UPDATE 30/09/09: Thanks to an old friend’s generosity we now have this flyer:
Rumours from a source very close to Spiral Tribe at the time indicated that this never happened due to one of them doing a runner with the money and spending it on crack. So much for the ‘positive energy matrix’! The flyer below is for the free event that happened in its place:
From Atomic Robot Man’s rave diary:
Was anyone else there? Anything to add?
Why the hell am I writing about a pay rave ??? Well, it’s because, although I had a great time for some of the time (i.e. when we were in the DiY tent), this party had none of the atmosphere that makes free parties great, and I wanted to try and explain why.
The only time I ever went to a DiY do it wasn’t a free party, it was this Universe event where they ran a tent. It was quite a night, I remember dancing on the stage for a while, but I got so involved with the whole music/dancing/smiling thing that I hadn’t realised I was jogging the decks. Sorry! There were great psychedelic projections on the roof and wall of the tent, and the deep deep house music really drew me in for the first time, it made techno seem a bit grey and humourless, this was REAL FUN. Another good point for us was when we sat down by the edge of the DiY tent for a breather, and someone (er, girls, hopefully…) started massaging us through the tent. We never saw their faces but it was rather nice.
The other tents were less interesting. The second one, the house tent, which was empty, seemed to be playing remixes of Nirvana every time we went in.
Another tent had a row of people in chairs using ‘dream machine’ goggles. As we were passing, one of the guys using the goggles had a massive epileptic fit, pretty worrying.
The main tent was enormous, and condensed sweat was raining from the roof 
. There was a noticable lack of girls, and all the way to the back of the tent you could see legions of skinhead/tops off/gurning/bugeyed/macho/E-gannet blokes. I remember being a bit shocked at the sheer scale of it, why would people NEED to rave in such huge numbers? I just didn’t get it.
This party was my first pay rave and I really noticed the difference between this kind if party and a proper (free) one. A lot of the people there were unfriendly to say the least, unless of course they wanted to tell you how many E’s they’d had (usually more than three, for the record). Stingy too, a friend and I wandered round when it was getting light looking for Rizlas, but if anyone had any they certainly weren’t giving them to us. Tightwads :/ Of course there were stalls selling skins at loopy prices but sod that. And of course Rizlas were probably on the long list of things which got confiscated at the gate.
We also noticed (as I’ve already mentioned) that everyone was going well overboard with their intake. My raving buddy saw a guy’s eyes turning red due to overdoing poppers.
[Update: My raving companion that night remembers things a little differently: " Nobody's eyes turned red, that was black, I saw that. Two E'd up crew cut northerners had a bottle of poppers clamped to each nostril and were huffing vigorously until their eyes turned black. But could have been an active imagination, a lot of these things are I guess.
Also remember someone eating speed at the chill out area and then throwing up everywhere, near us as well. We moved on.
Apart from that I remember going on one of those horrible rides, it was half fairground really."]
I also saw someone freebasing (which I’d never seen before). There was a weird vibe at this party and the other two or three big pay raves I went to- it was as if everyone had been locked into a fenced compound and told to neck as many pills etc as possible before the party ended. With free parties and free festivals there was a more relaxed atmosphere i.e. ‘Let’s go and chill in the car/van/tent for a while, then we can come back and fucking have it 
‘
Another downer was the fact that there were clearly gangs out hassling and hustling and generally being rude boys which contributed to the feeling of being a bit on edge.
The way the party ended was pretty top though. I can’t remember the details but it went something like this: in the main tent, maybe half an hour before the party was due to end, the music suddenly stopped, and the stage, which I was right in front of, suddenly swarmed with policemen. One of them grabbed a mic and started explaining (to a loud chorus of ‘booooo’) that the party was going to finish early. The crowd’s mood became even more menacing but suddenly the cop with the microphone turned round and told us that actually the party could go on for an extra half hour. The music started up again and the cops tore their hats off and started going for it like the rest of us. They’d been actors all along. Everyone went mental (in a good way this time).
