Updated 2 years ago
The Formative Years of Goa, Raves, and the Reign of the New York Club Kids
Directory – Flyers – Map – Before 1979 – The 1980s – The 1990s – 1990-2 – 1993-5 – 1996 – 1997 – 1998 – 1999 – The 2000s – 2000 – 2001 – 2002 – 2003 – 2004 – 2005 – 2006 – 2007 – 2008 – 2009 – The 2010s – 2010 – 2011 – 2012 – 2013 – 2014 – 2015 – 2016 – 2017 – 2018 – 2019 – The 2020s – 2020 – 2021 – 2022 – 2023 – 2024 – 2025 – 2026 – 2027 – 2028 – 2029 – The 2030s – 2030
Highlights:
Goa Trance develops in Goa, India and Europe, peaking in 1995.
Ravers proliferate, and although they seem a sideshow at first, as the Internet kicks into high gear, many of them proceed to slowly disrupt all major industries, especially music advertising, and retail.
Early trance develops at the Dorian Gray in the Frankfurt airport in Germany, the Omen (Sven Väth‘s Living Room) and Aladdins (AB Goldbach) and across Europe.
Technologies:
1994 – Yamaha unveils the ProMix 01; 1994 – Propellerheads releases reCycle loop splicing; 1994 – Iomega Zip drive; 1995 – MP3 developed
1993
Anchor Lauren Thierry and a film crew for the tabloid show American Journal bought heroin undercover on Stanton Street and they gave it to me to snort in a penthouse at the Marriot Marquis. Wearing Gaultier sunglasses and a tan suit, after a snort, I said, “That is definitely heroin!
Then they followed me into Peter Gatien’s Club USA, where I parted the crowd at the door. While inside they showed me walking around all the sketchiness and the huge blinking DRUGS signs. I met a girl Karen Dennis from Idaho, who I later saw walking down the street in the Upper West Side. She was an aspiring actress at the Actor’s Studio. We dated for a year or so.
In 1993, X-Dream’s Trip to Trancesylvania came out and blew everyone’s minds. After almost 30 years, this music sound very modern:
December 10
Doom launched
1994
Part of why I don’t like Trump is jealousy. He didn’t have to work it to get to the VIP room. But he usually stuck with places I grew out of, i.e. uptown places like Au Bar with lots of cheesey Eurotrash. But he was enough of a man about town to venture downtown to see the freaks. He never did drugs. It was all about the girls, and showing off his status.
January
Yamaha unveils the ProMix 01
May
For years I had been out clubbing a lot with a whole retinue of nightcrawlers –
-relentless partygoer Mary Chan, who lived in Columbus Circle,
-Walter Monheit, an elderly Swiss part-time lifeguard in the uptown scene
-Frenchman Henri Krief who lived on Central Park West
-Carmen d’Alessio, who had introduced all the founders of Studio 54,
-Emotive label head David Chang,
and Michael Ault and David Sarner who often threw together clubs with furniture “pulled out of their ass.” At one of their events, while at Adweek, I hosted a whole group of visiting advertising students from my alma mater, University of Texas.
Ran into Joseph Jett at the Plaza Hotel with Carmen D’Alessio.
I dated Dara Foster at this time.
June
Propellerheads releases reCycle loop splicing
The Most iconic NYC party I was lucky enough to attend:
1994 Launch party for Absolutely Fabulous in the US at the Puck Building. Magic often happens when the coolest trends in London meet New York. See also: Tina Brown, Malcom McLaren & the Sex Pistols, ETC
Take every fashion parody film (Bruno, Zoolander) and crank it into a Cuisinart.
It was a New York Moment, the kind that happens only a couple times a decade. It was absolute madness. Layers and layers of everything i had ever wanted in the NYC social scene, and then some. It was the kind of party you wondered if someone spiked the drinks, because Oh My God.
And it was in the afternoon and early evening.
Moet & Chandon sponsor, the CEO used a sword to cut open bottles.
Dancing drag queens dressed as the actors. The real and simulated began to blur together over the course of the evening.
Naomi Campbell et al the assorted entourages
Drinks at the bar with Fred Schneider of the B52s (wonderful man) was the icing on the cake.
All in all, it was like a Suzanne Bartsch party combined with a Splash vibe and video remixing, with tons of celebs, with the insanity of a British pirate boarding party.
Here’s a review: From the Hartford Courant:
“Don’t talk to me, dahling.
I’m in pain.
Agony, sweetie. Psychic trauma, dahling.
Call my guru! Bring me my horoscope! I think my moons may have collided in the night. Or something.
Don’t just stand there, dahling. Pour me a Stoli, roll me a ciggie. Bring me my cellular! I need answers.
Hurry, sweetie. I feel faint. Faint, I tell you. Swooning from the pressure of it all.
Oh, how could it have happened?
How? How? How?
How could I go to an “Absolutely Fabulous” party — and have an absolutely dreadful time?
