Documentary on the 1989 Summer of Rave and the explosion of acid house music and a new youth culture that arrived with it in the UK.
We first watched this one via the Network Awesome website – a superb online library of obscure but engaging television from the periphery of pop culture. We recommend you keep an eye on them as well as watching this documentary.
Here’s what the Network Awesome website say about the film:
In the final days of the yuppie decade, the summer of ’89 saw a new type of youth rebellion rip through the cultural landscape, with thousands of young people dancing at illegal Acid House parties in fields and aircraft hangars around the M25. Set against the backdrop of ten years of Thatcherism, it was a benign form of revolution, dubbed the Second Summer of Love – all the ravers wanted was the freedom to party… The rave scene, along with the drug Ecstasy, broke down social barriers and even football hooligans were ‘loved up’, solving a problem the government had never managed to crack.
But lurid tabloid headlines and cat-and-mouse games with the police eventually turned the dream sour, as the gangster element moved in at the end of the summer. The pop charts, which at the beginning of the summer had been dominated by Stock Aitken and Waterman stars Jason, Kylie and Sonia, gave way to ‘Madchester’ bands like Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses, who’d been influenced by the burgeoning dance culture. Mrs Thatcher’s grip on power was also weakening, with a radical cabinet reshuffle and her increasingly regal demeanour revealing the cracks that would eventually remove her from office a year later. And in a euphoric, blazing hot summer, the Marchioness disaster was a moment of horror that people would never forget.
Once again, thanks to Network Awesome, for pointing out this entertaining and thorough documentary on the emergence of acid house. Keep up the good work.
For more of this type of thing check out DJ Dribbler’s first hand account of the 1989 Tramway Rave in Glasgow and also this World In Action documentary on acid house.