediluvian rock pigs arrive cracking weak jokes about jailing ravers on general principle in mere moments.

Paging Mr. Jonmc, Mr. Jonmc to thread 32741 please.

(antediluvian rock pigs is a killer moniker, although I wasn't aware club culture was a flood -- people who still like rock and roll are just like unicorns!).

What was this thread about again? Oh, right. I think they already have something like this going on in NYC. There was a club raided a few weeks back (Soundfactory?) and they were criticized because their drug sniffing dog was sleeping (can't find a new article).

On Preview: I swear I wrote that before jonmc posted.
posted by malphigian at 9:56 AM on April 27, 2004

Does this mean that the Federal Government should arrest itself for building all those highways that people transport illegal stuff on every day?

How does the government throw itself in jail? Who gets the key?
posted by troutfishing at 10:00 AM on April 27, 2004

So would this mean it's OK to have a massive electronic music drugfest if the organizers are a not-for-profit entity?
posted by nickmark at 10:01 AM on April 27, 2004

This was big news....um, last summer. For more information, see em:def. Be sure to check out the pages on laws, legislation and legal cases affecting raves and electronic music.
posted by arielmeadow at 10:10 AM on April 27, 2004

Anyway, bet you a fiver that antediluvian rock pigs arrive cracking weak jokes about jailing ravers on general principle in mere moments. Just y'all wait until they make patchouli a controlled substance! Then you'll be sorry...

Well, I guess the universe owes you a fiver. I'm most certainly an antedeluvian rock pig, but I've never had any fondness for patchouli.

I don't want ravers jailed. I just find the whole culture annoying. But annoyance to me is no reason to jail somebody.
posted by jonmc at 10:17 AM on April 27, 2004

first they came for the ravers, and i did not protest because i disliked their clothes...
posted by Miles Long at 10:18 AM on April 27, 2004

* fearing arrest, begins nervously deleting all techno playlists from own iPod *
posted by matteo at 10:24 AM on April 27, 2004

C'mon everybody! Don't you realize the music is on OUR side!?
posted by Oddly at 10:25 AM on April 27, 2004

file this under the "no, i never did drugs as a kid, why do you ask?" self-delusional section of revisionist history. aren't these anti-drug baby boomers a wee bit hypocritical here? suddenly it's their own kids / grandkids getting high and now it must be stopped, and by god since they're the ones leading the country now it's their job to stop it.

the idiocy of this is astounding. are we going to start prosecuting high school sports coaches for allowing sports to continue, even though a competitive environment might promote steroid abuse? or prosecute medical schools for setting up an environment in which students might be taking stimulants to stay awake for the 72-hour shifts they end up pulling? or, for that matter, prosecuting universities and colleges for providing an environment in which there's a chance that people will partake in illegal drug or underage alchohol use?

as an aside, maybe we should just get congress to pass a law making it illegal, from this day foreward, to pass a law with some painfully idiotic name just so they have a cute acronym like "CLEAN-UP" or "CAN-SPAM" to refer to it with in the news. i suspect the bastards who coined "PATRIOT" are behind the sudden trend, but who knows.
posted by caution live frogs at 10:25 AM on April 27, 2004

We talked about this the last time it came up. It was a different Congress, but the bill didn't go very far then, either.
posted by MrMoonPie at 10:32 AM on April 27, 2004

"But annoyance to me is no reason to jail somebody."

jonmc, if only everyone were as selfless as you...
posted by nickmark at 10:37 AM on April 27, 2004

jonmc, if only everyone were as selfless as you...

'tis ok, nickmark.

I shall bear with the exposed buttcracks, the shiny pants, the bad electronic music, the pacifier crunchers, the rainbow brite hair...for my country, dammit!
posted by jonmc at 10:39 AM on April 27, 2004

Try as I might I just can't give a damn about Ravers...
posted by wfrgms at 11:06 AM on April 27, 2004

Try as I might I just can't give a damn about Ravers...

want to offer any reasons why they in turn should give a damn about you?
posted by specialk420 at 11:27 AM on April 27, 2004

Reminds me a bit of England's even more restrictive Criminal Justice bill (did it get repealed, or what? I forget), which among its clauses banned unlicensed gatherings of 10 or more people with music "characterized by repetitive beats." (IDM band) Autechre released the 3-track "Anti EP" around then ('94), as sort of a protest, with this label: "Warning: Lost and Djarum contain repetitive beats. We advise you not to play these tracks if the Criminal Justice Bill becomes law. Flutter has been programmed in such a way that no bars contain identical beats and can therefore be played at both forty five and thirty three revolutions per minute. However, we advise DJs to have a lawyer and a musicologist present at all times to confirm the non-repetitive nature of the music in the event of police harrassment. (...) Autechre is politically non-aligned. This is about personal freedom."

