Dancing 'Til Dawn - 12/21/2006

Remembering when e-music fans all grooved together ... and how they still do

By Dennis Romero

In 1989, not long after I came to Los Angeles, I discovered the "acid jazz," house, and rave scenes - alternatives to the velvet rope that placed dancing, music, and vibe above hype. I was mesmerized by the speakeasy atmosphere, hip-hop jazz ensembles, and random acts of grooving that followed the roaming Brass parties of the time. I became a frequent flyer at house-and-techno after-hours events at Vertigo (now Los Angeles Entertainment Center), the Park Plaza Hotel, and the Hollywood Palladium. But it wasn't until the winter of late 1991 that I got the full-on rave experience.

I was researching a piece for the Los Angeles Times about URB magazine and the rebirth of electronic dance culture in America, and URB publisher Raymond Roker took me to a true underground party at a Long Beach warehouse. As we walked up to the entrance, the corrugated metal sidings rattled and throbbed uncontrollably. Inside, the scene was orgasmic: my sightline rocked by "intelligent," pastel light beams and green laser stabs, my ears assaulted with aggressive sorties of up-tempo bass and strange proclamations ("I'm the one and only dominator"). The most impressive aspect was the dance floor. Actually, it wasn't so much of a dance floor as it was a concrete surface where dancing broke out at all corners, a sea of heads bobbling, hands raising, kids of all colors and tribes publicly jacking their bodies, pop-locking and swirling as their eyes rolled back into their own private head spaces.

The experience kicked off a lifetime of love for the electronic dance music scene. It was the antidote to Hollywood's nightlife exclusivity. The music, often without lyrics, was composed in the international language of beats. The community, perhaps idealistically, embraced a countercultural, come-one, come-all ethos. There were cyber-hippies and breakers, house heads and debutantes. But most important, it was a movement built on dancing - a communal experience that brought divergent people together under the almighty P.A. speaker. Just as the hippies had their moments of unclouded idealism - they thought they could change the world with peace, love, and rock 'n' roll - the rave movement had its dance-floor dreams: If a few thousand divergent strangers could dance together in peace for a few hours, maybe this thing called rave could bring the world closer. In a way, it has.

Of course, that Long Beach warehouse seems light years away now. The hopes of the underground disintegrated, post-riots, until after-hours parties became an excuse to do drugs (mainly ecstasy, speed, and nitrous oxide) in the mid-'90s. Diversity was supplanted by a predominately Latino crowd, where thugs peddled drugs, gangs sometimes waged war, and dancing, sadly, gave way to a macabre scene of passed-out tweakers sprawled across the dance floors of inner-city speakeasies. The groove was lost.

But in 1996, the groove made a sweeping comeback. The idealists held on, and that summer, longtime local radio DJ Swedish Egil brought 24-hour electronic dance music to the commercial airwaves in the form of Groove Radio, at 103.1 FM. The same weekend, the Chemical Brothers, Underworld, Leftfield, and Orbital came to Southern California for Organic '96, a rave in the form of a professional, organized concert. And I found myself stomping in the dirt at sunrise to the bubbly sway of the Orb.

Since then, e-music has become ubiquitous (car commercials, movies, college radio), even if the rave scene has ebbed and flowed. DJs who play progressive house, techno, and trance often spin at semi-exclusive super-clubs where bottle service is available and cocktails are king. If you go to any of these places, you'll notice people don't shake it as much as they used to. Swanky banquettes line the dance floors, and hipsters smoke and socialize in open-air patios, often pondering - philosophically, stiffly - which jock rocks the floor better.

I guess I've become one of those people too. That's not to say you still won't find me bouncing occasionally, front-and-center, when Danny Tenaglia, John Digweed, Deep Dish, Peace Division, or Hernan Cattaneo hit town. Argentinean Cattaneo, for one, plays fresh electronic music nightly, tunes that have been e-mailed - yes, e-mailed - to him from bedroom producers across the globe. After all this time, that dream of a world dancing together has been realized more than we might think. Tech-infected dance floors are throbbing uncontrollably from Taipei to Tokyo, Mexico City to Buenos Aires, not to mention the kick drums flowing through all those iPod ear buds, private head spaces to be sure, but spaces that are nonetheless unified more than ever by the four-four beat.