The start

First things first……

I left school in 1990 and this is where the tales begin. Sweet 16, the age of consent. Also the age that i was taken to my first rave and had my first hallucinogenic experience. I was living in a small town called Atherstone, North Warwickshire, in a foster home. Not like 40 kids in a dormitory but with foster parents. As a teenager living with my family i was a bit of a tearaway (you will find this out soon enough) and after a lot of rows i left home aged 15 and put myself into voluntary care. I had moved a couple of times due to not really getting on with foster parents and eventually ended up in this small town where i knew absolutely nobody. According to my dad i had family there but no idea who or where to find them, so i never bothered trying. So here i was, all alone in a strange place yet again. The night i was taken to my new home was tough for me, because as soon as my social worker had left me there, the foster parents pissed off to the pub and left me in the house on my own. I remember sitting there crying and feeling like nobody gave a shit about me, and along with the usual other teen angst issues this proved to be the catalyst for me thinking ‘fuck everyone, look after number one’, a hard way of thinking that still lives in me to a degree to this day. After a while i got to know people my own age in the town and started making friends but this was to be short lived. Remember i said i was a tearaway? Well, that’s putting it mildly. Me and my best mate had recently started burgling houses and smoking draw and we were the new boys in  town. The girls in the town liked us as they had grown up with the same lads and me and my pal (who i shall refer to as JJJ) had a lot of success in the arts of loving, if you catch my drift. This annoyed the local lads and when i bragged about a certain house  we had burgled this fucked everything up. It had been a popular lads house and suddenly we went from hot property to most hated. I had the big gang of local lads after us both and spent a lot of my time walking the long way to places to avoid getting jumped. Not ideal.

                      The Eclipse, Coventry

Now before we go any further i want to make this clear; i’m not bragging about this, just setting the scene. I’m not proud of this behaviour and do not condone it but it was what i was up to and feel i should explain it properly.

Atherstone is, as i said, a small town with a proud history of underage drinking in pubs. so i decided to go to these pubs and join in. Why not? the chavs that chased me so often didn’t really go to pubs so i was relatively safe in them. This is where i met a load of older lads, all in there in their early 20′s and they had talked about ‘Amnesia House’, ‘The Eclipse’, and other raves they went to. Now i was still in pub/straight club mode so didn’t really understand what they meant; i just assumed it was like any other nightclub at the time. Like i said, i was 16 but easily got into clubs in Coventry and Nuneaton and thought they were one and the same. Back in those days you had to wear a suit and tie so when it kicked off (and it often did) you looked nice waiting in A&E to get your lip stitched back on. I wasn’t that interested at first, i liked fighting in clubs and fast kissing on the dancefloor for the ‘erection section’ at the end of the night. For those young enough to have no clue what that was, at the end of the night in these clubs they would play sloppy songs and you would grab the nearest girl still conscious and slow dance with her, groping her arse whilst trying to remove the enamel from her teeth through the power of a combination of frantic tongue action and gratuitous suction. Nice. I liked the Chicago house music but only really knew the chart stuff, i was no music buff back then. Eventually i decided to try it out and went to The Eclipse in Coventry to see what all the fuss was about. The lads had told me to wear jeans and t-shirt as wearing a suit would have marked me out as a copper or worst still, a bell end. Off we went, a 3 car convoy travelling to the big city of Coventry to dance the night away till 8am. Like any 16 year old i thought i knew it all but this night i was firmly put in my place. We arrived in Coventry around 10 pm and queued up with the rest of the mad heads there and after paying £8 to get in (this a lot back then, considering 20 fags were £2 in those days and i earned £29.50 a week from my YTS scheme) we made our way up the stairs into the club. People were sitting on the stairs, the floor, pretty much anywhere there was space and this threw me straight away. In normal clubs you would get thrown out with a punch to the back of the head for this behavior so ithought it was very cool. We made our way into the first floor room and  my first thought was “what a fucking shithole”. there was a dj in the corner of the room and i remember thinking it wasn’t impressive at all, but still we sat there talking about drugs. One of the lads had some ‘purple ohms’, or LSD tabs and gave me one. Now, as i said earlier i was already smoking draw (cannabis resin for those not in the know) so thought i would give it a try. Everything was great till i started to come up on it and then things went awry. I had discovered a new sense, not unlike synesthesia (smelling colours, feeling sounds) and loved it. After a bit the lads said it was time to go upstairs and the sight before me blew my tiny little mind. The main room was heaving, full of sweaty lads with no shirts on, eyes wider than a hookers growler and bizarrely, everyone dancing. Nobody standing around in gangs trying to pull girls or fighting and the music was deafening. The lasers felt like solid blocks of light boring into my head while the rhythmic music entrancing all but the bar staff (and not all of them) and bouncers prowling the outskirts of the room. Th trip was really taking effect now and i became convinced i had broken my jaw for some reason. I sat down and then after growing paranoia decided to go back to the first floor and panic in a more calm environment. I remember thinking eating some chips might help so went to the food counter and asked for chips. I took the money out of my pocket and looked at what was in my hand. Big shiny coins, all looking the same. after a while the lad serving helpfully took the coins from my hand, handed me the chips and left to stare at them, trying to fathom what i was supposed to do with them. A bunch girls saw the state i was in and took pity on me, god bless them. they say with me making sure i was ok but i was too far gone. I had broken my jaw, after all. My mates eventually found me and after seeing that state i was in, they decided to call it a night and take me home. those chips didn’t stay down for long, in fact they soon ended up being vomited onto the floor of my mates Ford Cortina estate (he wasn’t happy) They dropped me at home around 4am and i had to wake up my foster mum to let me in, all bug eyed and flying my tits off. i spent the next 4-5 hours lying in my bed trying not to panic over getting my jaw reset. Eventually they acid wore off and i realised i was having what i now know to be a ‘bad trip’

That was my first raving experience. It didn’t put me off, as you will find out in my next post………..

This video is from The Eclipse at New Age 2; Hite Nite in 5/7/1991. at 12:50mins  i am there, giving it loads in a red top with black stripe down the middle on a dance platform. Sexy.