[1] 

Todd:

Tell me a little bit about how you got started at Melody Maker and ended up reviewing this event for them.

Simon:

I started freelancing for MM at the end of 1985 and by the autumn of ‘86 I was a staff writer. That continued until autumn 1990, when I quit because I needed to be free to travel regularly to New York, where my girlfriend—and future wife—lived. At the time of writing this Castlemorton report, I was a freelancer again but a very regular MM contributor, writing about American stuff when I was in NYC and then UK stuff when I got back. This particular piece was written during a longer stay in the UK—I was going through the official process of marrying an American and becoming a resident alien, so you have to wait in your native country until the application has been approved.

In late May, I went with my raving crew to what we thought would be a regular sort of Spiral Tribe event that might involve perhaps a few thousand people. In fact, Spiral Tribe were just one of several sound systems involved and the event surpassed everyone’s expectations—anywhere from 20,000 to 40,000 people attended. It went on for much longer than the usual day or two, it lasted a whole week in fact. We just went for the first night and it was a mind-blowing experience, just the scale of it. Then seeing the negative reaction from the media and government, it was clear that this was a big deal—as a confrontation between a youth subculture and Authority, on a par with punk.

I had not been assigned to review it by MM—I had gone as a fan, someone caught up in this scene. So that’s why I did it as a news story. By good fortune, MM had an eye witness to the event, which I’m not sure any of the other music papers did. When I got back on the Sunday after a night of no sleep and a rather hairy drive back to London, it didn’t occur to me to write it up so it could be in the next edition that went to press on Monday and came out Tuesday. I wouldn’t have been in a state to do it anyway. But I came into the office on the Tuesday still wide-eyed and burbling and proposed doing a report, which ran the following week—a day or two after the remaining sound systems had finally dispersed after a week’s raving and nonstop front page stories in the papers, TV coverage, questions in Parliament, etc.

[2] 

Todd:

I’m curious about the editing of this piece. Do you remember much about that process?

Simon:

I had never done a news report before. A few times when at a loose end in the office I had helped out typing in information about record releases (and made up some imaginary releases by bands I disliked—so not that helpful!). But the news section at the front of the paper was the province of news editor Carol Clerk and deputy Mat Smith. They did reviews and interviews as well, but the rest of us writers would rarely if ever contribute to the news section. And there’s a very good reason for that—almost none of us had any journalistic training whatsoever. That was the norm in the UK music press—as a result I didn’t know anything about getting secondary quotes or how to structure a piece, ledes, nut graphs, etc. I only picked that stuff up after writing for American newspapers.

So I submitted something (which you can see further on) that was much more like my usual approach, i.e. first-hand observation blended with sociocultural generalisations—a combination of festival review and thinkpiece. And Carol or Mat restyled it as a new story. I was not involved in that process—I just saw the result the next week when I opened the paper. This was another thing about the UK music papers—you were not edited, in the sense of having a back and forth with an editor. Things would be done to your piece, usually amputations to save space. (Actually the same thing happened when I wrote for proper British newspapers, now that I think of it).

So the first time I experienced the editing process was at the New York Times where it was disorienting to be consulted about every last bit of punctuation. The idea that an editor could work closely with you to improve a piece and help you to develop as a writer was absolutely foreign to me until I moved to America. So the ‘news report’ styling of this piece came from Carol or Mat. It would never have occurred to me to get a quote from an official. I don’t know if they phoned up the police spokesman or just “borrowed” that from a national newspaper.

The Spiral Tribe quotes were supplied by me, however—earlier that year I had done a big piece on techno for Details magazine, which is how I had first come across Spiral Tribe and glommed on to them as a colorful story element and a source of inflammatory quotes about techno as a revolution. There was a bit of luck involved there: one of our raving crew, Sam Batra, had met this guy in a club at 7 AM and fallen in love, and it turned out that he was the brother of one of Spiral Tribe. Before Castlemorton, though, I had only been to a small Spiral event in a squatted house somewhere in London. And then later I’d interviewed them in the aftermath of another rave at a derelict pub.

[3]

Todd:

For those who may not be aware, can you briefly explain what travellers are and their role in the rave scene?

