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♪ Don't stop, don't stop I'

[fast-paced dance music]

[man] To drive up and hear the bass or feel the bass,

♪ Don't stop, don't stop I'

You just sort of get excited.

[woman] You never knew what you were gonna get.

And I think that's what really drew people to that scene.

[man 2] It was the music, and it was the sense

of what was going on,

plus the sense of danger that you was doing something

that you weren't supposed to be doing.

Breaking the law a little bit,

and doing things in, uh, renegade ways.

It was DIV, do it yourself.

[woman 2] The energy, the-- the music was amazing.

You just dance. You'd sweat, you know, it was just like,

this is bigger than all of us here.

[man 3] It's a mysterious, magical entity that people

have a really hard time putting their fingers on.

But that's part of San Francisco, you know,

that's part of the legacy of San Francisco.

[man 4] It was known as the Mecca of house music

at that time, because there was so much going on.

It was fever pitch.

[man 5] You can't help but just be infected

by this thing, this beautiful rhythm and this sharing,

-all of a sudden. -4' Don't stop, don't stop ♪

[Malachy O'Brien] An overall sense of newness

that nothing like this had ever happened before, ever.

-And you were a part of it. -4' Don't stop, don't stop ♪

[man 7] You're all listening to the same music

in that environment, that contained environment.

Everybody's heart is beating as one.

That's pretty powerful.

[Ne yea Griffith] You know, it was this, like, kind of call

to arms and call to action, which was very heart-based.

And it wanted to do it through dance culture,

'cause that was beginning to emerge.

[man 8] It felt renegade, it felt outlaw, it felt filthy.

It felt absolutely wrong and perfect.

[man 9] I just slipped in between the beats

of the music, and was like, I-- I was never really the same.

♪ Don't stop, don't stop I'

♪ Don't stop, don't stop I'

[Joe Nice] I had always been really, really

angry and resentful that I missed punk.

And so I wasn't gonna let that happen again

with another kind of music scene that hit, right?

So I heard something was going on in England.

So I told my friends, I'm like, we're not gonna miss this.

We're going out. We didn't know what the hell was going on,

but we heard something was going on.

So we bought plane tickets and we went

over there, and-- and we're, like, looking and looking.

I remember my friends being like, is this it?

I'd be like, No.

And then, remember at midnight, Fabio and Grooverider

came on the decks and the place went berserk.

And we were like, shit, we found it.

[burst of energetic music]

[Mark Heley] It was crazy. I remember being out in London

and being dressed up, wearing a jacket or whatever,

arriving and, you know, expecting a club experience.

And basically, as soon as you walked through the door,

it was like walking into a shower.

It was like, you know, 8090 degrees.

There's like one strobe light and a fan,

and people going absolutely mental.

People with their shirts off, screaming acid,

and, uh, really loud. Acid house.

[upbeat house music]

I just remember standing there in the middle

of the dance floor.

It's like being made love to by a robot, you know, um--

Might be a bit kinky, but, you know,

it felt great at the time.

A'

♪ Future, future, future, future 3

♪ Future, future, future S'

♪ Future, future, future, future 3

[Heley] That was an incredible period.

From 87 into the beginning

of 89, which was the original racing.

People would get together, we'd do big warehouses.

And the first ones were really simple.

It was basically sound system, some strobe lighting,

and that was it.

A'

[DJ Harvey] Tonka, tonka, tonka is like

a bonker, bon, you know, thump, thump.

Tonka, tonka sort of thing.

Noise and sort of a little bit sort of industrial,

a little bit sort of modern and fun.

Like it was-- it was a toy.

[DJ Garth] They had a really amazing, eclectic crowd,

and everybody was just all one.

And the music was great, and they bring in their own

sound system, and I'd never heard house music

played like that. It was very, uh...

There's a lot of disco, I guess, as well, mixed in.

It was just-- it was very soulful, but also psychedelic.

[crowd cheering]

[DJ] I'm sorry, everyone, I can't--

I can't do another one. I won't let you turn another one.

But if you come down to the beach right now,

then you'll get some more party, so...

[cheering]

[DJ Harvey] After the Zap Club would shut at 02:00,

we would take the party on down, uh,

a mile down the beach to a spot called Black Rock,

where we would face the speakers out to the ocean, light a fire,

have some fireworks, and the survivors and people

that wanted to keep dancing on into the morning,

would come down, and-- and the party would carry on.

I just played records all night and well into the morning,

you know, and we repeated that every month. We-- We--

We did this beach party, this idea of

going onto the beach and-- and just-- just going for it.

[Ne yea Griffith] All of a sudden, the little world

unzipped and was like, ah, wow, this is all new.

This looks like it can sweep a nation.

This looks like it might get popular.

[DJ Harvey] There was all kinds of things going on,

you know, the legacy of the earlier warehouse culture,

the new movement, of the acid house scene

and all of that, like the-- maybe the sort of

Reagan thatcher politics of the time, the end of the world,

the four minute warning, all this kind of stuff.

So we might as well have a damn good time,

and we can do it as friends and family and then spread the love.

So we pull up to this sort of area

where there's some trees,

and stopped the car, turned it off,

got out, and I could hear the party.

I could hear the bass. We kind of came over

like a bluff and went down, and there was the party.

People were just loving each other, dancing.

It was just amazing, beautiful. And the music was great.

I remember thinking, wow.

Why is this not happening in America?

Why is this not happening in San Francisco?

[Doc Martin] I'd been to New York already,

checked it out, saw music I was really into.

Didn't know it was house music at that time.

Picking up something like Acid Tracks,

or IT'S “Shake your Body“, or the house musk: anthem, or,

you know, Mr. Fingers, which I used to clear the floor with.

Every time I'd play, I'd go to New York and hear it,

and it's a thousand people screaming.

And the crazy thing about when I would go to New York

at that time, they would just laugh.

California. Like, you know, all the surfer jokes

would come out from the Puerto Rican kids

and the Black queens and all that.

And I'm like, well, we're trying to make this happen out here.

There's a group, small group of us,

that really want this music to come forward.

It was a Thursday night at Townsend.

He just played house, didn't play any hip hop.

And the place, a couple of people, like, really got off.

They were like, oh, boy. And finally, house.

And they were voguing and doing their thing.

But, like, I swear, like, three quarters of the people

that were at the club, they were just like, "Uh..."

And we left. It was like, ugh.

Cause the thought was that, like, you know, house, you know,

just four on the floor, had absolutely no soul.

Everyone just looked at me like I just smoked a bowl of crack.

Sunshine Jones was...

Furious, yelling, what are you doing, man?

We want your hip hop, na na na. Like, I'm like,

this is where it's at. You know?

This is where it's at for me right now.

I can't play what I'm not into,

what I'm not believing in anymore.

As far as I can remember, it's the first

club in San Francisco that actually played

house music all night long.

And that was a really special thing.

I mean, people sang songs about

that house music all night long. Like, wow.

Like, we finally, you know, there's enough of

this music that we can actually dance all night long.

[Joe Nice] Dance music in general had such

bad connotations from disco and Saturday Night Fever.

It was just, I think, back in,

most guys on dance floors at that time would only dance

if there was a girl standing right in front of them.

Like, it was really difficult for-- for guys to just...

kind of dan-- you know, that-- that came much later.

Nightclubs, especially in the late eighties

before rave, were just...

Like cattle markets, people would go dress up.

You know, it's basically a whole different world.

It's a completely different scene.

I like to call the little black dress parties,

which-- I guess they happened around 1990,

89, 90, And they were pretty much

in the clubs, and they did involve house music,

but it was kind of a different energy.

It was more about kind of dressing up

and being a little more sophisticated.

It was definitely more runway than psychedelic.

You know, looking back at it now, I realized that once

people cleared out and got to about 2:00,

once the-- the bar closed and a bunch of people left,

then there was people that were more interested

in the music that were left behind.

That was me. I was the last one on that dance floor.

Every time, shouting at the DJ to put more--

I remember shouting. I didn't know who Doc Martin was.

I was like, oi, put another one on.

Oi, you, put another record on!

[DJ Garth] Somebody invited me down

to Nicky's barbecue, where Ernie Munson was playing,

and he played a great set. I remember having--

We did some ecstasy, and we had, like,

a three hour, you know,

Ernie Munson set playing all house music.

