TECHNO PARTIES ARE ALL THE RAVE

But Drug Scares Put A Damper On The Fun

Just past midnight on a balmy Saturday morning, the Mid-South Fairgrounds
is sleepy except for the throbbing bass vibrating through the walls of the
Pipkin Building and the clusters of teenagers and twentysomethings smoking
in the parking lot.

Their backward baseball caps, spiky hair, Day-Glo embossed T-shirts, baggy
pants and bored expressions contrast with the RVs and kennels dotting the
parking lot for the weekend dog show.

While championship canines stir inside their owners' vans, rave kids are
inside dancing, washed in flashing colored lights, green laser beams,
artificial smoke and electronic music provided by deejays who, with
turntables and a mixer, manipulate the dance tracks into a syncopated yet
fluid musical loop.

Techno, the accepted umbrella term for most rave music, began in mid-'80s
Detroit, where deejays appropriated computer technology to alter sounds and
create new music. Rave parties grew out of London some years later.

Stateside, the large dance parties grew into a subculture with its own star
deejays, record producers, party promoters and venues in cities like Los
Angeles, New York and San Francisco.

Memphis is behind the culture curve, say concert promoters, deejays and
fans. It's difficult to book the industry's best talent because even though
Memphis fans are loyal, they're few compared to other regional cities
including Little Rock, which routinely pulls a contingent of road-trippers
from Memphis for its better raves.

A bigger problem is the rising drug use associated with raves, most notably
the resurgent and most-popular teen drug MDMA, better known as Ecstasy.

Reports of the separate overdose deaths of 17-year-olds Kristy Mullins and
Joshua Robbins, who died in early April after taking Ecstasy, has made a
difference in the local scene.

The rave at the fairgrounds, Ghetto Fabalus III, brought six deejays from
Memphis and around the country. But rumors of a raid by police for drugs
meant at times there were more kids in the parking lot than inside dancing.

"Since those two kids died," says Brittany Jones, outside sitting on the
hood of a car, "everybody thought the party would get busted."

An 18-year-old University of Memphis freshman from Collierville, Jones has
decided to forgo the raves.

"The vibe is just different now," she says. "I'd like to blame it on the
cops. When they started busting the parties, the scene started to change.
But if you're a cop and you know what's going on, you have to go take a look."

After four years of raves, she's decided to "move on." By that she means
"just growing up, going to college, getting a real job. It won't take their
place . . . not as much fun."

"There's a lot of misinformation out there. A lot of these kids are so
young and gullible, they don't know any better or don't want to know any
better," says local promoter Patrick McIntyre about kids going to raves for
drugs. "A lot of them don't have any idea of why we do it (go to raves) and
they ruin it for everybody else."

The music

To say a rave deejay's job is to spin records is like saying a poker
player's job is to play cards. Not only can some of the higher-profile
deejays pull upwards of $10,000 for a few hours' work (pay for deejays at
Ghetto Fabalus III ranged from $100-$1,500), they're responsible for
providing the most necessary rave ingredient: the sound.

A skilled deejay can alter an ingrained hit song like Michael Jackson's
Beat It, as techno-pioneer Moby did, rendering it nearly unrecognizable,
but infectious and danceable.

Money and popularity brought the once-underground sound to the pop charts,
either on a pop star's album, like Madonna's "Music," or produced
independently by deejays such as Moby and the Prodigy, who found success
with a tamer, radio-ready version of their style.

"We were happy the major labels were getting involved," says Memphis deejay
Graflin Booth, 38, who's credited with tracks on numerous techno
compilations and spins in Germany these days. "It's good that there's more
money, but when that happens, things get prostituted and the popularity
tends to water down the music. Look at alternative rock; how many bands now
sound like Pearl Jam?"

Dave Silver, a local promoter and co-owner of Venus Records and Gear, said,
"(Electronica) is a growth industry that's about to explode.". Electronica
is the norm throughout Europe, says Silver, a New York transplant whose
Silver Promotions, which he also co-owns, produces the best-attended raves
in the area.

Techno has been popular before, he says. "Only now it's mainstream."

The scene

The conventional wisdom is that once an underground scene is discovered, it
quickly fades or evolves into something the original hipsters hate.

Memphis is no different. Raves have risen and shrunk in popularity, drawing
from 100 people to 4,000 for a rave featuring some of the genre's biggest
names. Silver says a good rave draws 400-500 people and a promoter who can
draw 1,000 has done a "really serious job."

Without much in the way of mass communication save for E-mail and voice
mail rave lines, rave promoters borrowed from early rock promoters the idea
of highly artistic and creative fliers for advertisement.

Those promotions - and especially word of mouth - bring kids willing to
drop anywhere from $15 to $50 or more for a party that they may have to
drive for hours to attend.

Any rave worth its cover charge features not only a laser-light display,
but often projected video reels cut with the music to create the necessary
vibe. A bad vibe is a reputation killer for a promoter.

"It's really kind of hard to say what the scene is like in Memphis," says
promoter McIntyre, 23. "One party could have a great vibe, and the next
weekend it could just go horrible. It's kind of a guessing game."

A guessing game that has cost him thousands of dollars.

At Ghetto Fabalus III, McIntyre saw a barren dance floor dotted with groups
of young, racially diverse ravers who paid $17 to get in.