Flutter is actually kind of a cool track, the gimmick actually sounds pretty good.
posted by abcde at 11:28 AM on April 27, 2004

want to offer any reasons why they in turn should give a damn about you?

Well, the only reason I can think of is if he were a voting citizen :P
posted by abcde at 11:29 AM on April 27, 2004

HR 834, by my reading, would put the owners of MLB and NFL stadiums in serious jeopardy. I hope Peter Angelos winds up in general population.
posted by Kwantsar at 11:56 AM on April 27, 2004

I shall bear with the exposed buttcracks, the shiny pants, the bad electronic music...

The difference here is the buttcrack exposed at clubs is female. Unlike your Journey concerts.
posted by dydecker at 12:40 PM on April 27, 2004

A local New Orleans weekly did a great story on this a few months ago: Disco Donnie and the Days of Rave.
posted by ajr at 12:44 PM on April 27, 2004

The difference here is the buttcrack exposed at clubs is female. Unlike your Journey concerts.

I've never been to a Journey concert, but I saw plenty of exposed female breasts when I saw Metallica back in '89 and '91. Sadly, I saw a lot of exposed hairy man-breasts as well.

I couldn't comment on "clubs" since I'm proud to say that I've never set foot in one in my life.
posted by jonmc at 1:09 PM on April 27, 2004

England's even more restrictive Criminal Justice bill (did it get repealed, or what? I forget)

No. The outdoor party scene kinda went into hiding, and the masses were re-directed towards the club scene. Hence superclubs like Ministry of Sound, and Cream.

I couldn't comment on "clubs" since I'm proud to say that I've never set foot in one in my life.

Ignorance is Strength!
posted by inpHilltr8r at 1:14 PM on April 27, 2004

Well, I guess the universe owes you a fiver.

Lousy deadbeat universe! Pay up, dammit!

I've never had any fondness for patchouli.

...and I've never had any fondness for pacifiers, hair-dye, glow-sticks or going bare-chested in public. Electronic music is often very cool though, although there it no doubt also has its lemons. I have also had great times in some clubs, and lousy times in others. The problem is that somewhere (almost) unquestionably ace like Shelter is just as likely to be hit by shitey laws like this as your common-or-garden crappy warehouse rave. (Well, actually the larger problem is that the law is draconian, illiberal and blatantly discriminatory, but that's another story...)

abcde - as far as I know the criminal justice act is still law, but it is never really enforced. Well, not the provisions that apply to busting clubs for drug use anyway.
posted by bifter at 1:19 PM on April 27, 2004

Ignorance is Strength!

Ignorance, shmignorance, I just know what I like and what I don't like, so there's no reason for me to go there. And quite frankly, I probably wouldn't be welcome, anyway.
posted by jonmc at 1:22 PM on April 27, 2004

Hrm, I guess I'm a bit disturbed by the "doesn't affect me" mentality. H.B. 834 looks like it could be used against just about any concert, and H.B. 2962 seems like just about anything could be pulled into the rubric of "electronic" (do electric guitars count as "electronic?" It would not suprise me to see a zealous prosecutor make that argument.) The Clean-UP act is specifically focused on Methamphetamine which has broad cross-over appeal. I think that the "annoyed by ravers" crowd should look beyond the obvious scapegoating of raves to what other forms of musical events might be affected.

The basic problem with these laws is that I don't see a way in which a show producer can avoid liability. What music venue operatior is really going to be so stupid as to believe that there is not some level of drug use going on? It seems that under the law, instructing security on how to deal with drug use opens the door to criminal prosecution.