That was great. And that was probably

the first time I ever really got it.

[Cosmic Jason] We'd dance our asses off.

We'd wear our-- our tracksuits,

we'd be throwing shapes, having a great time.

And people would literally point and sort of,

like, make faces because they didn't understand

what we were doing with all this energy on the dance floor.

Like, just jumping around. Like, we were really having it.

We were really having a good time.

We were trying to spread this message of, like,

dancing and fun, and just--

We were having the best time.

We wanted them to be having a good time with us.

So that was one of the impetuses for Wicked and Come-Unity

coming along, because it's like, well, look, wait a minute.

There's all these people. We've got all the ingredients.

Let's just put them together.

A'

[energetic house music]

[DJ Jeno] Somebody said, let's go down to Baker Beach.

I think it was to do with the fact that

the Burning Man festivals have been happening here.

They've been burning wicker men on the beach.

And so it was a cool spot that we could use.

We literally snuck the sound system down that night

down here onto Baker beach.

Called around as many people as we could say, hey, come down.

We're gonna do this party.

[Quartnee Kwatek] It was just a whirlwind trip of, you know,

butterflies in the tummy, and, oh, we gotta find it.

And it's winding roads, and the streetlight's out,

and where are we gonna go?

And then we get to the parking lot,

and it's like, how are we gonna find them?

And, you know, they were just setting up,

and it's like, once you get down here,

you're pretty much the only people on the beach.

[Griffith] We were aligned in our intention to just

go out, honor the moon, be on the ocean.

And we were almost amazed at how perfect it was,

and how beautiful, and how no one bothered us.

We could just be there playing music.

There was an incredible sense of liberation.

We didn't even have a deck for the-- for the turntables.

They were, you know, on a blanket in the sand.

So the DJs were on their knees in the sand.

[DJ Jeno] And then suddenly at dawn, the fog just rolled back,

exposing the Golden Gate Bridge right above us,

and the moon above it and everything.

It was just incredible.

I had no idea, when we come down to the beach

in the middle of the night, that it was sitting right there.

You know, I was just blown away.

It blew my mind. There was this amazing...

Bright red, you know, iconic image right behind me.

It was just-- made, gave me goosebumps.

Even though I'd only been here a day,

and I didn't know what was going to happen next,

it just felt right, you know.

[Malachy O'Brien] We were very young, obviously, we were--

it was a totally new experience, and we were naive,

but the naivety and idealism is the only thing that's ever

made a difference in the world. You know what I mean?

And, you know, we tried to bring people to

that same level we were, because we felt if everyone felt

like we would, there'd be no problems in the world.

[DJ Spun] We all supported each other.

There was this group of kind of like-minded people.

It reminded me of when the punk scene

first started. Just because there were so few of us,

we kind of had to stick together

for survival if we wanted to do it, you know?

And -- and also, we all kind of...

I think we were all looking for the same thing.

[Malachy O'Brien] Simon and I both worked here at the club,

so we had an in to ask Ira, the owner,

if we could do a party here at 10:15.

And I remember that Ne yea Griffith

had mentioned this quote, and I believe it was from a book

that it was "Community to eternity,

"through infinity we will find serenity."

And I thought the first word, community, would make a great

name for the party, since that's what I felt we were becoming.

We also wanted to sort of call people to community,

and make a sort of a bit of a mantra.

[Griffith] Come-unity.

A community that is actually inviting

unity out of disparity, you know, out of everyone.

Like, we've all been, like, searching

for your family, searching for your tribe,

and it was like, hey, tribe's here.

[Dana Marlow] I was just sort of like

this long-haired hippie kid, and, uh...

Went out and didn't feel like I was getting

judged at all by the way I was dressed,

or by the way I danced, or anything like that.

It was just really, uh-- seemed very open.

There was no inhibitions, which was brilliant.

That's one thing that this whole scene kind of

removed from a lot of people and community.

It was a real safe place, you know,

to kind of let go and be free.

[Sunshine Jones] I've never been anywhere where, like,

it's completely dark and the music's like-- [beat boxing]

And people are dancing and touching each other

and sweating and cheering and totally feeling the music.

And then there's all these little leaflets

about, you know, elevated consciousness,

and opening your heart, and, like, go further

with your life, you know, be psychedelic. It's beautiful.

[Cosmic Jason] Evolution magazine, the writings

of people like Fraser Clark,

it showed people that this was more than just a party.

There was a whole psychology behind this,

a whole movement that was like a voice for that movement.

So myself and Malachy would put it on community handouts

with our own stuff, and we would find sources

from wherever we could, anything to do with...

The vibe that we were into.

[Donovan Drummond] |-- I used to play this film by lshu Patel

called the Bead Gang, and it does the entire evolution

of our planet so far.

Basically us evolving from, you know,

single-celled creatures up to us just trying

to kill each other for most of human time.

That's a very psychedelic movie.

At one of Malachy's parties, I showed that.

It was cool when the-- when, when people started eating acid,

because, uh, everything got a little bit more groovy.

And all of a sudden, my, um, art was-- once again had a--

Um, a little bit more of a context.

Um, someone once told me I-- I captured the moment in light.

[Malachy O'Brien] When you're on acid or ecstasy, definitely

certain visuals highlight the experience, you know,

and then that goes back to Terence McKenna.

And his theory was that mushrooms

and psychedelic experiences been the silent hand

guiding us in our evolution.

You know, you can sit around a campfire,

which is the most ancient thing that humans

can do, and you can alter your consciousness just by

staring at the flames, because you start to see

patterns and shapes that look like things,

and you start to tell stories about the things that you see.

I mean, this is a very basic human impulse.

And so to take LSD or mushrooms or ecstasy,

it's just a way of scheduling those kind of

random moments, maybe. And it's a very modern way.

It's our modern take.

[Billie Sharp] From the beginning of the so-called

rave movement, Tim Leary and-- and other sixties psychonauts,

They found a new audience because

the people who were into this music, and

into this boundary-dissolving ritual together,

were in fact open to ideas about our role in our own culture.

[overlapping voices]

-This is an Experiment. -This is an experiment.

-Mind formation. -In mind formation.

-Information. -Information.

-Forming, controlling, -Forming, controlling,

-operating your mind -operating your mind

-and your brain. -and your brain.

-Using digital techniques -Using digital techniques

-to overload and scramble, -to overload and scramble,

-confuse, unfocus your mind. -confuse, unfocus your mind.

A'

[psychedelic house music]

[DJ Ethan] This experience of there being hundreds of peoples

of all colors, shapes, sizes, creeds, et cetera, just getting

their ass grooving, you know, getting down together, dancing

themselves completely out of their egos and their trips.

And it was a really, really powerful experience.

Just A, See people kind of come together like that.

But more importantly for me was that when I kind of

really started getting into the experience,

I would usually just kind of park myself

in the sweet spot, wherever the sweet spot

of the sound system was, and, uh, you know,

take a pill and maybe follow it up with some acid.

And I would just park right in that spot and dance for--

Dance for, you know, six, seven, eight hours.

And I felt like my personality, myself,

my true self, kind of started coming out at parties.

I started feeling like, uh, like I was kind of becoming me.

I always liked the expression

that |-- I used to hear back in the eighties.

There was like, he goes in, he goes out.

And I always thought that was a good expression

of saying, you know, urn, that part of

the party drugs and the whole thing there,

stripped down the people from all that conditioning

that you had, and you let it all go.

[Cosmic Jason] Ecstasy. It was used as a medicinal compound

by psychotherapists to help people to open up.

It only got made illegal because too many people

were doing it and having a good time with it.

The government couldn't control it and regulate it.

Did the rave overuse it?

Probably yes. Could it be stopped? No.

Once it hit the scene, everybody wanted to try it.

It was basically the drug of choice for a generation.

They all wanted to have a go.

♪ Can you let your heart become several, Papa? a'

♪ For all human feelings a'

[DJ Adnan] I grew up in south Brazil, where there was

a lot of racism for me being Arabic.

So when I first moved to here, urn,

I did not wanted to tell people I was Arabic.

I'm not Arabic, I'm not Palestinian, I'm, you know--

I'm Brazilian. And, urn...

Taking ecstasy for first time in my life, my...

first trip that I had was my identity crisis.

