Rave On, Raver

Hope You Saved Your Glow Stick

'The new generation of ravers under London Bridge. The location, the site of illegal parties in the 1990s, is now a nightclub.

To most people in Britain, rave is a memory, and a blurry one at that. For four years at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, Britain's youth took to the fields, forests and warehouses, took Ecstasy, wore some of the silliest outfits ever devised - like cricket hats, white gloves and gas masks - and ushered out Thatcherism in a strobe-lighted haze of electronic music that shook the ground they danced on.

Then Parliament passed the Criminal Justice Act of 1994, which humorlessly characterized rave music as 'the emission of a succession of repetitive beats,' and gave police the power to shut raves down. That swiftly put an end to the scene's drug induced violence - and to the scene itself.

But if you happen to be in London these days, there are signs that something like rave is stirring again.

'The first time around, rave really seeped into the mainstream,' said Carri Mundane, 26, a designer who was a child during the first rave scene but kept the fliers amassed by her older brother. 'The music was in the charts, and everything just became a little bit more psychedelic.'

This time, it's more insular. And it's different in other ways, too: some of the music is rock, not electronica, and the scene is no longer as defined by the twin illegalities of drugs and trespassing.

But a collection of young creative types are dressing up and making music that unmistakably refers back to the garishness, the euphoria and the escapism of 15 years ago.

In mid-December, the Klaxons - an indie rock band and the self-appointed leaders of the scene - invited a pack of D.J.'s, artists and other performers to play a final gig of the year under the railway arches of London Bridge.

The location was the site of illegal parties in the early 1990s but, in keeping with the more sanitized character of today's movement, is now a well-appointed nightclub with a bouncer, sofas to lounge on and $7 beers.

The music didn't sound like rave. Though tinged with electronica, the Klaxons and two other bands played stripped-back rock, not unlike much of the music that has been in vogue in Britain the last few years. And the dance floor was more of a punkish mosh pit, with lots of shoving revelers, than a blissed-out, synchronized community of dancers.

Still, there were glow sticks a kind of waving coral reef of neon pinks, yellow and greens - and between acts, young men in leather jackets nudged their way around the dance floor, offering Ecstasy. Teenage fans wore reflective jackets, neon paint, sunglasses, beads and whistles as they hurled themselves back and forth, up and down, suggesting that if this wasn't rave, then it was certainly a somehow-related cousin.'