Simon:

The traveling scene dated back to the early ‘70s and basically involved nomadic hippies who moved from festival to festival in their trucks and caravans, on this circuit of free festivals that emerged. It was a summer long lifestyle but some of the travelers would attempt to maintain the lifestyle of no-fixed-abode all year long, which could be quite tough but ‘freedom of the road’ had its appeal. Or perhaps during the winter they would live in squats in town and then go on the festival circuit during the summer.

Travelers and squatters had an overlap, although there were many squatters who weren’t hippies particularly, just vaguely bohemian people who couldn’t afford rent or liked the idea of communal living. There was a spectrum there, but the travelers were the direct continuation of the counterculture—the hair, clothes, drugs, and the music. The music component would be space rock and other hallucinogens-compatible sounds. Hawkwind were scene leaders who carried on playing endless free festivals even as they were signed to a major label and did big concert tours. Gong and Steve Hillage were others in a similar position—part of the Underground but signed to big labels. But there were many others with names like Here and Now and Magic Mushroom Band. There were also artists like Zorch and Tim Blake who used synths and trippy lighting, but it was more like electronic cosmic rock than what we would think of as dance music.

Gradually, at the end of the ‘80s, this traveller / festival scene started to turn on to house and techno music—and the attendant drugs. Sound systems like DIY and Circus Warp and Circus Bedlam emerged. There were also groups like Mutoid Waste Company who would throw huge carnivalesque warehouse parties in disused British Rail depots and places like that—in the city but with a free festival vibe. Anyway, there started to be a crossover between the neo-hippie travelers and the more regular raver types who had 9 to 5 jobs—the raves were more exciting and anarchic but also competitive price-wise compared to commercial raves or clubbing in the city. Well, they were free—although you were expected to donate money when they came round with a bucket, to fund the petrol for the electrical generators.

[4] 

Todd:

I… never really thought about this aspect of the free rave scene that much. Must have been a terrible smelling summer.

Simon:

You had to rough it a bit. The first night, it wasn’t a problem really, you just had to tread carefully when you were heading out to the periphery, but I should imagine as the event stretched on and on, it got a bit squalid.

[5] 

Todd:

What are some of the records that you think are particularly special from this time period?

Simon:.

I could go on for hours—but mostly I’d be talking about breakbeat hardcore and jungle, which was really its own separate scene. There was a little bit of overlap—one particular crew on one particular London pirate station always used to give out shouts to Spiral Tribe and information about where the rave was happening, even try to hook up people who needed a ride there. But jungle was more about clubs in the cities and the big commercial, professionally organised raves.

Specifically from the traveler / techno interface, there aren’t that many classics—the Spiral Tribe records are cultural curios, fascinating as snapshots of a moment in UK subculture. After Castlemorton they got signed to one of the larger dance independent labels who thought they were going to be the Sex Pistols of techno and put out a bunch of EPs and an album. There is one particular hardcore rave anthem featuring a member of Spiral Tribe chanting—this MC called Scallywag—Xenophobia’s “Rushing the House.” It’s a cheeky little number that rips off a Kinks melody: “Ecstasy—you really got me going, you got me so I don’t know what I’m doing.” That was played during Castlemorton. Another tune I recall vividly from that night is by The Drum Club, who were friends with Spiral Tribe and one of whom was in the car with us as we drove down to the West Country. “U Make Me Feel So Good.” Hypnotic but not that typical of the more hardcore fare being played.

[6] 

Todd:

How much context did you feel like you needed to provide to Melody Maker readers about rave and electronic music, in general, at this point? Was there already a lot of coverage of this type of thing?

Simon:

Melody Maker had been covering this stuff for a while. Even before acid house, I’d written about Mantronix and similar things and we had a guy called Frank Owen who was really on it in terms of early house and club sounds. Paul Oldfield, one of my comrades, wrote about Detroit techno and A Guy Called Gerald, I would be doing pieces on 808 State and Adamski, and others would be writing about bleep acts like LFO or proto-jungle types like Shut Up and Dance or Eon. Still, it wasn’t what the majority of the readership were into. And when it came to the rock press in general, the writing on electronic artists tended to focus on auteur figures—it was always looking for the artists who could pull it off at album length. It wasn’t really addressing the anonymous collectivity of rave, the role of DJs, the constant flow of white label 12-inches, how drugs factored into it. There were definitely some particularities about the way the hardcore rave scene worked that needed to be explained to the non-initiate, which would be probably 95% of the readers. That was beginning to change a bit because of the indie-dance crossover, with acts like Shamen and Primal Scream who had been ‘60s-inspired guitar groups and then embraced rave as a new psychedelia. They’d toured or done events where instead of support bands they had deejays, or a group like Orbital playing live techno. You had also had the whole Madchester thing with Happy Mondays getting remixed by big name deejays like Paul Oakenfold. So the barriers were dissolving somewhat, but the world of the free party rave scene, or the pirate radio world of jungle, these were fairly foreign zones for most MM readers.

