Shallow Rave

You may have seen this article by Sarah Champion in last Sunday's Observer about the alleged rave revival. This is has nothing in common with the NME's 'neo rave' nonsense (a bandwagon lacking both a driver and wheels - feel free to parse that metaphor as you wish) except that both are basically empty journalistic concoctions. There's no evidence that raves ever went away - they just got smaller and more discreet. Actually, having only been to the odd little squat- and forest-clearing-based rave, I'm no expert, but all of the commenters beneath this post on the Observer blog seem to agree. They also confirm, depressingly, that raves have moved from hardcore and MDMA to psytrance and ketamine - not what I'd call progress. The most notable comment is by 'Tomtea' who says:

..this weekend numerous raves were shut down, often violently and with no section 63 excetera issued. The police had been issued with a zero tolerance command from the powers that be.

The reason? The guardian published an article a month or so ago claiming that multi-rigger so called 'megaraves' were planned across the country on a massive scale. Thhis weekend was just like any other, multiple small parties aceross the country...only this time the guardian whipped up a dreadful rumour that led to many casualties at essex and the army called in at wales. This is a direct result of the guardians 'megarave' claim.