this made me so happy

http://www.hulla.info/archive4.html

reading matt and j3s's party review from 10 years ago is a fucking trip. so awesome to catch a glimpse of us at our finest -- to revisit how young and earnest and free we all were.

H4 was definately a Rave if there ever was one. in a single word, it was beautiful. at one point in the evening, dj frisky dropped a hh remix (by stompy on homegrown) of the classic tune 'one family'. for the first time ever i *really* experienced what the song meant. all it took was a look around to realize that everyone there was together: be it people smiling at strangers, laughing, dancing frantically, singing along to happy hardcore, jungle or old school rave music, wearing crazy fun fur outfits, or carrying around stuffed animals and toys. the night peaked for about seven hours. in a weird way, i felt that i was home. chicago's a very interesting place but as of late (say the last three years), it's had its fair share of problems. i love chicago and will do everything i can to make things at least a little better, but H4 showed me something that i usually just dream about. it was that special. - DJ matt positive

man, i miss those days! people seem to forget that rave was in many ways an incredibly moving and empowering cultural phenomenon. it provided so much meaning and a terrifically counterhegemonic social framework for countless adolescents just beginning to really explore themselves, their emotions, and their place within a social world that just didn't seem to have a place for hope.  what impresses me to this day is the uproarious force, the violent intensity of our collective desire to imagine a better experience of being together, to create (if only for a night) a better, happier world, a world whose sole purpose was to lift you up.   sure, in the end it became (or perhaps always was) politically inert.  it certainly did not form a lasting community of like-minded individuals working together to attain an ideal.  but that's perhaps why it is so beautiful to me -- precisely because it was so much about moments of explosive contact and unexpected intimacy, knowledge, bliss that continually escaped capture.  it was something that could only briefly be held, and it arrived with so much force!  it could shear people into raw wounds and stitch them back together in the same beat.  in one night you would be so moved to tears, so affected by the crowd and the music and the furor that you could forget how ugly and shitty and misunderstood you were and feel in your bones that you were a part of something amazing (and you were)

i guess i just want to say that amid bashing my old youth culture for its hedonism and (*ahem*) fash'n mistakes one must remember that this microcosm was precious for many people who craved a degree of freedom, intensity, community that quotidian life did not readily provide.  rave was a space for hope, a privileged space perhaps (an insular space) but a space for hope nonetheless.  and you never know how precious hope is until it's gone and you experience a life impoverished by its absence.

hope is a part of feeling alive.  without rave, i wouldn't be here.  SO SUCK IT, H8ERS!

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<3

mw-raves
internet rave archive (Matt and co.)
hyperreal
dropbass