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Posts Tagged ‘D.A.V.E. The Drummer’

Castlemorton: click on the picture for a film

Britain’s most infamous free festival at Castlemorton Common took place eighteen years ago this weekend (May 21st) provoking a massive police crackdown against raves which eventually led to both the Criminal Justice Bill and the emergence of today’s all night club culture in the UK.

Ironically the location was inadvertently chosen by cops who directed 10 Sound systems including Spiral Tribe, Bedlam, Circus Warp, Circus Normal and DiY to the common on May 20 1992, after shutting down the annual Avon Festival.  With weather conditions absolutely perfect for outdoor partying (hot and sunny by day and crisp and pleasant by night) thousands congregated with numbers growing even faster when the BBC opened their TV news bulletins with footage from the event on Friday evening.

An estimated 40,000 revellers attended the event over four glorious days and nights with most being either inner city ravers living for the weekend or ‘new age travellers’, predominantly young alternative young people who’d quit urban squats for life on the road. Though scores of cops prowled outside the festival’s loose perimeter of trucks and tents, virtually non ventured on site, leaving the Common to become a genuine temporary autonomous zone that remained safe and virtually crime free throughout the long weekend.

Spiral Tribe in the area

As Britain’s tabloid ‘yellow’ press demanded ‘something must be done’ to stop free parties, Castlemorton reveller ‘Richard’ defended free parties.

“There is nothing wrong with what we are doing. We are here to have fun in the sun. We chose to live this way and reject the hassles associated with a conventional way of life,” he told the Daily Express.

“Some say we are dirty, but we are environmentally conscious, we make efforts not to dump rubbish. People generally have it in for us because of our lifestyle. I think many envy us because of our freedom,” he surmised.
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Camilo Rocha @ Vegas (click on the picture to download Camilo's latest Tech-o-disco DJ mix)

“The original vision for Discology was about good dance music from any era meaning disco but also funk, soul, old school hip hop, 80s dance, acid house, boogie, vintage electro, classic Detroit. The name Discology has actually more to do with ‘disc’ than ‘disco’.”

Though London and increasingly Paris have gone ‘nouveau disco’ crazy in the last 12 months, Sao Paulo club night Discology first began championing the trend 5 years earlier in underground clubs and minimally converted strip clubs around the city. The brainchild of top local journalists Claudia (Clau) Assef and Camilo Rocha (also one of Brazil’s best known DJs) the club nowadays takes place once a month at Vegas, one of the wildest and best clubs in Sao Paulo nightlife.

“The inspiration came from Clau and I looking at our massive record collections and thinking it was a real waste that they should stay home,” says Camilo, “At the time, 2003, local clubland was still dominated by linear DJ sets, so there was something radical about the notion of playing all these styles together, from many different eras.”

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