The return of the free dial-a-rave
- Text by Gabriela Helfet
- Photography by Phil Clarke Hill
Raves were born out of necessity, like most of dance culture we know and love today. From their beginnings in New York, Chicago and Detroit, before they swept across the Atlantic to Europe and beyond, these illegal disco parties have served as homophobia-free, racism-free, and sexism-free havens from the mainstream.
Unconventional off-the-grid spaces – rent houses, lofts, factories, abandoned underground stations, patches of grass in the middle of nowhere – became audio sanctuaries. Who you fancied or how you looked or where you came from didn’t mean a goddamn thing.
You didn’t know the line-up. You didn’t know whether your best friend’s ex-boyfriend’s sister’s cousin’s mother’s pet turtle was ‘maybe’ attending. You didn’t even know exactly where the party was. Here’s what you did know: a date, a city – possibly a meeting point near a motorway, if you were lucky – and a telephone number.
This year, Red Bull Music Academy are paying homage to those halcyon days, and throwing a free dial-a-rave in London, Saturday April 11, 10pm – 4am. Lineup and venue tba on the day.
And, on a real, this is 2015 not 1992, which means no flyers. Here’s what you do: Tweet #0800R1NG2RAV3. Check your DMs. Follow the instructions. Go to the address. Turn your phone off. Put your hair up. And get down. Sounds like our kinda party.
For more information on the 2015 RBMA UK/NYC tour and to find what’s happening near you, check out Red Bull Music Academy.
Enjoyed this article? Like Huck on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.
Latest on Huck
Exploring the impact of colonialism on Australia’s Indigenous communities
New exhibition, ‘Under a Southern Star: Identity and Environment in Australian Photography’ interrogates the use of photography as a tool of objectification and subjugation.
Written by: Miss Rosen
My sister disappeared when we were children. Years later, I retraced her footsteps
After a car crash that saw Magnum photographer Lindokuhle Sobekwa hospitalised, his sister ran away from their home in South Africa. His new photobook, I Carry Her Photo With Me, documents his journey in search of her.
Written by: Lindokuhle Sobekwa
Inside New York City’s hedonistic 2000s skateboarding scene
New photobook, ‘Epicly Later’d’ is a lucid survey of the early naughties New York skate scene and its party culture.
Written by: Isaac Muk
Did we create a generation of prudes?
Has the crushing of ‘teen’ entertainment and our failure to represent the full breadth of adolescent experience produced generation Zzz? Emma Garland investigates.
Written by: Emma Garland
How to shoot the world’s most gruelling race
Photographer R. Perry Flowers documented the 2023 edition of the Winter Death Race and talked through the experience in Huck 81.
Written by: Josh Jones
An epic portrait of 20th Century America
‘Al Satterwhite: A Retrospective’ brings together scenes from this storied chapter of American life, when long form reportage was the hallmark of legacy media.
Written by: Miss Rosen