Gone To A Rave #52: A Treasure Trove Of Rave Flyers (Part 1..)

Music

This weekend I went over to Aiden House Hunting's place (and if you don't read the House Hunting column he writes for Ransom Note you're mugging yourself – Aiden knows an insane amount of sick tunes, and posts huge posts of proper old skool house knowledge. Have a butchers.) As I was buying some choice old skool vinyl off him, he mentioned that his girlfriend Tonya had a huge collection of rave flyers .Obviously I was interested, so couldn't believe my eyes when Tonya went and grabbed a folder that was FULL OF GOLD. She had about 300 pristine flyers in there, strecthing from the late 80s to the early '90s, bright neon badges from her youth spent raving. Like most young ravers who'd collected flyers, she told me that she'd not been able to afford to go to half the raves she'd got artwork for- this didn't stop her grabbing all the best looking imagery to decorate her room with. She had been to some absolute classic parties though, including the Fantazia at Castle Donington I wrote about for GTAR #50. I'd get her to tell some stories from the parties, but no doubt they're all far too wild for me to go splashing over the internet…

Suffice to say that Tonya was grabbing some of the most iconic artwork of the time – and she's been sound enough to let me photo the lot of it. Loads of this stuff isn't online, or if it is, it's in terrible quality. I've tried to get the biggest images I can upload without crashing the site. There really is a mountain of them though, so I'm going to break this post into a few different parts.

I find the little details on the backs of the flyers; the attractions listed, the crazy lighting promised, the guarantees that all the DJs are booked, that the sound will be insane, and that the party will be 'Megga', just as interesting as the amazing artwork they have on the front. Most of all, I feel sad that the rise of promoting via social media has caused something of a death in the world of physical flyers – these little pieces of paper feel like gateways to a world of hope and energy- although, who knows, maybe looking at a Facebook event page 20 years from now will feel the same…