Ecstasy

When the great synoptic annals of Britain come to be written, 1989 will go down as the Summer of House.  And when the history of Acid House is pieced together, England, and London especially, will emerge as the key location.

House may have originated in Chicago, but its most characteristic and exciting manifestation has been driven - literally - by the infrastructure of London's orbital motorway, the M25.  Police resistance to the burgeoning House scene meant that venues were never announced in advance.  Instead, a curious Acid House party-game of hide and seek evolved, with a nightly ritual of clues leading to more clues before the final destination was revealed; to work, this demanded a road system that could take anyone within 50 miles of London anywhere else within the same radius in a few hours.  Such flexibility meant a huge catchment area, which in turn meant potentially huge parties - twenty, thirty thousand and up.  And it was this critical mass of numbers that gave rise to House in its mature and perhaps quintessential phase.

Ultimately it was the extraordinary success of this system that brought it down.  The police and the government were frightened at the thought of gatherings this large; there were uncontrollable, outside the law.  Not that law-breaking was a real issue; to begin with, at least, House parties were models of rule-abiding order. No alcohol was on sale, and nobody looking for trouble would bother following the long and Byzantine road to an Acid House party to get it when the local pub was closer and much more convenient.  But for the powers that be, a principle was at stake: that everything and everyone should be within the domain of the law.

The pretext for this old fart churlishness was drugs.  Doubtless incensed by the provocative name 'Acid House' itself, the police claimed that drug- taking was rife, and that minors were being corrupted - the standard anti-Socratic argument beloved of repressive governments.  In fact the main drug being taken - and that only towards the end - was Ecstasy.  Its principle effects were heightened energy and a general feeling of well- being and warmth towards your fellow humans.  Mild, then, in comparison to those most anti-social of drugs, tobacco and alcohol, which grown-ups in their hypocritical wisdom have deemed legal and acceptable. 

As usual, the police, the government and worried parents missed the point.  House parties were not about drugs; they were not even the meat markets that conventional discos have sunk to, that display of tawdry finery and crude pairing-off.  They were about precisely what Ecstasy promoted, but was not necessary for; that profound sense of ease, of being among good and dear friends - thirty thousand of them, of all ages, colours, sexual orientations, classes.  And the music was the glue of this great pulsing pacific unity; in its relentless beat, its enormously amplified volumes and its near-wordless bass-heavy textures, this was music for the right- brain, the intuitive side, music for the body to get into, music so loud and so low that it got into the body until bodies and beat were one and outside all other categories.  In its total being and belonging it offered to the young and alienated more a sense of a deep, global home than Deep House; and ecstasy indeed.

(19.11.89)

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