Lone Raver’s 1st Time at Dougal Fry’s Unforgettable Event
It was between semesters at college, before my time as a “technologist” at a startup focused on organ preservation where supposedly my boss’s father’s head rested at the bottom of our deep freezer. I crossed paths with Ravena and Shaggy, one night. Word had reached us about F.A.M.I.L.Y.
An event not to be missed, so we connected on the internet. It wasn’t a swinger’s party, I would hear about unicorns for about 15 more years, and it never crossed my mind whether they’d be inviting me back up at the end of the night. It was about the dance.
It was yet the early Newsnet days of the internet; “socal-raves” provided the nexus for our connecting. This was the early, early days of the net, pre-web mostly — no dotcom busts yet — when most everyone was friendly and instant community that I met online, because mostly social-internet-curious, tech-inclined people wanted to fulfill the promise of technology for society! Before the greed came to tech and out of the woodwork with little notice for us babes lost in the woods. We hadn’t yet realized we had social anxiety, men and women, younger nearly-20somethings and even some “older” people in their late 20s and 30s – and even older — every race. It tbh felt diverse. Maybe we hadn’t felt the burdens of the world to have social anxiety as bad as people could have it, either. Or maybe we were inoculating ourselves against social anxiety with these rituals, these methods, aye these substances.
We agreed I would collect them from their dorm at UCLA, navigating from beyond the eastern-most corners of LA county through the labyrinth of the 10 to 405, exit to Westwood, up and around dark, sparsely street light-illuminated Sunset Blvd through some fancy part of LA I wasn’t yet familiar with, in the late 90s — being only 20-ish and from the other side of the mountains.
It was the era of my first cell phone, dialing on a Motorola as LA Cellular was about to be nabbed by AT&T, that I dialed to have them meet me. So convenient.
It’s the end of 1997; it’s autumn in Los Angeles.
That evening, the destination was not marked on any map. We were headed to “The Sound Stage,” not only a euphemism for a nondescript warehouse transformed into a black box theater of a party haven. Vehicles cluttered the vicinity, with revelers claiming every inch of legal parking—and some spots less so—just off Santa Monica Blvd in Hollywood. Where people once parked eventually became a lot filled with white box trucks infamous as film and tv production assets.
In the queue, the three of us exchanged pleasantries and shared tales of recent parties past while waiting to enter the F.A.M.I.L.Y. event, an acronym that stood for “Friends and Music, I Love You”—a tongue-in-cheek nod, I thought, to the unspoken ‘and Drugs’ that completed the sentiment. As one entered, you could hear the common refrain from an intrepid young entrepreneur, likely putting himself through a training program – offers to buy “X” or “L” from the vagabond vendor, “usually the guy with the backpack,” one of us observed, but I preferred to know the particulars of what I consumed.
And I had been lucky enough. To account all of my drug history to that point: B. who was in the accelerated MD program where I visited her in Madison, WI, August, 1995, gave me LSD — well, the shaven-skull dude who looked like he might have been a dead ringer for one of the guys in House of Pain, took my hand, put a drop on my hand, and he told me to lick, so I licked. Then, there was the 1st college psychonaut crew and I — we acquired shrooms from our college acquaintance who likely acquired it from the college psychedelics dealer — the person who is still a DJ and leader of a dance collective, she connected me with my first “X” dealer – for ecstasy, what a name, even today – that sometimes grade-school teachers also still throws events; they’re still relevant, no doubt.
My approach to these events leaned scientific, I was a junior chemistry major, after all, and I took these things extremely seriously: control some variables, let others run a bit more free. But there was always care and restraint in what I did.
So that night I didn’t do any drugs, not even cannabis. I had done pressed ecstasy tablets, LSD a handful of times, and shrooms enough to be taking a pause with them. That was all since the first time I had tasted what was mostly MDMA on NYE going into 1996 — nearly a year and quite a lot of learning. That night, I was explicitly there to soak up the vibe and finally make it to one of these famed F.A.M.I.L.Y. events “not to be missed.” And many of us had full FOMO, and we were not going to miss out. Full stop.