[7] 

Todd:

Was this the original title that you sent in? Did they often take the titles that you would offer up for your articles or was that all handled in-house?

Simon:

I don’t think it had a title—that’s just the baldest description, and then that’s my attempt at a dek, or what they call a standfirst, I think, in the UK.

Back then I rarely came up with titles—the editors would usually work up something involving a gruesome pun or witty wordplay involving some famous quote or proverb or saying—or a rock lyric. Much later on, for other publications, I started supplying headlines, often as a hopeful preemptive measure - but the suggestions are not often taken up. The magazine generally has a sort of house style when it comes to headlines. And often publications do have a better idea of what will sell the piece to the casual reader—or these days, what will travel on social media.

[8] 

Todd:

What do you make of the difference between the opening line in the final piece and the opening line in your draft?

“THE VILLAGE of Castlemorton was still reeling as The Maker went to press, following its invasion by thousands of people for the biggest illegal rave ever. But as politicians and protesters carry on arguing about the police's softly-softly approach to the onslaught, the organisers of the rave are promising more to come.”

Simon:

Well, it’s much more like a proper news story. I like it, although it’s nothing like anything I’d ever write myself, certainly at that time. My features in those days tended to start with a bombastic claim or widescreen pronouncement. In this case, I’ve focused in on the shadowy figures of Spiral Tribe—and probably contributed to an overestimation of their role in the whole thing, when in fact a number of sound systems were involved. But Spiral Tribe were eager to push themselves forward as the prime instigators. The other systems shrewdly kept a low profile, but the Spirals talked to the media, had all these snappy slogans, and they rode it all the way through to the big court case brought by the authorities.

I think the news story has a better start—it’s present tense (“still reeling”, “politicians and protesters carry on arguing”) and it also points ahead to the future (rave mayhem to come). My version plunges straight into recent history, the background of Spiral Tribe’s activities and gradual rise. The news editors knew what they were doing. I was probably guilty of burying the lede or some other phrase that I wouldn’t even have known then.

[9] 

Todd:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but Spiral Tribe was by far the best-known sound-system of this period. Why do you think they were so successful?

Simon:

They were good at publicising themselves. They also had a mystique and rebel-romantic aura, stemming from the oracular pronouncements of their leader-not-leader, the guru-like figure Mark, and elaborated upon by other members like Seb (the brother of my friend’s boyfriend, and the person primarily responsible for the Spiral Tribe Records). Spiral Tribe came across as a cult, whereas the other sound systems were just in the business of providing a soundtrack for the dance.  

[10] 

Todd:

Surprised this detail was cut!

Simon:

It’s just a bit crammed with observational detail—fine for a ‘new journalism’ style, in the trenches reported feature but not for a news story. They probably didn’t have that much space either. I think it was a whole page piece, but that’s about 1200 words if you’ve got pics and maybe a small advert at the bottom or down the side. Most of my original piece ended up in the relevant chapter in Energy Flash.

[11] 

Todd:

What was the split between men and women in terms of the sound-systems?

Simon:

Spiral Tribe had a number of female members—including the shaven-headed MC mentioned, whose name I found out later was Simone. But generally the sound system personnel was majority male.

[12]

Todd:

How would you do your reporting at events like this? Did you take a portable recorder? Pen and paper? It seems like they were quite open to talking about what they were doing. Evangelizing, in a sense.

Simon: I didn’t go to the event thinking I would write about it, so it’s all from memory. And then there’s the quotes from the interview done earlier for Details, most of which didn’t end up being used in that piece. On other occasions later on when I went both for enjoyment and with a view to writing about it—like with the Even Furthur rave in Wisconsin in 1996, which I reviewed for Melody Maker but also envisaged as a potential scene for Energy Flash—I would carry around a notepad and a pen. I don’t think I would bring a tape recorder to a rave though as a) it’s a bit bulky and b) the rave would likely be too noisy. So it’s scribbled notes, reconstituted as speech later.