And now, back to the usual "my musical pretentions are less noxious than your musical pretentions."
posted by KirkJobSluder at 1:23 PM on April 27, 2004

KirkJObSluder:

I stated that I'm against the law. And I don't think anyone here has said they're for it. so what remains is the usual good natured rockers vs. ravers war.
posted by jonmc at 1:33 PM on April 27, 2004

Well if nobody else is for the law, I guess I'll support it. I wouldn't want it to feel unwanted.
posted by bargle at 1:48 PM on April 27, 2004

I just know what I like and what I don't like

Jeez Jon, after you unfailingly show up to shout "techno sucks" in every electronic music thread ever, we now find out that you've never actually been to a club? Pathological! Don't you realize this seminal showdown between rockers and ravers is going on nowhere but inside your own head?
posted by dydecker at 1:54 PM on April 27, 2004

Don't you realize this seminal showdown between rockers and ravers is going on nowhere but inside your own head?

I have heard techno music, dydecker. I do possess the magical device known as a radio.

I don't go to clubs because I don't like to dance, I don't like the music, I don't drink or get high and the expense and the velvet rope mentality and quite frankly, I'm pretty sure they'd take one look at me and tell me to take a hike.

And if it's all in my head, how come I recall a cover of a electronica music magazine with a headline "The 50 records that killed rock and roll."?
posted by jonmc at 2:09 PM on April 27, 2004

if techno is a threat then how come moby, fatboy, and the chemical brothers have been replaced on mtv by jessica simpson, kayne west, and the darkness?

until this thread i didnt think "electronica" was seriously being considered something more than a trend killed by madonna once she and billy corgan embraced it.

as for ecstacy, it doesnt work on me any more.

now THATS a crime!
posted by tsarfan at 2:28 PM on April 27, 2004

tsarfan, those mainstream commercial artists have been replaced because mainstream trends don't last more than a few years...mainstream commercial artists are constantly replaced. Electronic music is still around, just like it was during the grunge years. Just like rock was still around during the disco years. Seems like Mods and Rockers have always brawled. Nothing's really changed.
posted by arielmeadow at 2:37 PM on April 27, 2004

I don't go to clubs because I don't like to dance, I don't like the music, I don't drink or get high and the expense and the velvet rope mentality and quite frankly, I'm pretty sure they'd take one look at me and tell me to take a hike.

I used to think this way too before I had ever been to a club. Dance music was associated with roped off snobworlds where rich people sneer at each other's clothes and dance moves. Maybe it used to be like that. It sure isn't now. For me, last Sunday afternoon was more like lying round in the sun with a bunch of Japanese folk dressed like bums listening to a Skazi remixes of Metallica. No velvet rope. It was free. You probably would had a great time.

Remember, the key is to never reject stuff out of hand and to actively look in the really abandoned, neglected corners of the music world.
posted by dydecker at 3:30 PM on April 27, 2004

We talked about this the last time it came up. It was a different Congress, but the bill didn't go very far then, either.

MrMoonPie, wtf? are you kidding?

Biden stuck the RAVE act onto a child-abduction bill to get it passed and it's already been enforced to silence political speech.

H.R. 2962 is the brutally efficient next step. i can't see how events like Phish concerts or Burning Man will be able afford survive.

i don't know about the odds of passage, but i really worry that it will get stuck as a rider on a terrorism-funding bill.
posted by mrgrimm at 4:22 PM on April 27, 2004

an insightful comment from Bill Piper in the Billings Outpost article:

They can’t even keep drugs out of prison.
posted by mrgrimm at 4:26 PM on April 27, 2004

And if it's all in my head, how come I recall a cover of a electronica music magazine with a headline "The 50 records that killed rock and roll."?

Because journalists make shit like that up to sell dead trees?

I know this is anecdotal, but everyone I know, who's into electronic music, is also into rock and roll, at some level, and a lot more besides. So will you please quit shitting on every fucking electronic music thread we have? It's neither big, nor clever.
posted by inpHilltr8r at 4:42 PM on April 27, 2004

On occasion you can find me at this sort of event in the middle of nowhere. This legislation is a whole continent away, but most of the gatherings I go to are under the radar of local law enforcement anyway. Limited vehicular access, private property, everyone knowing everyone else and people on 'gates' provide adequate early warning of any potential troubles. I assume that the solutions in the US subculture to pressure by authority would be similar. It tends to be an underground culture now anyway, if only to avoid teenage hip hop gangsters who take the opportunity to gather together to test the edge of their knives. Club promoters must be having nightmares, but give me passive doof hippies any day.
posted by snarfodox at 4:42 PM on April 27, 2004

So will you please quit shitting on every fucking electronic music thread we have?