Being fall 1997, I had returned from a summer in London, having soaked up the vibes there, and “full stop” is something I picked up there. Weeknight events with legends spinning till 4am, walking home across London as the sun came up, and Sunday Sessions at the Bluenote, though it wasn’t the same even a few years later, I heard. Stories for another day.
As we entered the actual building and almost immediately went our own ways until the end of the event, the Sound Stage boasted a truly imposing wall of bass bins.
A line of speakers, several layer cakes stacked up: subs, lows, mids, highs. It was full spectrum, even as the whole of the warehouse was mostly dark, only punctuated by a sea of people mingling even though how could they hear each other (?), moving as current of organisms responding to the call of, and to, the beat, the beat, the beat, the beat. As the speakers lined one side of the dance floor, which would have been quite a big space if it were empty, we focused energy and created a dance vortex, simulating a lively experiment with humans navigating a sea of sound and sensation, powered by little capsules that could make you feel…not invincible, but superconnected to self and…the universe, and we were doing it together! Strangers but not really since we shared this city, and now this warehouse.
Reflecting in 2024, it is remarkable, even today in March 2024, to think I had ever feared people, then I didn’t for more than a decade, and then came to have such twisted dynamics with people in the years of unraveling subsequent cPTSD that fear isn’t quite what I was feeling, but something that felt a lot like something worse than typical fear – that never really ceased for more than 7 years. The shadow of dark clouds smothered me there, and I knew that I wasn’t myself, but I couldn’t fix that either.
Those were the years I felt I had lost my spiritual family, I almost lost my blood family, as I figured out life without psychedelics, started seeing I had been caught up in cult-like behavior, and ultimately put enough together to rejoin “the land of the living.” And there were tragedies and people did get hurt, before and after my “ground zero” in 2009.
Looking back, perhaps during that time, I didn’t learn to fear people enough. I loved being around people, but that wasn’t developing me socially, I can see, now. Not grieving seemed like a feature, though it now looks like a bug.
Implicitly trusting is how I had always wanted to be. I had so much fear and doubt about people. So much not to trust in the late 90s (“Same as it ever was” – Talking Heads, led by a trust-fund kid of all things, the bittersweet irony – at least we got a pop tune?): advertising wanted to sell us everything, parents and teachers with their agendas that had nothing to do with kids, other students, did I mention plastic advertising and stuff, everywhere.
But there we were in 1997 — explored around on my own, exchanged lots of smiles, and chatted for a moment, here and there. I came upon a “second room” I hadn’t realized was there for some time. It was nearly empty, but the sounds compelled me! Drum loops and bleepy sounds, this spoke to me. My first moments with old school techno breakbeat will be memories I will never forget.
That night, DJ Oscure (still going) introduced me to ‘Bombscare’ by 2BadMice, a 1991 track still vibrant in the evolving dialogue of electronic music – which did get a re-release with remixes in ‘96. Despite it being dated already in ‘96, being more than 5 years old even then, prompting no jaded raver to complain about how the vibe had changed ever, I’m sure — it struck a chord in me, and I busted some moves like I never had.
Bombscare (here’s a contemporary remix) certainly outlasted many of its contemporaries from a time before the genre of breakbeat’s production tricks had been universally honed and refined, and morphed into Jungle and Drum and Bass genres.
More Recent Reflections
Fast forward to years later—March 2024—it’s been 10 years that the person I shroomed with for the first time passed on, dying from an overdose. My fellow psychonaut whom I’ve shared many dancefloors and psychonautical explorations passed due to fatal, risky use of psychedelics and serotonin-releasers that were more dangerous than anything that had existed when we started exploring in the mid-90s and late 90s — so those dangers did not exist when we started exploring.
Looking back, I stayed in the cult, got kicked out, and ironically, that’s what saved me.
My fellow psychonaut didn’t join or wasn’t accepted by a cult, didn’t get kicked out, but Ben’s dead, and he’s been gone 10 years now.
Lesson for us all, today: if you’re going to be risky, don’t be risky solo.
A Saturday in March
Flash forward to 2024, amidst a field in a park in the basin of Sepulveda, San Fernando Valley, I let the music of classic breakbeat techno move me once again.