[13] 

Todd:

There’s always been quite a bit of talk about the political potency of dance music. What do you think dance music has achieved politically in its history, looking back?

Simon:

This remains an unresolved thing for me. On the one hand, there can be a tremendous feeling of power in the music, you feel like reality is shaking a bit, “How can the world be unchanged?” Certain jungle records or techno tracks transmit the same kind of abstract militancy that some rock songs, particularly punk but all sorts and from many eras, or certain rap records, or roots reggae songs, transmit. Or it’s like listening to Sly and the Family Stone. “Dance to the Music” is lyrically “inane,” but the sound of it is an insurgency of joy and hope.

Certainly when I got swept up in hardcore rave and followed its evolution into jungle, everything about the culture—not just the music, but the dancing, the rituals, the slang, the social and racial mixing, infrastructural things like pirate radio and the little labels and record shops—it felt like a movement. In the literal sense of acceleration—it seemed to be going somewhere, at full speed.

But what that has translated to in terms of tangible political results, it’s hard to say. You might say that Grime4Corbyn is a kind of descendant of what jungle began—although what I find interesting is how little grime is socially conscious or politicized in its lyrics. It’s more a case of Stormzy, et al. using their star power and standing with youth to exert influence.

With rave likewise, most of it was apolitical—there were no words or just a few words, after all—except in that very broad and vague sense of making a demand for joy and unity. And more than that, actually making that communion and uplift a reality there and then. But it rarely addressed real-world issues. I guess you could say that there’s a basic level of politics to do with the right to popular assembly, in the case of illegal raves held in public spaces. Rave’s politicization, such as it was, came about through attempts to suppress it—police clampdowns, legislation. Castlemorton led to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill, which inspired a protest movement called The Advance Party that held demonstrations in support of the rights of ravers, squatters and travellers. But it was self-defence really. And defending fairly selfish pleasures—spaces in which to dance, take drugs, etc. And to an extent these were then catered for by the rise of the professionalized clubbing industry, the superclubs, etc. At which point the edge that hedonism had, for a moment there, disappeared. There’s a Zizek line that Mark Fisher liked to quote, something like “there is no emancipatory potential in pleasure in itself.” It’s the fight to defend it that is politicizing.

As for explicitly political music…. on a gloomy day, I’ll think of that in general as a form of quasi-politics—a glamorous fun alternative to the actual grim graft of struggle. In music subcultures, you can have these quick and total results—creating micro-utopias and temporary havens from the real world—whereas politics is about incremental struggle, hard-won reforms, agonising small steps forward.

On a less gloomy day, I think of this phrase Fisher used, “indirect action”—the idea that culture is a space in which minds and attitudes get changed, and that is just as crucial, if slower to take effect, than big ‘P’ politics. Consciousness and how people carry themselves and interact—music and the cultures around music can contribute to slow and steady shifts

And then there’s the role of dance music in minority identity, maintaining a sense of community and history. That could be identity based around race and ethnicity, or it could be sexuality and gender. Or class. Dance cultures can be a form of sustenance and continuity, they carve out space in a hostile world. Something that was made beautifully vivid and concrete in the Steve McQueen film Lovers Rock. It’s largely about a kind of reggae that wasn’t overtly political or confrontational, unlike roots reggae. Lovers sounded supersweet, the rhythms are gentle, the songs concern romance and the hope of finding a companion in life—modest demands. But the atmosphere it creates in the dance is a little heaven on earth—for people who need it. So in that sense, as a way of evading Babylon it’s perhaps as effective as any blood-and-fire prophecy.

A phrase I sometimes toy with is “partly political.” That’s a play on the Party Political Broadcast—this thing in the UK where the major political parties get given time on television to make their case. I think of music as “partly political” in the sense of part way to being political—it’s pointing towards things that it can’t, by itself, deliver. But the pointing counts for something. And with dance music there’s a further level of word play, the idea of partying as a kind of politics—partying for your right to fight, etc. But there is a kind of wishful thinking there, maybe. There’s a rather large gap between a party and a political party.