OK. OK. That's kinda why I put the "obligatory" tags around my rave diss. I've actually known some techno fans who were OK people, but I always sensed an antipathy to unreconstructed old-school rockers emanating from it, so that's where I got my bias, that and I truly don't care for the music (although I will cop to having enjoyed a few of Moby's and Fatboy Slim's tracks). And plenty of stuff I love (70's hard rock, metal, and other stuff) gets slammed on a regular basis around here so I figured turnabout was fair play. But I'll cease & desist.

But I can still keep dissing Morrissey and the Cure, right?
posted by jonmc at 6:05 PM on April 27, 2004

And as proof of my magnanimity, here's a true audio treasure: basichip's Album Of The Week.
posted by jonmc at 6:32 PM on April 27, 2004

I've been a proud raver since well before there was the annoying term for it.

We just called it acid house.

And you'd be mighty surprised who is and isn't a raver. The real ravers don't look anything like those goofy-pants wearing candy kids. Real ravers are often grad and undergrad students at CalTech, MIT, Harvey Mudd, Berkeley and more. Real ravers are engineers, scientists, programmers, writers, musicians, artists and - of course - neurologists, biologists and organic chemists. And much more. Sometimes all of the above all at once.

The real ravers are the carriers of the torch and bearers of the standard of the real no-nonsense aesthetics, intensity and long-lost inventiveness of rock and roll, the DIY passion of punk rock, the musicality of jazz, and the intelligence, intentionality and complexity of classical.

If you do not care to even attempt to understand what it is we're doing you have no place to criticize us, much less criminalize us.

For us music is religious. That's not a metaphor. Ecstatic dance and radical self expression become primal and spiritual, our footsteps rediscovering the path our ancients knew so well while never denying our modern life and heritage.

We seek utopia and seek escape from the anti-social "society" that blights us even yet. And you criticize us? That only fuels the (disco) inferno.

We seek music that communicates with the language of music itself, not the language of marketed angst, pseudorebellion or sex and violence.

And jonmc? Though most of the above is indeed for you (and anyone like-minded) this is especially for you: If your only exposure to "techno" is the radio, chances are great that all you've heard is the crappy unce-unce-unce-unce of incredibly awful wannabe deep house. There are no commercial stations that I've heard of that play real techno. Aqua's Barbie Girl? Decidedly not techno. The only radio you'll find real techno on is college and public radio, and even then it's sporadic and hit or miss. Would you judge rock or blues by modern commercial radio? On preview: If you like some Fatboy Slim and Moby, there's thousands of tracks out there I can point you to that you'll actually love. Fatboy Slim is some good stuff, but it's just the tip of the most enormous iceberg. Check out stuff like Ninja Tunes, Luke Vibert, Boards of Canada, Casino vs. Japan, Fuxa, Monolake, Pthalocyanine, Nullsleep, Yuppster, Love Spirals Downwards... soooo much more.

This bill is even further Draconian horseshit. Canada is looking better every day. If only it wasn't so damn cold most of the time. I guess I should be honored that we're potent enough to be considered a threat to the de facto - hell, de rigueur - way of American life. This American LifeTM of unquestioning and blind patriotic dogma and jingoism. Fear, uncertainty and doubt. Mindless hyperconsumerism and materialism as a surrogate for introspection and self worth. Ad nauseum.

Citizens, build thyself and your ideal experience and society. And when you're done, tear it down and do it again. And again.

Thanks for the great link, Matt.

For your further reading and enjoyment here's some writing I've done that's tangentially or directly rave or techno related: link 1 - link 2 - link 3 - link 4.

Also: If anyone - techno neophyte or adept - wants some suggestions on what to listen to to explore this stuff, feel free to do so via the IM contacts on my bio. Or ask questions about the history of techno culture, or anything about techno culture. I've been doing this since 1990 or so. If you're in the Los Angeles area and want to go to some of the anti-club and outdoor events I go to, you should also feel free to IM me. I'll have to get to know you first before I would take you to anything truly underground or renegade, but I'm sure you understand. As you can see, we're being persecuted.
posted by loquacious at 7:07 PM on April 27, 2004

Well, I'll have to poke around a bit. I may be too addicted to guitar riffs and Hammond organs to ever jump up and down at arave somewhere, although I get what you're talking about with the "ecstatic dance" and "music as religion" part. It happens in mosh pits and arenas full of people banging their heads too. Or at a Led Zeppelin show. or T. Bone Walker.

