It's London Thing: How Rare Groove, Acid House and Jungle Remapped the City by Caspar Melville

Author:Caspar Melville [Melville, Caspar]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781526131256
Google: aVWuwwEACAAJ
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 2020-01-20T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 3

From Ibiza to London: Brixton acid and rave

June 1988. Clink Street

We’ve come late, after a shift at the restaurant, but there’s no rush – it doesn’t get started until midnight. We walk under the railway arches – the train line that crosses the Thames north to Cannon Street is above us – and find a blue door. Unlit, unmarked, except for a couple of blokes standing outside. We push it open and hear the music. At the bottom of the staircase are a makeshift desk and a girl taking the money. We pay our fiver and up we go, into the dank heart of the building. The night is called RIP, which feels appropriate: there is something ominous and dreadful about the building, and the music we can hear from above (later I find out that the building is on the site of a notorious prison, its location, Clink Street, is what has given us the slang term for prison). I’ve been to loads of warehouse parties but I feel apprehensive. I’ve been told that this is something new, possibly dangerous, and I’m going to try a new drug – ecstasy – assuming we can find any. My adventurous Spanish friend is sorting it out; she knows people. We pass the first room, booming bass-heavy funk, and I can see the familiar figure of Soul II Soul’s Jazzie B behind the decks. So far, so familiar. But in the next room it changes. The room is sparse, with a massive sound system, but this time there is a lot of smoke – dry ice? – a strobe, and a seething mass of people moving in strange ways to the sound of machines. There’s a beat, a very insistent thumping beat, no discernible instruments, and no singing, just snatches of words – ‘said rock to the beat’, a sinister distorted voice asking ‘where’s your child?’ and laughing like a robotic Bond villain, as well as snatches of screams, and every now and then someone talking over the mic, exhorting the crowd to get into it. It’s strange and unsettling and I don’t like it. Is this black music? Is it even music?

My friend slips away. I back into a corner and watch. The smoke is unpleasantly heavy, the music oppressively fast. No soul. When she comes back she holds something out to me, a pill. I put it in my mouth and swallow.

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