In pursuit of outlaw cool

When music has become so heavily branded and effort-free, it's no wonder illegal raves are back

Alexis Petridis
Wednesday August 30, 2006
The Guardian

There is a certain glorious serendipity about the illegal rave scene once more rearing its unkempt head at the same time as the Carling Weekend festivals. To the outside world at least, it has been missing presumed dormant for over a decade: it was last noticed when a 1995 attempt to stage a vast rave in defiance of the Criminal Justice Act was scuppered by - and you may be ahead of me here - the Criminal Justice Act. Now it is in the spotlight again, apparently attracting thousands to disused airfields, drawing the ire of Tory MPs, chucking things at policemen who try to stop it. Last weekend, at least three illegal raves took place at the same time as a vast rock festival that forms part of a lager brand's deathless attempt to "own" youth culture.

It is hard not to draw a comparison: anyone looking for a reason why the rave scene is picking up popularity again might consider that rock and pop music has never been more in thrall to corporate sponsorship or more willing to license music to advertisers, has never seemed more unrepentantly venal than it does today. Veterans of an era when the Clash refused to appear on Top of the Pops and "selling out" was an endlessly debated topic might be shocked by today's climate, in which any artist who refuses to "play the game" is met with the kind of spluttering disbelief that greeted Gnarls Barkley's refusal to license their music to a McDonald's campaign: "Perhaps they prefer Burger King," sneered one US magazine.

The situation has become more obvious than ever during 2006's festival season. This year, Glastonbury took a sabbatical. Into the breach rode dozens of events that frankly made the Carling Weekend look as dangerous as Altamont. Their aim seemed to be twofold. First to flog everything from mobile phones to deodorant via branding. And second to finally rid the rock festival of its historical connotations as a byword for mud-spattered countercultural depravity, to hose it down and transform it into light entertainment for the kind of thirtysomething audience who turn up with a lot of elaborate picnic equipment. The end result is like a cross between Glyndebourne and Bluewater shopping centre - hardly an atmosphere in which to enjoy the Flaming Lips.

Youth culture - and by extension rock and pop music - is supposed to have at least a veneer of disreputability, to be the stuff of moral panics and generation gaps and why-oh-why articles in the Daily Mail. Fifty years of history suggest that rock and pop music never actually poses any significant threat to establishment values; if it did, as Paul Weller once dolefully remarked, "they would have banned it years ago". But it should at least give the appearance of doing so - that's part of its appeal.

It is hard to pretend you're posing a threat to anything other than your own will to live when you're surrounded by corporate logos at an event broadcast on the BBC and attended by ex-Big Brother housemates and the cast of Hollyoaks. What self-respecting teenager wouldn't instead opt for an illegal rave, with its sense of outlaw cool and danger - offering not just drug-fuelled hedonism, but an attendant palaver involving the chance to run across motorways, trespass on private property and the occasional spot of light rioting?

In fact, the attendant palaver may hold another key to the illegal rave's burgeoning appeal. In 2006 everyone is conspiring to make music as effortless as possible - virtually anything you might want to hear is available at the click of a mouse. But convenience isn't everything. Morrissey once posited that music mattered more to fans in the 70s, before downloading and MySpace and digital radio catered to their every whim. It's human nature to value something more if you have to struggle to get it, and you certainly have to struggle a bit to attend an illegal rave - before you hear a note, you have to endlessly text and check websites to find the location, avoid police roadblocks, scramble under hedges and cheat death in the fast lane of the M23. It may be the only time the modern music fan is required to put any effort in at all. Taking that into account, the question might not be why teenagers go to illegal raves, but why teenagers attend any other kind of music event at all.