And I'm all like, why do I have shame of who I am?

I am who I am. I'm not doing anything wrong.

I'm Adnan Mahmoud Jimar Sharif.

That's who I am. My parents are from Palestine.

I was born in Brazil and I'm growing up

in San Francisco. That's who I am.

So I say I have Palestinian blood, Brazilian soul.

San Francisco mind.

A'

[eerie house music]

[Sunshine Jones] A lot of people converge on San Francisco

in a lot of ways. You know, my parents

converged on San Francisco's beatniks,

and then the hippies came and pissed off the beatniks.

And then, you know, uh, in the seventies, a sort of a--

A blue-collar slash gay revolution happened here,

and that pissed off the hippies,

and then the punks pissed off everybody, and then, um...

Rave came along.

And, uh, so I think that it's a really natural

evolution of things, and this is a vortex

where things like that happen. I think it's magic here.

[DJ Dutch] We made ourselves a path through the worst

part of town, until we found this warehouse that was just

bumping with bass, and there was a crowd of people in it.

And it was just like, this new exciting thing that we

really didn't have the capacity to understand at the time, and--

Around, uh, 6:30 in the morning, they rolled up the garage doors

and everyone went outside and started dancing.

And there was a little bit of a drizzle

in San Francisco coming down.

And off in the distance you could see

the police car staring at everybody dancing

in the middle of the street, shaking their head,

wondering what-- what the hell is going on over there.

[DJ Bones] It had that nice, fresh, clean linen sense to it.

It wasn't too creased up, it wasn't too jaded yet.

It hadn't gone through the wash, so to speak.

And it seemed really fluid here. It seemed very easy.

And there was a party every week,

several parties every week.

In fact, you had a choice of maybe

six parties on a weekend, sometimes. It was that good,

you know?

[Sharon Virtue] It was all very

Alice in Wonderland for me at that time.

And so |-- I had this opportunity to-- to really,

as a 20-year-old woman who is really

into dancing and art and making music and, you know,

singing and generally having a good time, it was like, what?

I've landed and I took the blue pill,

and I'm here, you know, or is it the red pill?

I don't know which one.

I guess it didn't matter which pill I had taken,

I ended up here.

[Geoff White] Well, I don't know if this was my first party,

but I do remember going to a party.

I believe it might have been a Toon Town.

And it was the first time that I actually had

an experience of... people really going into trance.

And I remember going into this room,

and the energy was cooking, and people were...

Dancing. Their eyes were closed.

Some of the girls had handkerchiefs.

They were fanning themselves like this.

And I remember walking through there and saying, boy,

this is really, really weird. This is really weird.

And little did I know that five months later,

I would be doing the same thing.

[Malachy O'Brien] We had all the ingredients

for some seriously accelerated,

consciousness changing, mind altering experiences.

All the people who were throwing parties, and people

who had access to the drugs, which for us,

were an integral part of the experience.

And we were in San Francisco, a hotbed of change, tolerance.

Lots of stuff going on, on every level.

A'

[White] They would have the basement Wickeds at 10:15,

and they didn't start until 2:00 AM.

So we would line up around 1 :30, and then

all the other people would be coming out of the top at 10:15.

They'd see all these ravers standing outside,

and they're like, what are you standing out here for?

The club's closed.

I'm like, oh, no, no, no, this is...

There's another party.

I saw cargo nets and army jackets

and dark rooms full of smoke

and strobe lights and fantastic music.

Never had more fun than I had in that basement.

[DJ Markie Mark] We knew how to do this holistically,

as a whole group. It wasn't--

There's a DJ now, and then there's a break,

and another DJ doing something completely different.

It's like we knew how to kind of start the story,

take it up to somewhere in the middle of the story,

and finish the story.

[DJ Jeno] You know, we would literally blitz them down

in the basement, with the strobe light, and play these amazing

Chicago acid house tracks, you know, that--

with lots of squelchy 303 sounds and lots of real

tinny 808 drum machines and, and you know, maybe some real,

like, uplifting, soulful, gospel-orientated lyrics.

They were like, where, where-- where do you get

this music from? It's like, it's-- it's--

you know, it's an American label.

So we were playing American music back at American people.

And I think that's what-- what we specialized in at Wicked.

We were able to find that music.

[DJ Dan] I remember Yano played an express two track,

the "Raise your Hands" with, you know,

um, nervous acid Bobby Condors.

To me, that was genius, because isn't that just like

looking at the color wheel going...

It's exactly across from each other,

and it's vibrating at the same exact level.

But one's dark and one's light.

That's the energy that I'm talking about

that exists in San Francisco.

That drove the scene to the vibe of where it was.

♪ Raise your hands Raise your hands a'

♪ Raise your hands Raise your hands a'

♪ Raise your hands Raise your hands a'

♪ Raise your hands Raise your hands a'

[Gavin Hardkiss] Keep in mind, it was the early nineties.

There was a recession.

Bush One was in power.

We lead the world in facing down

a threat to decency and humanity.

[Hardkiss] It was Gulf War One.

It was kind of a-- a gnarly time, you know,

and we were all looking for, like, not so much escapism,

well, a bit of escapism, but also looking towards

utopian futures, and what we could create that would be

an improvement on what was going on at that time.

[Doc Martin] When the whole thing happened, it was just

very quick, and it happened very like,

barn, we've arrived finally, you know.

It was energetic, and you never

knew what was gonna happen, when, what or where,

but it was gonna happen, you know,

and that was the whole magic of it.

[DJ Spun]|t was fun for it to get bigger, you know, we had

these little parties with 100 people, and then

we realized we were all doing the same thing.

So then these different little factions and people

from different parts of the Bay would all come together.

And all of a sudden we had a really big party.

A'

[Martin O'Brien] Right at the top of the floor.

It was destiny, community, pieces, eclipse

presents the gathering.

This was a disused racquetball center slash church.

Grabbed the phone, owner, lucky enough, got the owner,

and I was like, hey, yeah, yeah, what do you want to do?

I'm like, we want to make a video

of an African dance troupe that are in town.

We're making a video. Oh, great. I like African music.

Lucky for us.

And we got away with it all night.

[Harry Who] Martin came up with the logo of the hands holding,

and it says, circle is now complete.

I was manning the door and I said, oh my God,

these people just keep coming, coming and coming.

And in the middle of the night, that dance floor

was just full of people, full of love.

Different crowd, definitely a lot friendlier.

People were really nice, friendly,

and like a little community, really.

[Martin O'Brien] People having the time of their lives.

Dance until 09:00 in the morning in here,

jumping around the place, this place was ripping.

There was a new level of excitement.

There was a new space.

A'

[reporter] It's called a rave, an underground party

which takes off after midnight and lasts until dawn.

At them, you'll see remnants of the sixties,

liquid light shows and psychedelic colors,

but with high tech improvements like lasers.

Tony runs one of the largest raves,

a movable feast called the Gathering.

Clubs are boring, you know, clubs is the same thing.

Week in, week out. You go to a club every Friday,

you're going to see the same thing there.

A'

[Martin O'Brien] [indistinct], I'm tingling.

There's San Fran, like, rewriting your life contract.

It was all right not being a bricklayer.

It was all right not being part of the norm.

It was all right to go look for warehouses

to have mad parties in.

[Kyle Edwards] Oh, it's like finding out about

a new sexual position you never knew of.

I mean, it's a new space, new places to explore.

If it was an indoor space, what other rooms might they have?

If it's an outdoor space,

laying down, watching the stars,

you know, it's just, have that fresh, virgin space,

you know, I remember people talking about,

hey, should we go to this party? Yeah. It's a fresh, new space.

It's an hour from here.

Awesome. Let's go.

♪ There's a place I go J“

♪ Inside my mind, inside my mind a'

[Martin O'Brien] Normally what I'd be doing would be

listening to [indistinct] tape,

to, like, weigh our future or our energy

or especially inside the mic.

Uh, brilliant. I thought I'd be out here

listening to music for hours on end

from first thing in the morning till last thing at night.

Just driving, driving, driving, driving, looking for spaces.

It wasn't like, oh, I'll just roll

out of bed and go down to the club.

You actually had to do some work.

You had to go out and find the party.

Just getting there, just getting there alone

was pretty-- was pretty amazing in itself.

