Netflix tips

[Críoch]

Great synopsis. Dont have to watch it now

[Ben Kohonays]

Great synopsis. Dont have to watch it now

Yeah I guess I gave away most of it there.

still worth watching though.

[Críoch]

Ah, it sounds good man, I was just being smart haha

While I have ya, merry Xmas mate

[Ben Kohonays]

You too!


Incidentally, in the Wiki about Rose Island, there are mentions of other similar situations, including Sealand, a kind of mid sea fortress left over from WWII off the east coast of england. Reading around, it has had an interesting and chequered history itself and has been occupied by the same family for over 50 years, despite attempted oustings. The current 'president' has a book out about it which I am tempted to aquire, it has very good reviews.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand

They also offer (for a small fee) the chance to become a Lord or Lady /Count/Countess, Duke/Duchess etc.

https://sealandgov.org/

[Lost to the Void]

Sealand

I've got a Sealand passport.
We were talking with them at one point when we were trying to get raver officially recognised as a religion.

It's a long story.

[Ben Kohonays]

Sealand

I've got a Sealand passport.
We were talking with them at one point when we were trying to get raver officially recognised as a religion.

It's a long story.

Haha, you should definitely tell it on here sometime.

[Lost to the Void]

Short version, there was a point where there was a campaign for people to put Jedi on the religion section of the national census to try to get it recognised as an official religion, as in 2001 they introduced religious affiliation to the national census.

And we thought what if we got people to put raver.
And it escalated from a joke into a plan.
We were going to take out adverts in dance music magazines.
We had the proposal sorted. Basically if you get a religion officially recognised then you can have places of worship and those places of worship have various regulations (and tax exemptions) and legal protections.
Clubs would become places of worship. The music would be the religious hymns. DJs would be the ordained priests. The tennets of the faith were Peace Love Unity Respect which was a well known term on club flyers at the time....
The religion was to be called The Church of Rave.
We wanted somewhere to be the head church that was outside of UK law. Hence we got in contact with Sealand about setting up the first Church of Rave.

It all eventually started falling apart at the same time that the rave scene started falling apart.
I wanted to get big commercial names involved, and was talking to various names in the uk commercial scene, but the rave collective wanted to keep it underground. And then issues over leadership and all kinds of shit were going on, and I pretty much was getting done with everything rave at the time as my life was falling into utter madness and danger due to the raves, and internal strifes, police attention. We actually had our own nightclub in Waterloo at that point. It was ours, got a contract with railtrack for a railway arch on Brad st just around the back of Waterloo. We spent ages building a stage, a soundproof "snake" corridor for the entrance to minimise sound getting out. Painted and decorated the entire interior of the arch, built a bar, seating......did 3 events of our own, had a load of other events booked in by promoters, had our launch party on NYE and then got fucked by railtrack and one of our partners.... That was to be where the church started.
2001 was a shit year for me, it ruined me.

So it all just went nowhere in the end. I walked away from everything, and when I walked that whole plan died.
Such a shame.
Logistically we could have got the numbers to get the religion officially ratified.
The plan was magazine adverts, huge amounts of canvassing and flyering at clubs. That's why I wanted to get the commercial scene in, to get the numbers to get the general clubbing public involved.

I mean who wouldn't have done it when they were asked?

"Next census, put religion as Church of Rave and it will legitimise dance music as a religion".


It would mean little to no licensing issues (alcohol could be sacrament) no license required for religious ceremonies, much more weight, legally, for the dance music scene as a whole.

There's much more to it in terms of how it would have benefited promoters, funding, grants, all kinds of stuff.

It's a fucking shame that everything was getting so out of control at the time, otherwise I would have pushed ahead, regardless of leaving the rave scene. But it was all so ugly and depressing and just fucking nasty...dangerous at the time that once I decided to walk away I just collapsed inwards for about a year of harsh harsh depression.
I tried to kill myself that year. Was saved by the wind...literally.

And then I started a record label haha.

[Ben Kohonays]

And then I started a record label haha.

Fucking hell man you've certainly had a colourful life. Thanks for taking the time to write that.

I think I remember vaguely hearing about the Jedi as religion thing. Would have been great to have pulled the Raver as religion off. The infighting and disagreements sounds kinda typical, so difficult to organise people and get them to agree.

That whole time around the turn of the millenium was pretty weird, seemed to mark the point where the music stopped being as interesting, commercialisation was dominating, the scene as a whole was contracting. NYE was never going to be the same after the greedy bastards tried to capitalise on the night by charging extortionate fees just for entry, which kind of killed NYE off. Prior to that I had never seen a pub charge for entry - the following year they were all doing it, even just a couple of quid but it killed people's way of going out. You can't do a pub crawl if every one of them is charging to get in, it just makes it unviable.

Then throw mp3's and napster into the mix lol.

[Críoch]

Glad the wind didn't blow the other way Steve

The whole y2k / millennium celebrations were indeed a bit of a smash & grab. The sensible people went to a house party or something organised/ underground. I think ket had a massive destructive influence on things at the start of the 00s. It was a thing on its own for a while.. then it started becoming the main & unadvertised ingredient. Was a buzz killer & somewhat
Of a death knell imo. Went to several nights where everyone was acting like they were trapped inside a magic mirror. Unenjoyable to see. Up to then, going out had been primarily about the music & being social , but it became a fractured challenge for a while.

[Lost to the Void]

NYE 2000 was the greatest party I have ever experienced in my life.
It was utter insanity and debauchery and I am glad we did it and got away with it (the only rave in central London that didn't get busted on NYE2000, so we had EVERYONE turn up to party).
There was a real end of the world vibe, all this energy was reaching some kind of Zenith.
It was a very interesting experience. Insane in fact, that night alone and the week of prep beforehand could make a book or a movie in it's own right.