I reflected on past pains and personal growth. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, and it wasn’t about assigning blame. It was about seeking – and finding – life’s moments and embracing the feeling of being alive — in the face of extraordinary external circumstances surrounding us all in that world then, and still.
And many of us did it and it helped us survive and some even thrive.
Even if it was through merely being present — and shaking a leg.
My memories may be intercalated with a blur of 12” records beats and rhythms, but that night at the Sound Stage still reverberates in my mind and heart. A day after the day at the park, I would learn that those events F.A.M.I.L.Y. were the brainchild of one Dougal Fry (not to be confused with the DJ Dougal of the UK, different Dougal).
The cost of belonging may on some days be measured in dollars, effort, and treats, but the true testament of flow was in the experience, showing up and showing out, see who else is representing and how, and to be together as one, even if but for a fleeting moment, as everyone had their separate yet unified experience.
And notably to do it in a way that doesn’t impose an ideology, many rules, or even a demand for a donation. The only imposing going on is a DJ’s laying down of the groove for a fleeting moment in eternity — or when someone asks for a light, maybe a drink of water. We’re ignoring a lot of bad behavior here, but that’s how it seemed for a moment, so pure, so elegant: people coexisting and celebrating together.
With all the weird weather everyone’s been getting in 2024, in one of the first sunny days of 2024 that I could remember, even with it being southern California, that track ~ Bombscare ~ got a rewind — that’s raver-speak for one more rotation on the wheels of steel.
From the track’s sampled lyrics:
I don’t want to lose your love / I don’t want to lose your love
In those warehouses-turned-sanctuaries, identity was fluid, and expression was free—though not without its perils.
From the spoken-sung words from the track that takes you to that rush, the momentary anxiety, and the energy:
Feel the energy rush up to your face / Feel the house music steady steady pounding
Among the pulsating beats, there was space for connection, for fleeting friendships, and for the chance to be part of something bigger than oneself. And for a moment to be free from geopolitical violence and intrigue, the burdens of finding our way in a society that seems past its prime and not fit for purpose, and simply to maybe meet someone.
The draw is immense, once one gets a taste. Stimulating, healthy movement, people, treats, and beats, that’ll make you tap your feet.
And there’s an implicit order that emerges: peace is real, peace can grow and be perpetuated, community building is a thing, personal peace is possible, and perhaps this might be an experiment to give a solid go.
It’s in this loud, vibrant, and unapologetically lively space where the focus isn’t on individual narratives but on a collective experience, amplified by music and the human connection it fosters. In this world, you’re invited to share in what feels private and special, made even more so by its public accessibility.
Don’t want to lose your love / Don’t want to lose your love!
But a good sample for a refrain over the years becomes more than a platitude. It becomes the words that give some meaning to all the pain, all the peaks of joy and the many valleys of loss.
Lately, I’ve started playing this little game, where let my mind wander and see if it makes up a little rhyme without very much effort. In the park on that March day, I let a new reply to the refrain, as I twirled on the grass under 2024’s stormy sun.
Didn't want to lose your love.
But - over the games - I’m finally done
I gave you my heart; you left me in the cold.
Done with the games, the truth now told.
Like a fish swept out to sea,
You turned my friends against me.
Was our love just a haze,
A blend of wild nights and chemical daze?
It felt real, but perhaps I was wrong,
In the shadows of love, I've grown strong.
I've learned to embrace both joy and pain,
Self-love is the truth I now claim.
Shame for loving, shame for falling,
Kept on turning, back to calling
No longer shamed for the love I gave,
I found peace within, brave and grave.
I sought your love, but now I see,
The love I need must come from me.
Didn't want to lose your love, it's true,
But the love I need comes from me too.
When I give, when I receive,
It's the balance that I now believe.
Love is fluid, this much I know,
Never truly gone, despite the ebb and flow.
Rest in Power, Our Ravers Who Say
“The Hardcore Never Die, They Just Trip and Roll.”
May they be remembered for the light they shined.
And, yes, may we be more like them when they were alive~
To shine as brightly, now they can only reflect through us, today,
There is a chance for eternal life, celebrating memories it’s the way.
Lone Raver is a labor of love. Support by sharing, following us around the net, and telling us what you think!