And just the fact that, you know,

you had to go through so many obstacles to reach this

really remote location, as it seemed during the night.

[DJ Darkhorse] The people that were into that collective

were willing to drive endless hours out,

you know, after listening to voicemail messages

and then going and paying for a ticket

somewhere else and then driving to a party.

They're the people, you know, we kind of...

Who would do that in this world of impulse buying

and impulse this, you know, I mean, we would send

people all over the map to try and keep the parties quiet

and so the police didn't find out

where things were going on, you know?

I mean, we had to send people all over the map.

And for them to do that and pay money to do it,

you know, I mean, that's really raving

is those people that actually do that.

[overlapping chatter]

We need people to keep quiet,

[speaking indistinctly]

but if the truck comes to a complete stop,

we need pure silence.

Thank you.

[Joe Nice] We grew up in an era where you really had to work

to find your music, to find your Doc Martens,

and suddenly, as we get older,

everything's really easily available.

Doc Martens are in malls,

and any song you want, you can get found on the internet.

You know, it was fun finding where the party was.

It was fun finding that record, right, that you, like,

didn't have Shazam, you know?

You had to kind of go up and, like...

step over the DJ's shoulder a little bit

and take a peek without

stepping on any toes,

you know, and work for it, and it was really fun.

[man] All right, where's the map lady anyway?

I got my map, I got my map!

It made us a lot more involved.

You know, you can't just punch up the address on

your iPhone in the early '90s and figure out where it is.

You really have to-- you have to do some--

you have to pound the pavement, right?

You have to figure out where it is,

and you have to come prepared with

your backpack full of goodies, whistle, water, you know,

whatever you're going to need, massage oil if you're into that.

It added to the sense of psychedelia.

Like, you're on a trip, you had to do something

extra special to get to the extra special place.

[Jerry Sladewski] That's kind of how

the whole scene was back then. It was just mental.

I mean, a lot of times these map points,

the reason they had them was because they didn't know

what space they were going to use.

So, yeah, but that's what made it magic.

I mean, that's what made everything about the scene fun.

I mean, we would have stuff happen on the day of an event

that, you know, most people would freak out,

and we'd be like, okay, well, plan B, plan C.

Anywhere near a railroad,

you're going to see a beautiful space.

Look at that.

Beautiful space.

Long, square, high ceilings,

no industrial area,

no houses for miles.

I mean, it was just perfect.

Finding spaces is the hardest part.

Some people would go and just find

an empty abandoned warehouse like this one

and cut the lock, wait 6, 8, 12, 24 hours,

see if any police came, see if a security company came.

Then you've got a space to do a party.

People used to skate here, you know?

People used to break in and skate.

It was disused for years, right?

So people already were kind of creatively

reusing it for skateboarding.

And so we got here, and we creatively used it

for a psychedelic dance party.

A'

The officer's like, what's going on here?

Try to pam him off.

He's like, do you have a contract?

I'm like, I have a receipt.

He's like, okay, can you go get it?

I'm like, I'll be right back, officer.

I went in, got the receipt book out,

wrote out the receipt.

Got my girlfriend at the time to sign it

so it didn't look like my signature.

Went back out, gave it to the cop.

I'm like, there you go, officer.

There's our contract and our receipt.

Oh, thanks very much.

You know, you have a good night. We may be back.

I'm like, great.

Yes, bye-bye.

[Joe Nice] It's like the most rebellious thing that you can do

is live your life to the fullest.

That was definitely a message conveyed by these parties

that popped up at the risk of, you know,

you've watched turntables get confiscated,

you've watched records get confiscated,

you've watched people walk away in handcuffs.

[Geoff White] They didn't stop the music

just because the cop was on the hill.

They would go until maybe the cop was right there

taking the needle off the record.

It was like fierce love.

[Martin O'Brien] Thinking about it now,

the only thing I was nervous of

was that I wouldn't be able to get away with

having people party all night long.

That was the only thing I was concerned with.

Going to jail, getting a fine,

any of that didn't concern me.

A'

How simple of a magic it could be,

just, like, really loud sound system

and a black light or a strobe and just a few people.

It really felt like an underground movement.

You could trace it back to the Tibetan Book of the Dead

or what was happening at the Fillmore and Avalon Ballroom

in San Francisco in the '60s or even with punk rock.

It's a place where you can really be free.

In this world,

those places where people can really go out

and be free and really be themselves

and embrace our differences and what we have in common

and all of that are pretty unique and rare and special.

I think when a lot of people started

to pick up on that, it became their lives.

They're a big part of it.

[DJ Darkhorse] The first experience I had

in San Francisco would have been Sunnyside Up.

I'd never seen people really wearing boas

and big bright glasses

in platforms that made them 8 feet tall.

But no one ever looked sideways at those people.

I think that's what I really liked about San Francisco

was it was just come one, come all.

[DJ Bones] It didn't matter how you danced,

if you were psychedelic

or if you were rocking out or however.

You'd look there and you'd see people who looked like

headbangers and that wasn't headbanger music.

So, it was how that person wanted

to express them self on the dance floor.

[Pixie] There are a lot of spinners,

people that whirl around when they dance.

I'm one of those.

They're my favorite,

although it's hard to dance when you're dizzy.

[DJ Spun] Sharon, we loved the way Sharon danced.

So our friend threw a party, The Rave Called Sharon,

just because we just loved to watch her dance.

[Sharon Virtue] It wasn't inhibited at all

on the dance floor.

I could do whatever I want.

It was very expressive, actually.

There was a lot of interpretive dance going on.

And, you know.

Yeah, it was fun.

I was having a great time.

[Gina Paoli] It was amazing, you know, I just--

Dancing is something I've always done my whole life,

so to be able to do it constantly every night

is a great thing, all night.

The other clubs that I've been to throughout the years,

you know, it kind of shuts at 2, whatever.

So it was special being able to go all night long

until the next day.

A'

The continuity of it is what set it apart,

and that is also what set it in common

with, for instance, Grateful Dead, the most...

well-known of the psychedelic jam bands,

because the Grateful Dead expeflence

was about a 4- or 5-hour long dance experience.

It wasn't like this song's over, now we wait,

the next song starts.

When you went to one of those, it was a psychedelic experience,

and it was immersive, and it was continuous.

And that was the beauty of the rave, it was continuous.

[Geoff White] The DJs were on the dance floor

with everybody else.

They weren't up on a podium, or they weren't up

inside of a room where they were inaccessible.

They were right there.

That was a very important thing,

because I think it allowed that energy flow back and forth

between the partiers and the DJs to happen.

They were responding to the energy,

playing music, and then setting up

a wave that you could jump on and then ride it.

[DJ Jeno] One of the things I love about DJing

is exploring other realms,

to induce states of mind and consciousness

that are beneficial,

that allow you to see the world in a different way,

to experience it in a different way,

to experience yourself in a different way,

and in the process create something more,

than the sum of all the parts, you know,

that has some greater feeling to it.

[Malachy O'Brien] We were spoiled because we had

some of the best psychedelic music that was available to man.

Trippy, mad, crazy electronic noises

which did something inside your head

and made you want to move and groove and...

dance and scream and shout.

[DJ Markie Mark] It wasn't like,

you know, I've got a box of records

and I'm going to play them in this order.

It's like, well, I've got a bunch of music

and let's just see how it goes.

It was more about the sound of the music

and what the sound was doing

and how you took one sound source

and another sound source and when you put them together,

you were creating something completely new,

which sounded amazing,

but also kind of activated people on the dance floor.

[DJ Tony] San Francisco,

you pretty much could play anything, really.

A lot of the DJs did back then.

Guys like Wicked used to come in and play

a wide-range of music throughout the night.

And I think they kind of opened people's minds a lot just to,

you know, it's okay to come in and play different records.

It always worked really well.

Same with The Gathering,

Funky Tekno Tribe, parties like that.

Changed the way people listened to music, I think.

[DJ Dan] You know, I look at it like a revolution

and it was a funk revolution because

it was like we're celebrating everything funky,

whether it's disco, techno, hip-hop, whatever,

but we're driving it through this psychedelic medium

that the DJs understand because the crowd drives them there.

[Doc Martin] I came back, you know, I was doing parties here.

And I was coming back to San Francisco more, actually,

when I moved to LA.