A hot deejay list goes a long way towards filling a rave, but advance
advertising is key. "It's kind of sketchy if I can do it again," he says,
noting this is his second loss on a party in a row.

The drugs

For every raver who preaches the PLUR mantra - Peace, Love, Unity and
Respect - found on leaflets next to the "Save the Rave" petition at every
rave, there are those whose vibe is derived from mind-altering chemicals,
especially 3,4 methylenedioxymethylamphetamine (MDMA) - Ecstasy.

Local law-enforcement and DEA officials say they've seen a substantial
increase in Ecstasy use in the past year. Officers have seized more than
5,000 pills so far this year, a number far greater than what was seized in
all of 2000, according to Maj. D. A. Betts. Nationally, the number of
Ecstasy tablets seized by the DEA increased by more than 70 times over five
years, from 13,342 in 1996 to 949,257 in 2000, according to the National
Institute on Drug Abuse.

"A lot of kids take it and have no problems," says Dr. David Smith, an
international pioneer in drug rehabilitation and intervention and an
Ecstasy expert, "but then there're some kids who take it and have heart
problems."

Founder of the Haight Ashbury Free Clinics and Rock Medicine in San
Francisco, Smith, also a professor of toxicology at the University of
California in San Francisco, has started a rave-club task force to treat
those who take MDMA.

How bad is it?

"What I tell my patients," explained Smith, "is to pretend you're driving a
car with your brakes impaired. They still work and as long as you don't jam
'em too hard, you're OK."

In other words, Ecstasy might be your foot jamming the impaired brakes on
your body and brain. The result could be a heart attack or stroke, for
instance.

Those who take MDMA are looking for the intense euphoria and lowered
inhibition it produces, according to NIDA. Heightened senses make the
already enveloping wall of music at a rave even more so, and a user's
pupils are hypnotically assaulted by the otherworldly light shows, Smith says.

Long popular among the trendy nightclub set, the drug's popularity has
grown so much that the local DEA office lists it as the drug of choice for
teens and young adults, even more than alcohol.

"It's a harsh reality, but it's true," says Dr. Peter Chyka, executive
director of the Southern Poison Center and professor at the University of
Tennessee. "If you're under 21, if you want to get intoxicated, you need an
alternative to alcohol," he said. "The people in the age range 16-21 use
(Ecstasy) as an alternative to alcohol."

How prevalent it is in the rave scene, or any other, is almost impossible
to gauge, says Smith.

"It just doesn't have the immediate physical consequences of heroin or
cocaine," says Herman Holmes, addiction specialist and after-care
coordinator at Methodist Healthcare-Central. "That, and the fact that the
population taking the drug is so resilient, that age group being so
vibrant, it does not seem to appear in the ER."

Even if it does, Smith says, there are fair odds that what launched the bad
trip wasn't actually MDMA. Locally, DEA officials said all the Ecstasy they
have seized was MDMA. Ecstasy chemists may be more advanced than their
bathtub meth-lab cousins, but Smith says the technology for both is similar.

Side effects associated with Ecstasy are short-term memory loss,
disorientation, depression, impulsiveness, dry mouth (which contributes to
the popularity of lollipops and both candy and genuine pacifiers at raves),
faintness, dehydration, sweating, muscle tension, hypothermia, heart
problems and impotence - but those are short-term.

"There is not any definitive knowledge on its long-term effects," says Dr.
John Mendelson, associate clinical professor of psychiatry and medicine at
UC-San Francisco. He recently concluded clinical research on MDMA during
which he dosed humans with the drug to determine its effect on, among other
things, the heart. He found that MDMA prevented the heart from becoming
more efficient as heart rate increased. As you dance into the morning
hours, your heart on Ecstasy doesn't respond properly to the high activity.

"That might explain why some people get into problems with this drug," he said.

Mendelson further explained that during animal testing on MDMA, brain
function changes dramatically after dosing, but behavior only changes slightly.

"It could just be that it only makes you more impulsive," he said.

"There is a great deal of unknown because there hasn't been much interest
in studying this," said Smith. "As a trend, I think it's ominous, but
you've got to be objective."

Is the party over?

Some time after 4:30 a.m., the rave at the fairgrounds is winding down. A
deejay still spins for the handful of ravers who haven't gone home, or out
to the parking lot.

Some are tired, some are bored, some are still going. It's impossible to
tell who's on Ecstasy, speed, caffeine, or who's just young.

The police drove by a few times, but nothing major happened.

That could change.

Currently in New Orleans, U.S. Atty. Eddie Jordan is charging local rave
promoters with a novel application of a 1986 law known as the "crack house
statute". Intended to prosecute those who maintain a property where they
know drugs are sold or used, regardless of their involvement, this is the
first time it's being applied in a case against a nightclub or its promoters.

"Save the Rave" petitions are circulating at parties and on the Internet to
garner grass-roots support against this possibly precedent-setting case
that has also gained the involvement of parents groups and the ACLU.

Neither McIntyre nor Silver is too concerned about the goings-on in New
Orleans, however, and neither is former U.S. Atty. Veronica Coleman.

"I don't think it would work in Memphis," she said shortly before leaving
office. "I don't think we have anything like that here."