I've heard some techno on college stations and at parties I've attended. Don't take this as an attack on the culture that you obviously love as deeply as I love my rock-n-roll, R&B, country and hip-hop, but there was this mechanical hardness to the music that just alienated me somehow. It's just not my cuppa tea, I guess. The Moby tracks that I liked ("Flower" "Southside") seemed to counterpoint that mechanized part with the warmth of the blues and gospel vocals so that's what drew me in, I guess.

But again I could be totally not getting it. But thanks for the food for thought.
posted by jonmc at 7:33 PM on April 27, 2004

But I can still keep dissing Morrissey and the Cure, right?

Yeah, individual artists are fair game. It's the whole-genre thing I'm not going to take, anymore. Especially if you've only been exposed to the more commercial end of the scene. Imagine slagging off punk, if all you'd heard was Green Day.
posted by inpHilltr8r at 8:33 PM on April 27, 2004

I'm very Flat Earth Society about raves and ravers. I don't believe they exist. I went to something that was supposed to be a rave once, but there was a long line to get in, and we finally got into the warehouse and there was a loud attempt at a rock band inside and people were standing around looking at their shoes and there were no drugs or booze or beautiful jailbait girls sucking on pacifiers or any of that stuff. In fact I think I passed out there. From boredom.

I think these alleged raves are just illusions made up by people who wish they could go to them, and authorities that wish they could find one to bust and shut down. Of course this probably has something to do with the fact that I could never in a million years be cool enough to ever be invited to an actual rave. I have always had an aura of "NARC" about me.
posted by ZachsMind at 9:13 PM on April 27, 2004

loquacious, if you're ever in Australia I happen to know a whole lot of people who will want to meet you. Beautiful comment.
posted by snarfodox at 9:54 PM on April 27, 2004

mrgrimm, you are correct, kind of. The bill from the 107th Congress went nowhere. But I completely missed that Section 608 of S151 from this Congress does exactly as you say.
posted by MrMoonPie at 8:41 AM on April 28, 2004

This bill isn't about raves so much as its about MDMA.

Sadly, the effort here is misplaced. Concerned about X, a movement pushes for legislation banning the only genre positively associated with a drug culture: electronic music. Obviously this =~ rave, for the most part.

Popular culture roughly equates "rave" as "drug culture hangout" and whether justified or not, common opinion says that ravers are a bunch of drug addicts. Truly: why else would they dress that way, dance through all hours and listen to such crap music?

I'm sure this goes back to the days of Beethoven and Bach, the new crowd shunned by the previous avante-garde ad infinitum. The list even in modern times is endless: hippies, mod, new wavers, punks, moshers, etc.

This bill doesn't dissolve raves a'tall -- just poorly policed ones. Granted, not every drug dealer will get caught on the way in, but if one could reasonably claim due diligence I doubt one would face serious prosecution.

Sadly drugs are a part of that culture, or perhaps the reverse is true: part of the drug's culture is the rave culture. If that is untrue then the rave community must stand up and prove it is not so.

They'll lose a little mystique if they do but hey -- its not about the drugs, right?

[This being said, I don't know why "The Man" need meddle in one's affairs in any way. While I'm not a big fan of MDMA, we should all seek common ground in reforming the drug laws -- laws that paint the entire populace with the label of "criminal" with little protest. These laws have a long history of unbiased thinking behind them and we as a populace must re-educate the world as to what it really means to be a recreational drug user in the year 2004.]
posted by Ogre Lawless at 9:06 AM on April 28, 2004

Um, like, I don't understand. Why would rockers not dig the rave thing? Or are these alleged 'rockers' too young to remember the good-ol-days?

Your honor man, like I don't need no downers man, and I don't need no acid man, cuz I'm hooked on trance man.

You folks livin in 'Merica need to wake up and remember you are Americans. Tell these anti-liberty devils to take a powder and kick them out of office. ALL of them!
posted by Goofyy at 9:38 AM on April 28, 2004

two things. This bill is ridiculous. As a professional club dj I would hate to see my friends suffer any hardships due to what some would see as a right of passage for youths. The vagueness of the bills also make them completely open to abuse.

Second, I've gone to raves/parties or whatever for 11+ years. Although they are as much about the music as a rock concert they are also as much about the drugs. Please come off your high horse if you think anything different.

Btw, I'm a regular dj for one of the countries biggest rave promotion companies in the US.
posted by LouieLoco at 10:17 AM on April 28, 2004