Like, all the time,

I would spend weeks up here again

squatting on people's floors and such.

It wasn't like I ever really left

the first year everybody was here.

It was kind of still hanging out.

I came back up here and all these DJs that

would not touch house music were all playing house music

and acid and I was finding myself in stores going,

damn, I can't find records because they're all just

Pac-Man-ing on them, you know,

just gobbling up all these tunes.

[chuckling]

[Gavin Hardkiss] Yeah, man, it felt like we were in

the middle of something happening.

Couldn't get away from it.

Everywhere you went, there was,

you know, someone giving you a record or a tape or a CD

or someone wanting to work on something new.

It was pretty exciting.

At one point, there were probably about

15 record stores within a 5-block radius of here.

Bulletproof had DJ tapes, and Life had the DJ tapes.

So anywhere you'd go, you could tap into this music culture

which really wasn't available at the commercial stores yet.

The records would come in to Tweekin,

and everybody would be here. [chuckling]

Where are the records at?

They're coming, they're here, you know, out of the box.

So it's not like that anymore.

It's basically, if you like something,

you can just...

get it in online and type it in,

and you can download it.

There'd been a big gathering the night before,

and then we'd get there early for record stores,

which was noon, if we were lucky.

You know, and there'd often be a crowd of people

waiting for the store to open.

[indistinct] of tunes they were trying to explain to us,

some scribbled on bits of paper or whatever,

and just the thrill of hooking them up.

[DJ Dan] I miss the record store,

because that was like our barber shop for the DJs.

It was like where we could get together and go,

Hey, like, you know, have you heard this?

You know, so-and-so's in town,

they're coming into the record store.

I mean, for us as DJs, I think that was

like such a critical point where we sort of crossed paths.

I think we'd been out on a Saturday night somewhere.

I cannae remember which party it was,

but we'd been out to this party on a Saturday night.

Next day, Sunday morning,

we're in Record Rack at like 11 o'clock.

You know, as soon as we opened,

he was stood there, Garth.

He stood there in the corner, like,

picking out all these little gems that he finds.

[DJ Garth] I had a lot of jazz and hip-hop

and maybe a few house records or whatever,

but I was definitely starving for house music.

And when I first came to San Francisco,

I was going to Groove Merchant, and I asked them,

is there somewhere where they sell house?

And they said, oh, you've got to go to the gay district,

you've got to go to the Record Rack,

and you've got to go to the Butch Wax in the Castro.

[DJ Markie Mark] I used to work at 1015 Folsom,

a great nightclub, south of Market.

And then they had some of the best huge gay events,

probably in the West Coast, including Colossus.

The vibe there was one of community.

They were in the thick of the AIDS epidemic,

but every week there was a fundraiser

for stopping AIDS projects, etc., etc.,

and they took care of each other.

So there was definitely a much more

fluid movement between that scene and the rave scene.

[Sunshine Jones] I mean, a whole generation of people just died.

I mean, that's a pretty devastating thing to experience.

I think that's why house music,

in its anonymity,

it's sort of lulling bass frequencies,

and the fact that there were so many people together.

Sometimes, in those early days,

dancing felt like dancing with ghosts.

And it felt like opening your heart and letting go.

I mean, you start dancing,

your hands are down by your sides,

it's like going to see a rock band,

you're just shaking your leg.

But with house, feeling so unobserved,

feeling so inconspicuous.

You start raising your hands and blowing your whistle,

and screaming and cheering, and suddenly the whole room,

you know, this huge, weird, abandoned warehouse,

and everybody's got their hands in the air,

and they're all cheering, and they're all feeling

the frequencies come over you.

A'

It's really purifying, really cleansing, really redeeming.

It was really beautiful.

It's really needed, spiritually, in San Francisco.

♪ Unlock the house, I'm coming home S

♪ Unlock the house, unlock the house I

♪ Unlock the house, I'm coming home S

♪ Unlock the house, unlock the house I

You feel connection, you feel family,

you feel harmony.

And in a world that has bred isolation,

and this whole idea of individualism,

you know, to the point of where it hurts,

that the best medicine for our world, for our society,

and for our generation, is to feel connected.

Truly connected.

To a planet that supports you, to a tribal unity

that believes and loves and adores the same thing,

that's devoted to the same music and rhythm,

and we're blessed to have found the music,

and to have found each other.

And no wonder we gravitate towards it,

and that it really winds up feeding us,

and becoming the soundtrack of our lives.

[Anna Scott] That bass, the floor would vibrate,

and everybody would just be dancing, eyes closed,

feeling the music on such a level that

I had never experienced.

There was this consciousness of people that made it inviting.

Everybody was really engaging,

and everybody talks about the love,

but there really was this thing that just pulled you in.

In this world full of violence, it's really nice

to go somewhere for nine hours and play.

You're six years old, and not worry about your bills,

and not worry about your job.

It's just a huge playground, and no one's mean to anybody.

I think it's as close to a utopian society

as we'll ever get.

[crowd cheering]

I think if we're living in an environment like that,

and we're creating fun events and parties for people

to even be more free, right, you know, more themselves,

then I think it's a nice chemistry, you know?

To create something, really,

that allows for some really special

social experiments to happen.

[Mark Heley] I came to San Francisco

to see what could happen in a merger of these two things,

of the rave culture and, uh,

the West Coast psychedelic culture.

And I ended up writing for an East Bay magazine

called Mondo 2000,

and they were on a futurist psychedelic trip,

really interested in smart drugs and virtual reality,

and all of this really cool stuff.

And what happened at the beginning was this amazing

San Francisco incubation phase

where the people who were in the cyber scenes

were coming to Toontown and getting into the rave thing.

It was really colorful, and it was the perfect setting

for people that were open to psychedelic culture already.

They could easily drop into it,

they could see what was happening.

He was bringing all these different

cyber hippie stuff into the mix, which was cool.

You can go off to the musical night,

or you can go upstairs and get on the brain machines

and chill out, which I did a few times, very cool stuff.

We did video phone links between here and L.A.,

which is sort of an early Skype-y now or something.

We did high-definition television.

We had virtual reality.

It became kind of a technology playground

on some level, so it was a fun way

for people to experience these new technologies.

The best way I can describe the early house music movement is

we were all techno hippies.

Where back in those days, in the '60s,

people were counterculture.

They were rejecting against society, technology,

where the movement we were a part of in the early '90s

was similar, but we decided to

grab a hold of technology

and use it to our creative advantage.

The Internet was still very young.

It was still mostly about universities

connecting with each other.

This was before the web.

This was when people were just sending files

and short emails and such.

But inherently, there was something cool.

You kind of wanted to meet other people on the Internet.

You wanted to know what people were doing with it.

And I found these Internet email mailing lists,

which were really these conversational forums.

And I said, there should be a mailing list

for people into electronic music in San Francisco.

[dial-up signal bleeping and blaring]

So in March of '92,

I started the SFRaves mailing list,

and it was off of a machine sitting at Berkeley.

No one really knew much about it.

It could hide kind of under the covers.

And the first day, we had 80 people subscribe.

And I was like, okay, there might be something here to this.

You have this access to this information,

and all these tech heads around this new technology

live here and were a part of this scene

in some way and went to all these parties.

So as the World Wide Web developed

and Internet developed

and everyone started having email addresses,

and as all these new advances

started coming along for communication,

the rave scene used and exploited them instantaneously.

If you were on an email list back then,

you were definitely kind of technically inclined.

You were used to using technology to make stuff happen,

and you were obviously into raves,

and you were interested in talking about raves

and Monday morning quarterbacking the parties

you'd been to and what was good and what was bad.

And as I started to want to throw parties,

I turned to that community of people and said, hey,

what if we just get a crew of people that wants

to work on throwing a party?

And so, yeah, I've got a sound system,

and you've got some lights, and you want to do some massage,

and you want to make smoothies, and you've got a laser,

whatever it is, and let's get together and find a spot,

and then let's just each invite a handful of our friends.

And it turns out if you get 30 people involved,

really creatively engaged in throwing a party,

and they invite five of their friends,

all of a sudden you've got 150 people,

you've got a party,

and everybody's creatively engaged or actively engaged.

It really became an arena for people to be able

to be expressive into kind of like whatever they were wearing

or the funny dance that they did or that,

you know, there was like whatever they created,

whatever they brought to that scene, that environment.

