AFRAID OF RAVE? REMEMBER ROCK?

Reaction of the press is fuelled by fear of the unknown

Maclean's magazine has finally discovered raves. This week's cover shrieks:
"Rave Fever: Kids love those all-night parties, but the drugs can kill --
what parents need to know." The article notes that "ecstasy has been
implicated in at least 14 Canadian deaths in the last two years in Canada."
This number has been generating a lot of recent press -- including, most
likely, this cover story.

Accidental deaths of any kind are a cause for concern, but it's worth
putting this statistic into perspective. According to Health Canada (1997)
"1,680 people are killed and 74,000 are injured each year in alcohol-related
[car] crashes." For 2000, Health Canada projects that smoking-attributed
deaths will total 46,910. According to the Canadian Council of Snowmobile
Organizations, "on average over the last five years in Canada, approximately
95 snowmobilers have lost their lives while snowmobiling." And snowmobiling
is a leisure activity people choose to do for fun -- kind of like going to a
rave.

Maclean's has regurgitated the same story that seems to be told in the media
every month -- kids, partying, drugs, danger -- without giving the meat
about what keeps driving this important youth movement. This is a culture
growing by leaps and bounds and it should be covered with critical, artistic
and sociological analysis, not just with alarmist headlines and glossed-over
content.

Such coverage is not only myopic, but smacks of the treatment another youth
culture movement received in the media.

Those of you old enough to remember rock 'n' roll's unceremonious
introduction to the mainstream in the 1950s may recall its being painted as
"the devil's music;" marijuana, a drug closely associated with rock 'n' roll
throughout its history spawned such histrionic early reactions as the scare
film Reefer Madness, which warned -- untruthfully -- that marijuana would
send its users into a psychotic frenzy. Sound familiar?

Rock 'n' roll became a mass-audience form of music that developed into a
multi-billion-dollar industry.

And every indication is that the rave scene is well on its way to the same
profile.

People pay $50 or more to hear DJs like Oakenfold, Hype and Carl Cox, who
are, in their own way, their scene's Madonna, Cher or Bowie. But of course
these names, who command tens of thousands of dollars, don't have the
backing of Sony or Universal Music or get gigs in venues like Toronto's
SkyDome. Then there are all the indie streetwear shops and labels, Internet
radio stations, independent music labels and numerous other components that
go into making this counter-culture function more like a counter industry.

It has infiltrated most of today's dance club scenes.

But since only a handful of mainstream journalists cover this area on a
regular basis, the general public is kept out of the loop and simply served
the same surface stories about drugs and danger, again and again.

Most people who party today don't even use the term "rave" any more. They
associate themselves with different genres of music and go to jungle
parties, warehouse parties or the gay circuit parties that attract house
music afficionados and often an older crowd.

Maclean's lets its readers know that "there are parties every Saturday night
in Toronto, considered by many devotees the rave capital of North America."
In Toronto, there are smaller parties every night of the week. On Monday
alone there are two nights catering to jungle music: Chicks Dig It at the
Weave; and Jungle Nation at the Comfort Zone. Cities across North America
have clubs that cater to a variety of other electronic music genres from
techno to speed garage to hardcore and happy hardcore.

But the lack of such details are among the least egregious offenses here.
Take, for example, the fact that none of the founders of the rave scene are
mentioned or interviewed in this article, nor are any of the major party
promoters acknowledged. Granted, many are reluctant to speak to the media
these days. But imagine doing a feature about federal cabinet ministers and
talking to the guy who mops their floor, a few secretaries, a friend of a
friend and an outside "expert" observer or two.

There is a mention of the Toronto Dance Safety Committee, but it fails to
acknowledge the ground-breaking protocol it created for safe legal raving
which was endorsed "wholeheartedly" by Mel Lastman, the city's mayor, and
the city council.

City councillors, representatives from fire, ambulance and police
departments, zoning officials, public health officials, rave promoters,
security firms and the Toronto Raver Info Project, which distributes
educational harm-reduction information on drug use and safe sex, worked
together to reach this agreement.

It's a remarkable step, assuming city officials can keep up their end of the
bargain.

On the drug front, Maclean's has done us the decency of explaining that
ecstasy-related deaths are not necessarily a result of the drug itself, but
often from its misuse -- not drinking enough water, drinking too much water,
not knowing what substances are actually in the pill. Still, in the
accompanying "Young and Reckless" story the focus is "23-year-old Jaimie
Britten [who] died of an ecstasy overdose at a rave in an industrial park on
the outskirts of Halifax." It's a tragedy, of course, but what about those
95 snowmobilers?

There are thousands of fascinating stories in the rave scene, some dark,
some bright.

Isn't it time journalists started treating it -- from raves to clubs to
circuit parties -- the same way they do rock concerts and pop acts? How many
more trees have to die in the name of newsprint before they get around to
it?