Nice topic, different.
MathematicalxTrickery
How well do "ravers" mesh with mainstream culture in your opinion? Can you usually spot an E-head from a mile away, or do you usually only know by knowing the individual?
Not really, during the week they're bank staff, IT managers, nurses.
MathematicalxTrickery
What caused this culture to start?
I'm too young to properly remember all the details of what happened in the UK in the 80s and 90s but here's what I do:
When acid house kicked off, people started organising secret raves and free parties in warehouses and in the middle of the countryside. Flyers would have a phone number on them which you could only call for details of the location an hour or two before the event was due to start. All these ravers would jump in their cars and drive round the countryside trying to find exactly where the party was.
The newspapers started panicking about this and ecstasy especially. There were stories of young women who's lives were cruelly snatched away due to bad pills (often people who'd drunk too much water or something like that). The result was that the Government changed the law so that police officers could legally direct anyone within a 5 mile radius of a rave site away from the area, as well as making. A party of more than 20 can be counted as an illegal rave and it is an offence to make preparations for attending a rave if the police have told you within the last 24 hours not to. Want to hold a rave now? You'll need an events licence, a drinks licence, a music licence and a dance licence (no joke, a dance licence!).
Initially this pushed parties further into the countryside but eventually they moved into overpriced hot and sweaty clubs where water was £10 a bottle. That, and the arrival of easily available, cheap coke on British shores killed the rave scene.
MathematicalxTrickery
Why does this culture continue to be popular?
Well in that format its not really here. There are clubnights but most of the big players like Gatecrasher and Cream now run cattlemarket clubs that play RnB (except Gatecrasher which mysteriously burnt down, probably in an insurance job). The scene's moved over onto drum n bass and mainly dubstep, the other big strand that came out of it being grime which has nothing to do with raving. There are dubstep clubnights in small venues and big events around new years eve and things like that, the occasional free party in the summer if you know the right people, squat parties all year round. The latter two are the most similar to the old rave ethos: free entry and drugs on every surface.
That's another thing, the drugs over here have changed. I don't really know anyone who takes E anymore, its generally lacking in MDMA and packed out with speed and heroin. Mephedrone's very popular at the moment because its still legal, also popular are ketamine and research chemicals like 2-CB. Methamphetamine use is virtually unheard of.
Whereas before it was a big youth scene it's more underground now, although you can pretty much guarantee that a squat party will end the night with dubstep even if it started out with anarcho punk. To be fair, dubstep is quite popular in some circles. House music, dummies and candy kids however are decidedly not.
There was the nu rave fashion trend a couple of years ago but that was more coked up electro kids wearing neon clothes and trying to be cooler than everyone else. For cooler, read ruder. They are now all wearing suits and floral dresses.
MathematicalxTrickery
What are the pros and cons to mainstream culture from the "rave scene"?
Do you mean like rave culture becoming mainstream?
I'd probably class this in the same way as the punk rebellion. Punk demanded an overthrow of old values and an acceptance of punk values into the mainstream. The problem was that once the values entered the mainstream they were watered down until they were virtually meaningless. That's the snag really. The ethos of the free party was lost with commercialisation of the scene. That's not to say that the ethos has disappeared entirely, it crops up in other scenes and its ideals are carried through in other things.
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