You know, people were making jewelry.

Remember all the crazy jewelry people were making

and the costumes and the hats and the--

you know, it was like it turned into this place

where people could really be creative in so many levels.

Most of the times that I went out to Burning Man

in the early years, we went out there

just to go have a break and go have fun.

There wasn't that many sound systems.

The emphasis wasn't really on the sound,

and Burning Man organization was more focused on art

and what they were trying to develop out there.

They were a little bit put off by the rave...

the rave element sort of coming into their world.

They didn't understand it.

It didn't meld with them, and it really didn't fit in.

They didn't understand that music actually is art, too.

Ours was the first sound system out there, really,

the first proper sound system, and it was amazing.

I mean, because everybody that was out there was dancing,

you know, to the one sound system,

at the end of the day.

And it was just an incredible year.

The weather was insane.

I just remember there was sort of rainbow.

I've got a photo of this amazing rainbow that went

right the way from our Wicked camp

over to the main Burning Man camp.

There was all this electricity in the air,

like these crazy electric storms would come through.

And I just remember people doing this up in the air

and actually seeing electric sparks between their fingers.

We pointed the speakers out into the play a,

and I remember going to one of the...

hot springs watering holes, which was seven miles away,

and I could still hear the bass.

A'

Running headfirst into that whole scene, which was...

industrial art, urn...

way the hell out there.

And it was like, wow, this is really cool.

We can fit in with this.

It's a phenomenon.

It's something that I haven't had the experience

in this sort of framework to understand completely,

and I don't think anyone does.

But it's a phenomenon that happens within

the framework of Burning Man,

and it's a way for everyone to get together,

the same like-minded individuals

and with the same ideals, the same congruent energy

that we all want to create something

that helps everybody and makes us all feel better.

Every one of the DJs, from big to small

to everyone that's played on that sound system out there,

and hit that big, fat fire button

and seen 30-foot jets of flame fly over the dance floor

as 10,000 people put their hands up,

it's just, I get chills right now just thinking about it.

A'

There's always been a lot of

open-mindedness and experimentation

here in the Bay Area with music and art,

and I mean, I definitely have always felt

a strong connection to that,

and I think that's why I've lived here for so long

and still live here,

because there's a certain freedom

and inspiration that you find in that.

People feel like they're involved in

the whole movement instantly, as opposed to like,

you know, the barrier to entry to being in a band

is that you have to kind of, like, learn an instrument

and play with other people and all of those things.

So you see very quickly a kind of, like,

viral spreading of the culture.

People come to it, and then they start doing it themselves.

So it's not under the control of any one person.

Anyone can be involved,

and obviously there's different levels,

but it's pretty simple,

and that means that it's unstoppable.

A'

I wanted to do a free daytime party

just to bring people together

on a Sunday afternoon, end the weekend

enjoying, especially this time of day,

this transitional time of day from day to night

with the highlight being the sunset.

[DJ Solar] Instead of going out all night, you know,

do your party during the day.

The Bay Area is so beautiful.

You didn't need lights and all that kind of stuff.

You just, a little sound system, and...

you got all your visuals right there.

Just to be able to call up this number

on, what, Sunday morning

and have to find out where you had to go for the day,

and then the sunset over Mount Tam or wherever,

everyone turned, and everyone watched the sunset.

That was beautiful.

I've always loved, you know, outdoor festivals and music,

which kind of epitomized what we like to do.

It's like, do it yourself, you know,

make your own little scene.

So that's how we started.

It's for us and our friends, and then it just caught on.

My son did grow up in the rave community.

You know, like, I would bring him to parties,

day parties in the summer, mostly sunsets.

You were in a beautiful setting.

You were outside all day.

The sun was shining.

You could run around, fly a kite if you wanted to.

You know, we'd bring a picnic.

We'd have, you know, listen to music,

and he loved the music, you know, and it was fun.

I think there was something magical

about that period of time in the Bay Area.

The Internet was exploding, the technology was exploding,

but there was also this culture that had been here

in the Bay Area probably since the Barbary Coast days,

and I do think that the alternative culture here

in the Bay Area and electronic music in general

encouraged that kind of

think-different kind of philosophy.

The sons and daughters of Wavy Gravy were there,

the fodder of this fresh scene, you know,

like almost sort of on the edge of a, like sort of...

electronic Deadheads kind of thing happening,

you know, and it seemed very, very exciting.

It reminds me quite a bit of

the hippie community that I grew up in,

and I think that was why I was so drawn to it, initially.

I was actually drawn to the memory of going

to all the love-ins and the sit-ins with my mom.

It was whimsical. [chuckling]

I mean, I think that the hippie movement was,

it felt whimsical to me at that time,

and this felt so much like that.

The parties in Marx Meadow.

I remember going there, freezing my butt off,

and being out there and feeling, wow, I'm home,

this feels exactly the same to me.

[Malachy O'Brien] I guess the whole city

has that sort of vibe.

I always remember being up in Golden Gate Park,

maybe on a Sunday evening, the fog rolls in,

and there's just something mysterious

about that part of the city.

It seems like some of the energy from the hippies

dancing up there is still up there, you know?

There's also the connection between us and the '60s hippies.

They liked to dance, and they liked music,

and they liked light shows,

and some of the early experimental

environments like that were created

here in San Francisco,

and it was exported everywhere as well.

So we were busy doing a mirror of that,

but in a different era.

[Tom Anderson] When Martin told me there was going to be a rave,

I had no idea what a rave was.

I thought it was maybe a guy with a guitar.

[chuckling] you know?

But to me, it was a big, good, cool happening,

kind of like Woodstock in my day.

A'

[Geoff White] I really miss it.

I miss it that Martin doesn't do the Let Freedom Rave

at Fourth of July, because for me,

that was just such a great...

celebration of what it is to be an American.

We're all different types of people here,

and the thing that binds a country is the dream itself.

A lot of times, people forget that.

During the party, someone shot a bottle rocket,

because I guess it was Fourth of July weekend,

and it hit the hill, and the hill caught on fire.

[onlooker] Dude, uh-uh, baby, we're going to have to go.

[onlooker 2] I'm not leaving, I'm not going anywhere.

[onlooker 3] Dude, there's some guy in the middle of it.

[indistinct chatter]

[Gavin Hardkiss] It was so beautiful,

watching the hillside burn.

I think a whole lot of people went and put it out

before it got too big, and we were all applauding

that we could all come together and put out the fire.

[crowd cheering]

[onlooker] I guess we have a party.

Whoo!

Rockin'!

Feel the fire burning!

[DJ Jeno] I was told, you know, okay, party's back on,

get on the turntables, and the moment the beat kicked in,

people just appeared and ran, ran onto the dance floor.

[music pumping]

[crowd cheering]

I think it was for those of you who can feel the fire burning,

check this, boom!

[whooshing] The whole place lifted.

Electrifying energy.

A'

[DJ Tony] I love doing the parties outdoors.

They're always a little bit different.

People would bring the tents and they'd be like,

camping and, you know, just made like a...

full on night of it.

And in the morning, I'll never forget

how it looked in the morning.

You know, sea of people just out there,

sound system still pumping out good music.

[Tom Anderson] To me, they were kids and they had to have fun.

And when you get that many kids together

and don't have a fight, don't even have an argument.

And I was here through the duration of seeing them,

you know, and, like, it's telling you,

we as parents forget

that we did things like that, you know?

[John Atkinson] When I first started participating

in the party scene,

I noticed a lot of similarities in people's perceptions

about the people who were participating in those.

And a lot of the misconceptions

of who Deadheads were or who people attending raves were.

And I think that, like, in most things,

90 or 95% of the people are really good people,

and then 5% of the people kind of fuck it up

for everybody else.

But then those 5% get all the press.

[Billie Sharp] Raves always had this terrible reputation

for being irresponsible and for not having a political agenda

and just being a bunch of hedonists.

And there's no denying the fundamental thing

that ravers or the rave scene was about

was coming together and partying and dissolving boundaries

with music and with psychedelics.

And following Marshall McLuhan,

for example, who said, "The medium is the message,"

then our medium is to party.