Universe had a good reputation as organisers back then, and a lot of the things I’m complaining about weren’t really their fault. Fair play to Universe for booking DiY to play at this, I had a wonderful time for some of the time at this party, and also at some of the Tribal Gatherings and Big Love, but for me personally nothing was ever going to top a really wicked free party
freepartypeople says:
Flyer from my collection above. Here’s yet another report from Amino Clang, who’s now overtaken yours truly in terms of the amount of memories he’s contributed to the site Thanks again old friend. And for anyone else who’s got anything to contribute, please feel free, I’ll publish pretty much everything you write (as long as it’s about free parties from 91-94 in the UK)…
Not long after the New Year’s party in Uxbridge, there was another party in the same area billed as “Spiral Tribe’s last party in the UK”. It was to happen on Easter weekend and it was going to be a killer party.It was – this party had a profound effect on my being, my psyche, my understanding of raves and of Spiral Tribe. Allow me to elaborate…
When we found this party it was fuckin’ massive (I think there were three big rooms with three big sound systems, lots of freaky projections, lights, backdrops etc and shit-loads of ravers. The main room had two HUGE pyramids of speakers covered up with camo netting and banging it out at full tilt from the minute we got there until the minute we left (and then some).
This party was particularly interesting for me because I had two groups of raver mates – one group from Dorset (where my Dad lives) and another group from Wales (where I grew up and lived with my Mum) – but there were members of both groups of friends at this party. One of my mates from Wales gave me some free acid (always the best kind!) and as I was starting to come up a group of my mates from Dorset bumped into me (quite literally because of the “Super-K” they had all just done). One of them was lying on the floor in a bit of a pickle and because I was the only one who was not Ketamized, he was left with me. I got him to lie down a bit more comfortably and put his head on my lap and in an attempt to keep him calm I gave him a gentle head massage.
After a while I started to get a bit worried, but I was happy that he was still breathing so I asked somebody if they knew how long Ketamine lasts. They didn’t, so I went back to my mate lying on the floor. After another minute or so he woke up and asked where he was and what was going on so I tried to explain but by now I was starting trip a bit harder so I think I just said something really useful like “Spirals innit! You’re in a warehouse, a party, just look – it’s wicked innit!”.
Luckily I saw one of my friends from Wales who knew a little bit about K and he just got my spannered mate to stand up and walk out of the warehouse. After a few more minutes he properly came round and said that he had a full-on re-birth experience, took some more drugs and bounced off back into the party with a big fat smile on his face.
That’s when things start to get a bit hazy so let me bullet point some key points from the morning…
1. I remember doing some juggling, but becoming totally distracted by another guy who was doing some amazing juggling (I was also a pretty good juggler and I was well impressed by his mad skills).
2. I remember walking into the main room and feeling something tugging at my trousers – it was a stranger who recognised me from the NYE Party in Uxbridge only a few months earlier. I sat with him for a minute as we exchanged disjointed bullshit about “Spirals in Uxbridge again eh! Two great parties in a row, still fuckin’ avinnit” etc.
3. I remember sitting at the back of the main room quite late in the morning watching the basslines wash over the room and crash up against me as Spiral Tribe Sound System started a live set. At least I think this is what was happening – I remember seeing them set up loads of keyboards and drum machines and asking another mate (the one who gave me the acid, who later went off around Europe with the Spirals and took his brother with him) what they were up to but he was no wiser than me. It all looked very serious though.
freepartypeople says:
Another flyer from my collection. The one below (front and back) is a postcard, rather sturdier than the floppy photocopies I’d picked up for Spiral raves before. That’s because they now had a record deal with Big Life and were due to launch the Sirius 23 EP three days after this party. Apparently the money from the deal was invested wisely (for at least one event it was spent on renting a ’sacrificial’ soundsystem).
