The True Story Of Acid House Britain S Last Youth Culture Revolution

The arrival of a new style of music and a new type of drug in 1988 ignited a revolution. To coincide with the 25th anniversary of the second summer of love, this is the definitive story of the seismic movements in music and youth culture that changed the cultural landscape forever. Luke Bainbridge is uniquely positioned to tell this story, having connections both in the industry, through nearly two decades as a music journalist, and on the dancefloor, through two decades of dancing, promoting and DJing. Bainbridge has interviewed most of the protagonists who led the revolution, from the DJs and musicians to the promoters, gangsters and ravers, and built up a relationship of trust and mutual respect. This will be true story of acid house, from the DJ box to the dance floor. He examines the legacy and lasting impact of acid house, and how the second summer of love is viewed 25 years on. How has acid house been assimilated into mainstream culture? How did the change in drugs, away from ecstasy towards other drugs, affect the music and the party scene? Why has the free party scene never really been replicated, despite new technology greater capacity to organise events and disseminate information? Did the summer of 1988 leave us with a generation of drug users? Has there been any lasting effect of such an explosion in drug use? Who were the real winners and casualties in the story? Do the world's current biggest DJs Tiesto, Swedish House Mafia, David Guetta have any connection to the original scene? Where next for house and dance music in general?

From its first publication in 1997, Altered State established itself as the definitive text on Ecstasy and dance culture. This new edition sees Matthew Collin cast a fresh eye on the heady events of the acid house 'Summer of Love' and the rave scene's euphoric escalation into commercial excess as MDMA became a mass-market narcotic. Altered State is the best-selling book on Ecstasy culture, using a cast of memorable characters to track the origins of the scene and its drug through psychedelic subcults, underground gay discos and the Balearic paradise of Ibiza, to the point where Tony Blair was using an Ecstasy anthem as an election campaign song. Altered State critically examines the ideologies and myths of the scene, documenting the criminal underside to the blissed-out image, shedding new light on the social history of the most spectacular youth movement of the twentieth century.

What went on behind the Acid House dream? The raves and huge dance parties of the late-1980s changed the face of popular culture, as hundreds of thousands of youngsters enjoyed the illicit thrills of ecstacy and vast, illegal all-nighters. Yet beneath the bright surface was a world of drug deals, violence, exploitation, protection rackets and armed robbery. In this book, Wayne Anthony tells the story of his two years as an illegal dance party organizer and promoter. In those two years he was beaten up, menaced by criminals and blackmailers, confronted with sawn-off shotguns, kidnapped and threatened with murder.

This is an innovative contribution to the study of popular culture, focusing on the youth cultures that revolve around dance clubs and raves.

Emerging from Nottingham in the summer of 1989, the DiY Collective were one of the first house sound systems in the UK. Merging the anarchic lineage of the free festival scene, the cultural and political anger of bands like Crass with the new, irresistible electronic pulse of acid house, they bridged the idealistic void left by the moral implosion of the commercial rave scene. Written by Harry Harrison, one of DiY’s founding members, this book traces their origins back to early formative experiences, describing in detail the seminal clubs, parties, festivals and records that forged the collective. Dreaming in Yellow is an attempt to distil the story of DiY’s tumultuous existence and the remarkably eclectic, outrageous and occasionally deranged story of them doing it themselves.

Welcome to the world of the sharp-suited ‘faces’. The Italianistas. The scooter-riding, all-night-dancing instigators of what became, from its myriad sources, a very British phenomenon. Mod began life as the quintessential working-class movement of a newly affluent nation – a uniquely British amalgam of American music and European fashions that mixed modern jazz with modernist design in an attempt to escape the drab conformity, snobbery and prudery of life in 1950s Britain. But what started as a popular cult became a mainstream culture, and a style became a revolution. In Mod, Richard Weight tells the story of Britain’s biggest and most influential youth cult. He charts the origins of Mod in the Soho jazz scene of the 1950s, set to the cool sounds of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. He explores Mod’s heyday in Swinging London in the mid-60s – to a new soundtrack courtesy of the Small Faces, the Who and the Kinks. He takes us to the Mod–Rocker riots at Margate and Brighton, and into the world of fashion and design dominated by Twiggy, Mary Quant and Terence Conran. But Mod did not end in the 1960s. Richard Weight not only brings us up to the cult’s revival in the late 70s – played out against its own soundtrack of Quadrophenia and the Jam – but reveals Mod to be the DNA of British youth culture, leaving its mark on glam and Northern Soul, punk and Two Tone, Britpop and rave. This is the story of Britain’s biggest and brassiest youth movement – and of its legacy. Music, film, fashion, art, architecture and design – nothing was untouched by the eclectic, frenetic, irresistible energy of Mod.

From Revolution to Revelation offers a new paradigm for Cultural Studies. Tara Brabazon explores our understanding of our own past and the collective past we share with others through popular culture. She investigates Generation X, the ’post-youth’ generation born between 1961 and 1981, and the popular cultural literacies that are the basis of this imagining community. She looks at the ways in which popular culture offers a vehicle for memory, providing the building blocks of identity - the politics and passion of life captured in an unforgettable song, an amazing nightclub, or an unexpected goal in extra time. For a fan, the joy and exhilaration is enough, but it is the task of cultural studies to understand why particular cultural forms survive the passage of time and space. Brabazon argues, with Lawrence Grossberg, that Cultural Studies is ’the Generation X of the academic world’. She tracks its journey away from Marxism and subcultural theory and looks at its future. In particular she explores the possibilities of popular memory studies in reclaiming and repairing the discipline of Cultural Studies - making it as relevant and as revelatory as in its revolutionary past.