[Sean Hall] Around the country,

raves have a connotation of being

these sort of candy rave type things

where everyone's wearing glow sticks and eating lollipops

and doing way too much ecstasy

and no real sense of community or focus,

like environmental or social issue focus.

These parties in San Francisco

really were about creating community.

They were about being socially active

and being environmentally active.

And you would often times find literature and information

about all of these things at those parties.

So for me, it got really down to the essence

of what we were doing.

Going into these interesting spaces,

having these amazing experiences with people,

and then trying to channel those experiences

into meaningful work in the world.

[Kyle Edwards] We were thinking, you know what?

This is getting ridiculous.

How can we do something that doesn't have

as much footprint on the earth?

So we started Recycle, and that was a party

that to get in, you had to bring a bag of recyclables.

So a bag of cans or newspapers.

The party really took off.

Everybody seemed to...

to enjoy bringing their recyclables.

And it felt good.

It felt good to be doing something

while we were doing the party.

It felt important at the time.

[Sharon Virtue] It was very much a sort of global consciousness

that I hadn't really thought of until I was in that moment.

So it's not necessarily the case that it wasn't already

happening or hadn't already happened in the sixties

or, you know, but for me, at that point,

that was when I really got that message,

when it sunk home to me.

Because, I mean, you can be told something a million times,

but until you actually experience it.

And it was a very experiential sort of learning

and knowledge that you suddenly wake up and get it.

♪ In the beginning, there was paradise a'

♪ Where man, foolish man, wanted more out of life A“

♪ So he bit the apple to become wise a'

♪ There he stood, naked, he realized r

♪ That when he opened his eyes, it was still really blind I'

[Joe Nice] There was a magic in that period

that exceeded all expectations.

And we really believed that we could change everything,

that this was going to change the world.

And I think that it changed us.

A'

[Danja Koja] When I went to these parties,

I was able to actually open up enough,

let myself relax enough...

to feel.

And, gosh, the feeling, I can't even--

It's priceless.

Some of it seemed like it was extraterrestrial

or it was spiritual, or it was God,

whatever one put your finger on it.

But there was another level

that we were trying to get to, you know?

Maybe it was all in our heads.

I think about that sometimes.

Like, maybe this was all in my own head,

that there was something else in the room

at a certain point, there's a certain magic

that you couldn't quite put your finger on.

[DJ Garth] It was like church.

It was like a church of our making.

We just would bring the tools to have a conversation with God.

I mean, that's how deep it was.

You know, even if it was just you

on your own with the sound system,

if there were just five of us, we would had a lovely time.

But the fact that there was all of our friends

coming down as well.

Sometimes they would all, you know,

spontaneously form a circle

and just start spinning around.

It was-- It's the next level.

It was-- It was very--

It was very spiritual.

[Sean Hall] There's a book by William James

called The Varieties of Religious Experience.

And in that book he basically describes

hundreds of different religious experiences

that people have had throughout the ages.

And they're all very different.

But what he came away with,

the kind of main point he made in this book,

was that it doesn't really matter what the experience was,

whether or not it was valid or real or whatever.

What matters is the effect that it had.

Even though we're bringing it with speakers

and DJs and records and track shoes

and, you know, t-shirts and glowy stuff.

It's... It's really an ancient tradition

that you're just-- you understand

when you're under the stars or under the canopy of trees

and with your feet on the planet,

that we are just keeping the thread going.

[DJ Markie Mark] Humans have been celebrating the universe

and change and astronomical events before--

even before there was religion.

And it's not as though--

we didn't invent the full moon party.

We were just following on with the tradition

that is as old as the human race.

[DJ Garth] It felt so different from playing in a nightclub.

We did have other club nights going on as well.

Wicked and community.

And there were big raves going on at the time.

But nothing had the feeling of the full moon.

Where it just struck a chord, I think, with people.

The fact that it was free, that it was just raw, you know,

it was something that we had created out of nothing, really.

We just would lug our speakers down,

our friends would come and magic would happen.

[DJ Jeno] Through the SF raves list, we got word

that there was this beach down in Santa Cruz,

the Bonnie Doone beach, that we could go down

there and probably get away

with doing what we were doing without being harassed.

So that's what we did.

We literally went down there to check it out.

And as it turned out, it was the most amazing,

beautiful beach, and we were like, "Let's do it.

Let's just move out of the city."

A'

The acoustics were incredible.

This is just an amazing amphitheater, really.

And then coupled with the fact that everyone's

high on the most incredible ecstasy,

marijuana known to man.

You know, the moon will be hanging over there

like some biblical painting.

And it was pretty perfect.

We felt incredibly free.

Free of our inhibitions, free of our shackles.

And some people felt free of clothing.

There was usually a naked streaker running around.

I remember one night, somebody walked up there

and some brave soul jumped off the cliff.

When you see someone go off of that cliff

into the water, you wonder

if they're gonna come out again, you know?

In that case, the guy came out,

he said he'd been saved by dolphins.

You know, great. Fantastic.

There's a happy ending to that story.

But it did stick in, I think, in all of our minds, you know,

that this was gonna be an issue,

you know, dealing with people like that.

A'

The psychedelic thing was like...

It was kind of like a torch that got passed,

kind of like a relay race, you know what I mean?

And it was almost like the sixties

and the Deadheads had carried it as far as they could.

And as a person who actually

carried the torch personally for a while,

I mean, I really felt like it was like that.

It's like you can carry it for a little while

and you gotta pass it on or you get burned.

Cause people who tried to, like, you know,

not change or not, you know, do the whole drug transformation

as just like a phase, you know,

I mean, it was pretty detrimental to people

that hung onto it for too long.

You know, drugs are the map.

They're not the territory.

And once you know that territory,

you can go back there

without any guidance or any tools or any, you know, GPS.

I mean, you know where to go.

Everything changes.

There was a certain nucleus at the beginning.

More edgy people, more people that are, you know,

prepared to look in places that other people don't,

that found it, and it really worked.

And people shared information.

The values were there, the intent was there.

Up to about '94, there was no such thing

as an ambulance coming to a rave.

Someone took care of you.

Not someone that worked at the party,

just someone else.

People took care of each other.

[Jerry Sladewski] Maybe it was because it got too big too fast

and maybe enough people weren't explaining things.

Maybe people were there for the wrong reasons.

I mean, a lot of people went for the music,

I thought, and the fun.

But the later generations maybe started coming

because it was drugs and girls or sex or whatever,

and, you know, that's all fun too,

but I think there has to be that fine line.

I think the drugs can be a challenge.

You know, the drugs can be about mind expansion.

They can be about increasing empathy for each other.

They can be about some terrific things,

but they can create dependencies, too.

I don't think this is unique to the scene so much.

This is something that we see with junk food and television

and other things people get addicted to out there.

But sometimes the fact that we were so willing

to allow people to experiment and willing to support people

in their endeavors did mean that, you know,

people did take liberties with that at times, too.

Of course it shifted people's,

you know, what was going on in their minds

and what they were thinking about and stuff.

Like it got into, like,

"We don't want to ever go and sleep,

so we'll take like, speed and we'll stay up all night

and we'll just go on and on and on

until the break of dawn."

You know, it's all about culture and teaching everyone

to know their own personal limits.

I've seen helicopters come down, right?

At that one-- the one festival.

I mean, let's say it, I mean...

it put a damper on things, I'm not gonna lie.

You know, that's real heartfelt when you see a helicopter

come and take somebody away.

He was just, you know, really, really out of it,

you know, barely breathing when I got there.

He was incontinent. He had, you know,

phlegm and whatever coming out of his mouth.

His eyes were rolled in the back of his head

and very unresponsive.

And while I'm standing there assessing him,

he quits breathing and ends up going to the hospital.

[John Atkinson] I was kind of taken aback a little bit

by the use of multiple drugs by people.

I think, like, at whatever, if you're gonna go see

Pink Floyd or The Grateful Dead,

people take acid.

But there it seemed like people were taking--

I mean, like, the guy that got choppered out.

I remember reading his chart or something.

He was like a pharmacy.

He had multiple drugs in his system.

[Donna Dion] That was one of the worst ones.

That's when I started to think these parties

aren't quite as much fun as they used to be.

You know, it's like, these kids are supposed

to come here, they're supposed to have fun.

They're not supposed to die doing it or almost die.

Happened to me, actually.