4. I remember sitting at the back of the room watching the party go on, watching the people fall over, feeling the bass and I got to thinking (just like most Spiral Tribers have at some point I’m sure) that there must be more to these events. It could be political, it could be religious. They could be some sort of cult or some sort of terrorists. It was a bit worrying really but I will come back to this a little later (at the first party in Nantyr Picnic Area), but for now I think it is enough to say that I became convinced that there was something significant happening here and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
5. I remember sitting in a car later again in the morning and watching a group of coppers turn up (I decided to sit a bit further down in the car). I saw the gates to the warehouse being closed and I saw a crusty hippy type with more dreds than brain cells left (not meant to be an insult, just an observation) being dragged off by the coppers and I remember feeling so sorry for that poor bloke. He looked like he was having a lovely time until those fucks dragged him off to (no doubt) take a beating and spend his comedown in a cell in police custody.
Eventually the friends who I came with (the K-hole surfer from Dorset) said they were ready to leave and the driver was straight enough to drive. I was not convinced (I certainly wasn’t straight enough!), but he seemed quite determined and so off we went.
This was the first time I realised that my friends from Wales actually already knew some of my friends from Dorset and that they had met up totally independently of me, but totally dependent on Spiral Tribe (the network grows stronger). In fact the links run much deeper, but I won’t get into that here.
Epilogue: Nantyr Picnic area spring ‘93
I have put this party alongside the Spiral parties in Uxbridge because they really blend into each other in my mind.
Nantyr Picnic Area is a beautiful spot where we used to put on parties up in the hills of North Wales and it will always have a special place in my heart because of this party (and lots of others). This was the first party that I went to that had been organised by my friends and I probably knew everybody there. In fact, it was the first party that I took my Mum to, there were lots of the same people who were at the last Spiral party in Uxbridge and although I’m not going to go into all the details of this party here believe me when I say that it was a significant turning point for me.
During the proceedings I had an epiphany moment. While at the last Spiral Party in Uxbridge I was starting to become convinced that there was something more to these parties, at this party I came to the firm conclusion that actually, people just love to meet up with their friends, get fucked and have a dance. People have done it for thousands of years and they will always have a need to do it. It doesn’t need to be a political statement (but it has been), it doesn’t need to be a religious experience (but it has been), it doesn’t even need to be anything else or anything more special than just a party with people getting wasted and dancing with their friends under the stars. What could be more natural than that?
Wales again- another marathon drive. Waiting around with a massive crowd of other ravers at a service station as people took it in
turns calling the info line on one payphone. Must have looked quite a sight.. Eventually found out where it was and set off. It must have been an overnight journey as I remember it being light when we got there. We saw a police roadblock ahead. There was gravel piled across the road. I remember some kind of pantomime with the cops where they couldn’t explicitly tell us not to go down the other road. So we went down the other road and found the party
We parked up outside the fence. I think that’s when my mate took this picture:
We were quite high up, right on top of a hill, and the site was quite small and muddy compared to Lechlade, the only other festival I’d been to at this stage. There were a couple of rigs there, though apparently there had been some confiscations which dampened the mood a bit. Luckily the people who took us to the party had brought a tent. A bit of lifesaver on this occasion, we spent a lot of time there.
Somewhere on this newspaper clipping taken from the front page of the local paper is our tent and the white Fiesta ravemobile
A friend of ours had walked from his hometown, and somehow managed to find us when he arrived on site. He said that he’d thought the party was ‘just over the hill’ but it turned out to be a longer expedition than he’d expected.
Once we were all ready we swallowed some huge browny grey biscuits. They were about the size of one of those big vitamin C tablets, and they supposedly contained mescaline. I know, it sounds like sales patter, but there was definitely something special in them. Things get a bit blurry for the next few hours.
