Knoxville's ravers fight the stigma and wait for something to happen
by Tamar Wilner
A sweaty mist rises off the crowd. Nearly blinded by strobe lights, you can just feel your way into a mass of oblivious souls who, with arms and legs creating blurs of color, spin themselves into a drug-induced haze. No one seems quite of this earth; withdrawn into their own minds, each dancer wheels frantically, a planet unto himself. The DJ drops another record and the crowd seethes and roils, shouting their devotion, now an army united for the mission of dancing till daylight. On the fringes teenagers, some barely out of middle school, swallow pills of innumerable sizes and shades. Somewhere, a girl's heart stops. Even as she's dancing, she crumbles to the floor.
This is not a night in Knoxville.
This may not be a night anywhere. It may only be a construct of the popular imagination, the idea we call to mind when we hear the word "rave." Like the hippie love-ins of the '60s or the Studio 54 coke binges of the '70s, it's a phenomenon whose image has taken on a peculiar life of its own, often proving more resilient than the less romantic and less dangerous reality.
London's Turning
All-night raves began in England around 1988, when fans of electronic music began to gather en masse to hear DJs play and mix records. The "house" musical genre fueled early raves, but in the dozen or so intervening years, innumerable categories and sub-categories have developed: trance, drum-n-bass, breaks, techno, progressive house, hard house, and so on. Today, there's disagreement on exactly what constitutes a rave: it may still take place, as the original raves did, in an abandoned warehouse, park, or some other "underground" venue. Originally—and currently, in some cities—partygoers would learn the venue's locations at a checkpoint, to keep the event secret from the authorities.
In some places, dance parties approximate the Platonic form of "rave" described above. Four years ago at England's Glastonbury Festival, I stood on the edges of the Dance Tent as a nucleus tens of thousands strong did indeed seethe and roil, their waves pressing against Fatboy Slim's turntable throne. A night for the purists it was not—Slim is often derided as pop, a pale imitation of his electronic roots—but there was an ocean of bodies frantically, tirelessly dancing. Ecstasy was as easy to come by as glowsticks.
At Fiction in the Old City last September, a different story. The house is nearly packed for an appearance by trance artist George Acosta. Most people stand around drinking beer. When the DJ starts up his signature track, a couple more people start dancing, self-consciously. No one's lost in their own private universe. Somewhere, someone is probably popping E, but no one's visibly hopped up. No one looks like they'll make it 'til 6 a.m.
Special K, a 27-year-old DJ whose real name is Kevin Wells, bemoans what he calls the "bubble-gum culture" of social clubbing. He's not a fan of Acosta himself; but he does feel frustrated with how little clubbers understand electronica generally.
"I don't think a majority of them really listen to the music," he says. "Nowadays, the music is about 20 percent. Eighty percent is about being social." Even at the late-night Boiler Room, located downstairs from Fiction, "it seems like no one really cares. Everyone's just grinding on each other."
Wells, who's never tried alcohol, cigarettes, or any other drugs, says many partygoers are lured by the promise of Ecstasy, and those who come for artificial stimulation usually prove an albatross around the scene's neck.
DJ Slink a.k.a Heath Shinpaugh, another popular local DJ who says he's never tried drugs, says narcotics are not as prevalent in the electronic music scene as the media would have parents believe.
"I think it's exaggerated to an extent. It happens. I wish it didn't," the tattooed, septum-ringed DJ says, adding that many who are attracted to rave culture for the drugs often end up quitting Ecstasy and staying for the music. He's happy to welcome those reformed individuals into the scene.
"It's easier to convert than it is to recruit," he says.
Talk to attendees at Knoxville's dance parties and club nights, and you're likely to hear Slink's claims corroborated.
"There are a good amount of people who do do drugs, but there are also those who don't," says Jessica Wireman, 21, who admits she did use Ecstasy for six months when she started raving. But she says the scene is not about drugs. "I just had a baby, and I would let my kid go [when the child is older]," she says.
Cassie Henderson, a petite 27-year-old who spins as DJ IKO, agrees. "You can enjoy the music so much more without that stuff," she says.
Back in the Day
According to Shinpaugh, promoter Scott Wilkerson threw Knoxville's first rave in 1991. It was called, appropriate enough, "Rave." Seven or eight Raves were held in those early days, bringing big names like Moby, DJ DAN, and Dieselboy to town. More fuel was added to the rave scene's flames by the Underground, a club run from 1990 to 2001 by Lord Lindsey's Harold McKinney in the building now occupied by Fiction.
"If it wasn't for the Underground, none of this would have happened," Slink says.