The post millennial hangover was felt everywhere I think. People expected some change, some revelation, some kind of rapture or whatever.
But it was just a number, and the shit still stank like shit. So yeah the early 00's was a weird time for dance music.


But yeah, ketamine fucked everything.
We got it first, in terms of widespread usage, it was prevalent in the London squat scene from about 94-95-ish.
Some of our....associates were the people bringing it in to the uk.
Trucks of bottles of rose water filled with liquid ketamine from India. They literally drove it in from India.
A 500ml bottle was a few hundred quid back then, and you got a fucking big pile of powder once you evaporated it.
So there was a lot of profit in it.
I remember distinctly one party where a shipment had arrived and it was high grade A Isomer Ketamine.
And seemingly everyone was on it. 85% of the dancefloor was sitting down, rolling around, lying down. Weird energy.
And I turned to my mate and said "when this shit eventually hits clubland, everything is fucked".
And a few years later K was in all the clubs and it sucked the life out of everything.

It's just not a party drug.

I might add (not for legal purposes, just to clear things up) I never got involved in dealing. Our rig was a clean rig, we were old school, no dealers behind the rig, no one in the crew could sell anything or they were out.
That's not to say we were angels by any means.
Not we're we straight...by any means. Everything was free for us, uncut, high grade, sometimes straight from the lab.....
There were many casualties and I'm lucky to have come out of it relatively intact.

Weed and Tequila are my main vices now.

It stunned me how much venues were charging in NYE2000. Tickets were like £50 - £150.

We paid a few team's to scalp outside the various big clubs of London, especially at kicking out time, to let people know about our rave.
People wouldn't believe it was £3 entry.
Free if you genuinely had no money.
Even so, 15,000 people at 3 quid a pop.........

Free party and Three party was generally the policy of United Systems Collective.

[Ben Kohonays]

Ugh, ketamine.

I've never bothered myself, but my experiences with people on it have not been positive. Just turns them into gibbering wrecks that make absolutely no sense whatsoever.

[Lost to the Void]

It`s a dissociative, that person is not there.
Sure find a comfortable spot at home or in the woods, go on a journey to the inner world, go beyond death, break through the membrane.................... but at a party you may as well be nodding off on smack, you are no longer participating.

[Ben Kohonays]

Yeah, exactly. It's a drug for private contemplation rather than for being in public.

[tunez]

I agree that Ketamine is definitely not a party drug.I never understood why anyone would want to take in that setting to begin with.Really doesn't motivate you to dance.However one positive thing about it is that it has some benefit for people with major depressive disorder in clinical setting.Shrooms also showing great promise there as well. It really is a shame that a lot of substances have been blocked from academic research for a long time. A lot of people have beneficial experiences at parties on various substances and it can be positive for their long term mental health.
Raver as a religion would have been cool and still would be cool. Having it as a religion would probably grant some amount of sacramental protection for substance use and would probably make things safer. Peace Love Unity Respect is much more appealing than religions with historical imperialism and just totally unpositive vibes.That was a very cool idea shame that it didn't gain more traction.

[Críoch]

If there was some way to protect it from corruption & violence.. while protecting the naivety of the vulnerable from all kinds of abuse, then yeah, it would have been a good idea.

[Lost to the Void]

If there was some way to protect it from corruption & violence.. while protecting the naivety of the vulnerable from all kinds of abuse, then yeah, it would have been a good idea.

There was never any intent for it to be a cult or a dogmatic religion. There was never intended to be any hierarchy apart from some quality control in terms of who could be "ordained" and quality of venues etc.
So corruption and violence wouldn't be an issue. "Churches" would still have security, health and safety etc.
No idea why vulnerable wouldn't at risk of abuse.
Without all the dressing basically it was a national members only club. To join the church you would need to be vouched for.

I'm not gonna go into the whole shebang, but I still have a lot of the paperwork on the organisational plans and so on.

The idea was a safe environment for clubbing.
Safe from the government, the law and assholes.

[Críoch]

Waaaaa - massive derail.

Ah in fairness Steve.. you wouldn't be able to control every aspect of it Once it was up & running. People would fly away with it. Cult, no.. of course not.. but it would attract all sorts. Where things can sometimes begin & where they eventually end up are usually 2 wildly different places. Unfortunately.

[tunez]

To get back on topic. I enjoyed The Trial of the Chicago Seven. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is supposed to be good as well as Da 5 Bloods. I haven't watched either but will at some point. Uncut gems is solid if you haven't watched it yet. Dolemite is My Name is fantastic. The Flordia Project is pretty good but the director's other film Tangerine is better but sadly may no longer be on Netflix.If you have Prime Amelie I believe just got added and there is never a bad time to watch/rewatch that film. There are a couple other Jean-Pierre Jeunet films on Prime as well and they are pretty good. Another excellent film with Audrey Tautou is on Prime called Priceless. The Prime exclusive Sound of Metal is supposed to be good. The new Christopher Nolan film that came out looks interesting as well. I will probably watch both of those.

[Lost to the Void]

To get back on topic.

Rookie mistake.


Let it go.....

[Lost to the Void]

Waaaaa - massive derail.

Ah in fairness Steve.. you wouldn't be able to control every aspect of it Once it was up & running. People would fly away with it. Cult, no.. of course not.. but it would attract all sorts. Where things can sometimes begin & where they eventually end up are usually 2 wildly different places. Unfortunately.

Well, the whole universe is trundling inexorably to a state of entropy, and there is nothing we can do to stop it.
That`s no reason to not try, it is our actions despite this that make life interesting and give it purpose.