One of our friends, who was quite tall, as it goes, was scared silly because a group of 3 or 4 even taller blokes appeared out of nowhere and proceeded to dance under the low canopy suspended over the sound system, their heads bobbing up and down and making random lumps and bumps in the makeshift tent. Although this isn’t scary in itself, add a liberal helping of bass-heavy gabba with samples such as ‘there is no planet earth, there is no planet earth’ and you have a severely frightened raver who is convinced that the aliens have come.
UPDATE 08/03/09: It was this track:
Shout outs to wheezer for id’ing it
At some stage the ground turned into bouncy muddy techno foam rubber.
I saw hidden codes written in the barcode on a Ribena packet.
There were, I think, 2 rigs but I think we were only hanging about at the Spiral affiliated one. I don’t even know if it was their own rig but I remember it was little.
Thinking about the music at that party, there were two things, or rather people- that really stood out, MC Scallywag and DJ Aztek. Aztek was playing a style I’d never heard before. Still not sure what it was (any ideas?) but it was hard and fast and gabberish. Scallywag on the other hand was just making up daft rhymes about ravers not leaving their turds all over the place (good point).
At some stage day turned to night and back to day and we were back in our tent drifting in and out of consciousness. The whole cycle started again on the Monday morning.
We bumped into someone we knew from Dorset who had enlisted in the brew crew. I had a half lucid conversation with him and then when I saw him in town a few weeks later he denied he had even been at the festival.
Halfway through the festival we wandered to the gate. There were a few journalists and cameramen hanging about and being berated by some angry travellers. When we finally reached home we made some tea, sat down, and turned the TV on. The party we had just been to was on the news. Not only that but we could be seen ambling around in the background. This festival was mentioned in the media because the DHSS had actually showed up to the festival to allow people to sign on on site. And at that time I expect there was a Daily Mail/Express/some politician expressing ‘outrage’ about mediaeval brigands &c &c
On the Tuesday (???? my memory’s not infallible you know!), the music was still going and there was a police helicopter circling. Some cop was blathering away over a megaphone, some nonsense about leaving the site, er, which we did.
Not long after we left the site we saw a police checkpoint up ahead. The driver decided that maybe we had to stop (maybe he had a guilty conscience!), but we urged him to drive on.
On the way back we stopped a couple of times for food- the first time was a little old ladies’ tearoom where we felt completely out of place after spending a weekend in another dimension. The second place was one of those fucking abysmal overpriced motorway service stations. We made the most of it though. Again we felt a little out of place. The most wrecked of us all spent some time transfixed by the weird spiral shaped Cumberland sausage on his plate.
I could post a well embarrassing pic of 2 of my fellow passengers, heads right back, gobs wide open, dead to the world leaning against each other all e-sleepy in the back of the car but A) I can’t find it, and B) it would only be amusing to about 10 people 
UPDATE: Amino Clang, who walked from his hometown and spent the weekend raving with us, just sent me this account, THANKS LOADS!
This weekend all starts on the Saturday night when my Mum had decided that she would like to come along to a rave to see what all the fuss was about. Unfortunately, our dog had “done a runner” and he didn’t get home until quite late so it was decided that we would not go to the rave tonight. I was supposed to be meeting up with some friends of mine who were going to give me a lift down to visit my Dad in Dorset and there was going to be a big bunch of my mates from Wales going too so I was not impressed with this decision but I was promised that we would go down there the next day instead. I didn’t sleep well that night. I just couldn’t wait to get there and meet up with my mates and get munted in front of a spirally sound system.
Sunday morning came and we all piled into the car to drive off to the festi. It was supposed to be in Kerry in South Wales and we lived in North Wales so we made an early start. Kerry was awash with coppers and the road up to the site was blocked. Not even my mum could persuade them to let us through, but when I explained that I had to “get up there to get a lift home” the copper in question said “I can’t just let you go through here, but if you walk around that way you might find another way though.”
I put my big backpack on my back, I had another bag in one hand (full of juggling equipment and water probably!) and I had another big bottle of water in my other hand. I said my goodbyes and off I went, on my own into the unknown!