And in those days, there wasn't just the Underground; there really was an underground—parties held in unusual locations to break up the monotony of clubbing. About five or six years ago, an underground party was held by a Knoxville DJ named Oracle at the National Guard Armory on Sutherland Avenue. Police made drug arrests and the party ended early, scaring many out-of-town ravers away from Knoxville. The events at the Armory buried Knoxville's underground scene, Wells says.
But the prize for East Tennessee's most legendary dance party must go to the Rave in a Cave. There were actually four raves in caves, all held in Indian Cave, in Blaine, Grainger County.
"That was the greatest," Shinpaugh says. "They had about 3,000 people. You should have been there." He played the third and fourth raves, where the "vibe and atmosphere were great."
It's the fourth rave that caught the public imagination, and subsequently, the attention of police and the media. In November 2000, residents angry at the prospect of possible drug use in their backyards cut down trees and used them to block the road to the cave. A church group maintained a vigil in protest of the rave. Wells says some protesters directed ravers down the wrong road to get them lost; others waved shotguns menacingly, and someone called the party organizers with a threat to blow up the cave.
Police set up a blockade and checked partygoers for drugs. "They were searching every single car that went through there," Wells says. Twenty-two were arrested for drug possession.
"It was a very ugly situation," Shinpaugh says. The protesters "did not understand what [the rave] was for."
"People drove eight to 10 hours to get to this event, and they were stopped by a bunch of crazy Baptists cutting down trees," says Knoxville promoter Nate Irwin. "People are scared of what they don't know and probably all these [locals] heard is people go to raves to have sex and do drugs."
Wells calls the cave parties the "last time there was really a rave atmosphere" in Knoxville. But Irwin says his first event, about two years ago, managed to briefly bring back that vibe. The party was held illegally in a warehouse, near Broadway and Gill.
"It was the really only underground party that had been done in Knoxville in some time," Irwin says. He says clubs have their drawbacks ("A lot of people don't like going out and getting hit on by drunk guys all night"), and Knoxville doesn't boast any legal locations that could create that "underground" feel. With increasing public awareness of and hostility towards raves, promoters take on more and more liability should something go wrong at their event. A 1986 federal law designed to combat crack houses allows property owners to face fines or prison time if they knowingly allow drug use on their property; a group of New Orleans club managers who were prosecuted under this law in 2001 entered a guilty plea and paid a $100,000 fine. Proposed Senate legislation called the Reducing Americans' Vulnerability to Ecstasy (RAVE) Act would allow prosecutors to apply the crack-house law to promoters, not just club owners.
Spinning On
Since the warehouse party, Irwin has held events at the Electric Ballroom, Lord Lindsey, a skating rink and an athletic center in West Knoxville; he's also helped with two parties at Fiction. Attendance varies from 250 to 1,200 people. Irwin has hired police officers to watch for drugs and keep out underage ravers.
"I'd rather no one do drugs at my events. If I had a way of stopping it 100 percent, I would. But there's no way of stopping it completely," Irwin says.
Some local lovers of electronic music, looking for an alternative to established clubs, host anywhere from 10 to 200 people at house parties. Wells says house parties happen in Knoxville every two or three weeks. Other ravers prefer to drive to cities, like Asheville and Atlanta, that boast bigger scenes than Knoxville's.
David White of Lava Productions says he's brought big names to the Electric Ballroom—including DJ Irene, Keoki, and Danny the Wildchild—but attendance wasn't as high as it should have been.
"Everyone tells me if I lived in a different city, every single one of my parties would be huge," White says, adding that what most clubs in Knoxville play isn't really electronic music. "If you go to Fiction, Banana Joe's or something, you're going to hear 'Genie in a Bottle'-type techno," he says.
Wells echoes White's sentiments.
"[Local kids] don't even understand the real underground music.... I don't think they're really educated. The best DJ in the world could come out and 50 kids will come out to see him," Wells says. He says to keep club-hoppers happy, even a talented DJ like Slink must spin mostly pop remixes, what Wells calls "training wheel music."
Wells says local DJ Satoshi, "one of the best DJs in the country," also doesn't get the following he deserves.
"If he lived in New York City, he'd probably be playing all over the world right now," Wells says.
It's 2 a.m. on a Tuesday, shortly before Christmas, and Satoshi is spinning his wares for an audience of eight, maybe 10. University students have either gone home for the semester, or still struggle with final exams; nearly all the people at the Electric Ballroom tonight are DJs themselves. The mid and treble seem aimed straight for one's ears, but the bass volume remains frustratingly low; no rhythms pound through one's body here.
Wells takes over the turntables and the vacuous Ballroom fills with his distinctive brand of jazzy house. His hands move quickly from knob to knob, altering the records' blend. Horns bleat as a stream of blue light swivels and slides across the dance floor. No feet get in its way.
January 2, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 1
© 2003 Metro Pulse
| 
