Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture
Nineteen ninety-eight is the tenth anniversary of rave culture, and though it hasn’t elicited the kind of hoopla that, say, the 20th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper’s did, it hasn’t gone unremarked either. But while ravers may be every bit as self-interested as baby boomers, rave nostalgia seems like an oxymoron, not least because techno ain’t over yet. Still, the subculture is attempting to sum up its contributions to popular culture so far, with everything from parties dedicated to capturing “that old school vibe,” as a flyer from Chicago put it, to cover stories in British magazines about “acid house ten years on” to compilations like Moonshine’s Classic Rave.
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This comes at an awkward juncture in the music’s evolution in the U.S., where rave has yet to get huge the way it has in Europe. Ecstasy and the music that heralded its arrival in England changed that country’s pop culture irrevocably. Here, though the impact has been significant, it’s still largely subterranean: ravers have played unwitting muse to fashion designers and drum ‘n’ bass has been appropriated by everyone from R & B producer Timbaland to New York art rockers Soul Coughing. But the broad popular assumption, shared by most critics, is that the music in its pure form can’t survive outside the nightclubs, and thus its appeal is limited to a cadre of diehards who might as well not exist as far as the real world is concerned.
In his review of Generation Ecstasy for the Minneapolis alternative weekly City Pages, Will Hermes writes, “Generation Ecstasy deserves a companion CD (or three), as with the U.K.-only companion to Greil Marcus’s Lipstick Traces. In lieu of that, one hopes some spirited record labels start reclaiming and reissuing the music history contained in Reynolds’s book.” This blatantly ignores that, to a great extent, they already have. The early 90s saw more than enough dreadfully packaged, one-good-cut-plus-filler techno compilations–Continuum’s This Is Techno series springs to mind. But there are a good dozen or so that still stand up today, not just as nostalgia but as living music. Back when critics were salivating over dull “masterpieces” by the likes of Hole, albums like Moonshine’s Speed Limit 140 BPM Plus 3 (1993) and Profile’s Best of Techno Vol. 3 (1993) and History of Our World Part One: Breakbeat & Jungle Ultramix by DJ DB (1994) were released to almost no fanfare. They’re actually as exciting as the aforementioned “Pazz & Jop” poll winner was purported to be.