I went into full respiratory arrest.

So there I am, unaffected.

I'm in La La Land, passed out on my friend's lawn,

while all my friends are around trying to revive me.

Had to call the ambulance.

And, I mean, that's me. I did that to them.

And that's not a real cool thing to put people through.

So everybody, and I learned a real powerful lesson,

and I'm real thankful that I'm here to this day,

that my friends had the wherewithal to say,

"Enough, we're not gonna worry about the party.

We gotta get this dude help."

You just don't have light unless you have dark.

And I don't think it's worth pointing a finger at anybody.

I mean, life doesn't happen.

It doesn't actually exist in darkness or light.

Life is really all about what's in between.

It's coming of age. It's a rite of passage.

It's a way of really being able to be grateful and appreciate

what you do have and to know where you do want to go.

[Malachy O'Brien] The sense of support and caring

that I received after my accident

which happened in March 1993.

A car accident the way back from a full moon rave.

We all fell asleep, we had a late night

then we had some coffee that morning,

couldn't make it back to the city.

We were just a few minutes from the city

and the driver lost control of the vehicle.

[DJ Dutch] And it was just tragedy hearing the news

that they went tumbling off the road

and Malachy was wrestling with speakers

all the way through that accident.

You know, that stuffs heavy.

And to get rolled up inside of a tumbling van

with all kinds of gear and heavy equipment,

it's just-- it's just amazing that he survived.

And then, urn, it really took--

Uh, it took a toll on a scene immediately.

It was, uh, it was like, "What's gonna happen now," you know?

I think almost like, you know, the-- the--

the guy being killed

at the Rolling Stones concert.

Back then, it was like-- That was like the signal

for a change in whatever scene was happening then.

It was the end of the hippie scene.

It was like that was some major turning point

to whatever was happening in San Francisco

and happening in the rave scene.

It began the questioning around, for me personally,

around drugs and intelligence and responsibility

and ownership.

The beautiful childhood adolescence

all of a sudden was like, [screeching]

you know, came to a quick halt of like,

"Oh, there's an adulthood, there's a responsibility,

there's a maturity that has to enter here."

And that sort of like wild abandon,

which seems really fantastic at the time,

can have CONSEQUENCES.

That happens every day in real life.

You know, there are accidents all the time, as I can testify.

Urn...

Um, I don't think my accident happened

just because I was coming back late night

from our rave because we thought we had enough,

you know, fuel, mental fuel to get back home.

But urn, we didn't, you know.

Yeah, it was careless, but, you know, shit happens.

And uh, the scene rallied behind him

and ultimately was able to come up

with a little bit of money to--

to help him along in the get go.

And then...

as things progressed and time went on,

we were able to throw a much larger event

to help generate enough money to hopefully help him

get to where he needed to be at the time.

In this case, it was sort of like

the gathering of the tribes.

All the different little groups

for that one moment could drop their stuff and--

and be like one-- one family.

Really, one family.

[Martin O'Brien] There was no more powerful party

than the unity party.

No full moon, no wicked, no community, no gathering,

no rave called Sharon, no together, no nothing.

Compared to that.

They had Buddhist monks,

Indian chiefs, 5,000 people in a room all saying prayers.

Malachy could hear the sound of the party, the healing...

sound for Malachy.

That's what it was about.

It was about healing.

[crowd cheering]

[energetic music playing]

[Malachy O'Brien] That was a very powerful time.

I actually thought this energy that I received

was going to one day help me to walk.

Little did I realize the seriousness

of my accident at that time.

Spinal cord injury is very serious, obviously,

but I definitely felt it helped me to heal on many other levels.

To be able to enjoy music and dance is a very...

important dimension to basic human happiness, I feel.

Urn, to express yourself with each other.

Even if it's just a simple bit of body movement.

Whatever you've got, you gotta sort of work it, you know?

So...

I feel definitely there was a strong community created out

of all of our efforts and all of our shared experiences.

[DJ Spun] Historically, San Francisco's the Wild west.

You know, a little bit, it's the end of the country,

and it's always been a place where people have gone

to actualize the reality they wanted to,

hopefully, their dreams come true.

From the gold rush to the gold rush of the Internet

to the Grateful Dead to disco dancing

or all these things, you know.

San Francisco has always been a place, to,

where I think people felt pretty free

to be a little bit different and be unusual.

[Griffith] The mists of manifestation that roll through

and just being surrounded by water

and so much vision and visionaries,

You know, so many globally minded people who are liberated.

So, it's a real utopic oasis for America.

And it's a-- You know, the sky's the limit.

In fact, beyond the sky, there are no limits.

♪ Breathe deep a'

[Jones] Each and every person dancing in those fields

and those beaches, in those basements and those warehouses

was absolutely a revolutionary, absolutely an artist.

And not even in the way

that created anything tangible that you can hold.

It's what was communicated

and what was radiated out into the world.

Like, you know, so many pebbles dropped in

or raindrops in a pond, right?

It just keeps radiating.

[DJ Harvey] It could be almost like a private life, you know?

You don't necessarily tell your mum

that you lost your virginity the night before.

You know, these are things that are maybe...

like-- like secrets in a way.

|t's-- it's not, you know, people don't stand up

when they collect their Oscar, yet, and go,

"I'd like to thank acid house culture for my success."

You know, so when that happens,

then maybe the world will-- will know the-- the impact.

I think the whole period was just so magical that,

you know, there are these gleaming moments of bliss

which are obviously the most-- the foggiest right?

They are the hardest to recollect, but I don't know.

[Nice] And at the time, I mean, I guess I knew, I always knew

we were lucky, and I always knew it wasn't gonna last,

urn, in that capacity.

We had the fierce DIY ethic

of just kind of doing our own thing

outside of the constructs of...

any other society.

You know, which at this point,

there's not much of that left.

You know, everything's so co-opted

and commercialized, that it's, um,

it's hard to have something stay pure.

You know, it's gonna be marketed by tomorrow

and it's on YouTube probably now.

My heyday would have been '91, '92, '93.

[Martin O'Brien] There's people still having heydays today.

Dancers, ravers, DJs,

promoters are still getting that vibration and that change,

But there's not as much mystery, really.

You know, you had more chance of getting away with stuff.

You had more chance of breaking into a warehouse

and getting away with it.

You had more chance of people bringing people out

into a field and getting away with it.

I'm not saying they don't work as hard

or as committed as we were.

It's just that they have a different set of tools to

work with in a modern day environment

which has had 20 years of anti-rave mentality.

That thing about Buddhists, how they create a mandala.

They spend hours, days, weeks, months,

creating this beautiful picture out of sand, you know,

and it's the most amazing thing to look at

is, you know, beautiful, creative, artistic...

picture, and then they wipe it all away, you know,

And start over again.

[Ameba] You know, the beats...

gave something that allowed the hippies to happen.

You know, the hippies

gave something that actually allowed disco

and noise and all this other stuff to happen

that they never even planned on,

and yet, it still allowed kind of the next thing to happen

and allowed it to be built on, you know.

So, when the rave happened and the rave came along,

it was like, well, they weren't starting from scratch, you know.

There was several different long histories

and lineages happening.

They just hadn't coalesced in this new way.

That drive has never gone away.

It's been there since before the first fire was started,

I'm sure, and continues to this day in many, many forms.

[White] I realized there's always been

and there always will be

an underground dance party culture,

and I think it's essential for a free society to have that.

That's what raves were for-- for the '90s.

It was a place where you could be yourself.

You didn't have to worry about the mores

and the strata of society.

And the good thing was is that it's something

that didn't just stop and sort of wear off the next day.

I think it actually changed us all really, for a lifetime.

It made lifelong changes

for the good, I would say for the good.

[DJ Jeno] We wanted people to realize that they could also

make their dreams come true themselves

if they got up off their asses

and made them come true themselves.

You know, in a way it was wanting to change

the way things worked, you know?

Just presenting an alternative,

You know, allowing yourself to let go to...

experience life outside of the safe confines

of our modern technological home

where we don't even have to go out

to communicate with people.

Take a chance, you know?

Let your inhibitions go. Dance all night, you know?

Check out some music you've never heard before.

Meet some people you never met before with

different opinions and different ideas

than-- than you have been exposed to before.

Do it, you know.

[upbeat electronic music]