An hour or so later I found myself on top a welsh mountain asking a group of dog-walking locals where the rave was because I needed to get there to catch my lift home. They pointed to the top of the hill on the other side of the valley and there, running across the horizon I caught my first glimpse of Happy Daze Free Festival, Kerry. With a new spring in my step I started the long walk down into the valley, through the woods and up the other side.
I-don’t-know-how-many-hours later I finally made it onto the site. Yeeeee Haw! My shoulders were killing me from carrying all my stuff, I had narrowly avoided a confrontation with a local farmer and his angry looking son, I was so fucked that a night of raving was the last thing I needed, but I had made it! Now I had to find my friends.
I did a couple of rounds of the site looking for somebody I recognised. I later discovered that all of my mates from Wales had gone home already and I guess everybody else was asleep following a hard night on the turf. Eventually I saw a car that I thought I recognised so I went closer to investigate. I was looking in the windows of the car to see if I recognised any of the stuff in it when this crusty came over. I am still not sure if he was serious or if he was checking me out but he was saying “Yea, go on mate, just smash the window and grab what you want. We could take it for a spin if you like…” etc. He wierded me out enough to walk away from the car and I was about to give up when one of my friends poked his head out of the tent next to the car and called me back. He said that he thought he had recognised my voice, but wasn’t sure. Yipeeeee! I had made it to the rave AND found my lift home – Happy Days!
Later that night our other friend (the driver) found us all some “Disco Biscuits” (they looked like somebody had drizzled chemicals into small biscuit shapes about the size of a penny and we were told that they were MDMA and mescalin, later experiments have lead me to believe that it was probably MDA – allow me to elaborate…) so we all dropped them together in the tent – the driver, his missus, two other close friends and me…
The next thing I remember is coming up like a demon had just jumped on my head and was beating my brain into submission. It was all I could do to clamp my jaw down on my wallet and scream my little head off! I was in the tent with just one of my friends (I guess the other three had gone for a stomp) and we were both beside ourselves with rushes.
A short while later the others came back into the tent (they had assumed we would be in a bit of a pickle if their state was anything to go by) and asked if we were OK – what with all the screaming and shouting and all that! We started to come round, but I asked the driver’s missus for a hug because I was so far gone (nothing funny like, just a friendly hug from a friend, please), and y’know what, it made things a bit easier. I strongly recommended my mate do the same so we all had hugs in the tent and then walked over to the Spiral Tribe Sound System for some dancing.
Dancing! Ha! Don’t make me laugh, I could barely stand up straight, never mind dance. Squishy field, wonky pills, gnarly techno, happy people. I think I went up and gave a dealer a hug at one point because she was doing such a service to society by spreading so much happiness (a view I still firmly believe – I mean, can you imagine a world where dealers didn’t provide some much needed escapism from the mundane modern world of working to pay the bills?). I also remember getting into quite a discussion with somebody who had lost their mate “Billy” and was asking if I had seen any of him – I just didn’t get it!
Later the next morning I was still awake with some other friends who I had met up with and I think we were talking with some Tribers because one of them was saying how the spiral is the best shape for a festi. “If all the vehicles,” he was saying “would park up in a big spiral with the rave in the centre, the police would never get in. You just park the last one in front of the entrance and leave them there – what could they do?”. He was not impressed with my suggestion that “It would be horrible if you were the first one here, but you had work on Monday morning though wouldn’t it?”
Well, later that day we had to start the long drive back to Dorset so we did another round of the site (stopping at the entrance, where there was now huge water containers) to fill up some bottles for the journey, and off we went.
A relatively uneventful drive home later and we were back home again (in my Dad’s place in Dorset) regaling my Dad with tales of the rave with the telly on in the background… when suddenly somebody shouted “OHMYGOD! It’s us on the news!”
We all turned to see the TV and there we were – leaning against the fence by the entrance to the festi, looking distinctly worse for wares, but right there on the national news! Funny how these things happen like that innit!
Ah, Happy Daze!