You know what an Ab Fab fan I am.
I was there at the beginning, dahling. I cheered those deah, deah girls Edina (Jennifer Saunders) and Patsy (Joanna Lumley) all the way over the bloody Atlantic, dahling. I rode the wave before there even was a wave, sweetie.
It seems so long ago, now.
I remember, it was the summer of love, July 1994.
That’s when I first saw them, dahling. On Comedy Central — a very, very exclusive all-comedy cable channel. Almost nobody gets it, dahling, it’s so exclusive.
Anyway, Eddy and Patsy were already huge on British TV. As big as the bleedin’ Beatles — and at least as old.
I don’t know about your friends, but my little group couldn’t get enough of them.
I mean, who could resist sweet, sweet Eddy, a double-divorced fashion exec who’d rather die than be even momentarily out of vogue? And Patsy? To die for! Best friend to Eddy — a kind of professional Ivana Trump. What can we say about her hateful relationship with Eddy’s straight-and-narrow daughter Saffron (Julia Sawalha) except to call it genius? Cruel, cruel genius, sweetie!
Who but a Bob Dole wannabe wouldn’t adore Edina and Patsy and their chain-smoking, drug-popping, champagne-swilling sensibilities?
Alas, now that it’s all the rage, it’s almost over.
Monday night at 8, the third and final season of “Absolutely Fabulous” begins on Comedy Central.
Seems Saunders, the creator/writer/star/visionary, is tired. She’s looking for something new, sweetie. She has sold the show to Roseanne, who will be producing an American knockoff — which, no doubt, will be too tacky for words.
Which brings me back to the party, sweetie. You see, Eddy and Patsy come to New York in the season-opener — jetting across the waters in search of a door handle. (A very, very special door handle, of course.)
So in honor of the show and the special role New York plays in this season’s final six episodes (which ends when Patsy gets a job in New York and the two separate), Comedy Central and Vanity Fair threw a little affair in SoHo.
It was at the Puck Building.
It’s all coming back to me, dahling. I’m feeling a bit shaky.
Get me a drink.
There. That’s better.
Where was I? Oh, yes. Well, I arrived– unfortunately, on time — thinking I’d get a head start on the champagne and a good seat near the girls.
Instead I ended up standing in a line, dahling. A long, long line, sweetie. WILTING in my smart jeans, black Gap T and Calvin sports jacket.
Waiting more than half an hour, invitation in hand, to get into this so-called exclusive party?
“What’s so exclusive about it if everybody in the world seems to be here?” asked my date.
It was a nightmare, dahling. They invited 2,000 people, and just about EVERYBODY came.
Well, after we were finally allowed entry and stuffed like pizza into a brick oven of a room, I found myself a front-row seat on the celebrity side.
Now, I thought to myself, the fun will begin. I was only a few feet from the leopard-print couch and fuchsia pillows my sweetie dahlings would soon be sitting on.
I looked around. For stars, of course. Trendsetters. But all I saw were a bunch of fashion disasters, a couple of Patsy and Eddy impersonators of ambiguous sexual definition and there, behind me, Ed Begley.
Ed Begley, dahling. A nice man, but no star. And the photographers couldn’t get enough of him.
Someone told me later that Fran Leibowitz, Helen Mirren and a couple of quite fabulous people were there, but other than Fred Schneider from The B-52’s, I must have missed them.
And then you know what happened, sweetie? They turned on the telly! Well, a tape, but 40 minutes of tape.
More delays, and my hard-won champagne getting low.
Finally, finally. They brought on the stars.
But to my utter shock. No Patsy! No Saffron! “Shooting schedule conflict” we were told.
A dandruff-laden clot of photographers rushed the stage ignoring the shrill exhortations of a frenzied little man who shouted, “Back! Back!”
One of them knocked over what was left of my champagne, and I gave him a sly little kick.
Supermodel Naomi Campbell, a woman I can only describe as thick as a box of rocks, tried and failed with the help of index cards to introduce Saunders, executive producer Jon Plowman and a couple of co- stars. I think Naomi’s dress was wrapped too tightly around her brains, dahling.
Some questions were shouted from the audience — many of them from hangers-on who wanted to know “Why you are so absolutely fabulous” or some such rot.
Which is when I think I passed out, sweetie. Or fell asleep listening to that Begley man chat up the woman behind me.
Oh, I suppose it wasn’t so bad, in retrospect. No one died or anything, sweetie.
And lucky for Comedy Central, Patsy and Eddy are “Absolutely Fabulous” enough to survive one bad party experience.
Now, get me the Psychic Friends Network on the phone. I need to move on with my life.”
July
Iomega Zip Drive launched
November 23
Warcraft: Orcs and Humans launched
Bill Hicks
December 3
Sony Playstation launched
1995
Great film.
May 16
MP3 developed
Music industry changed forever
June 30
Phoenix Festival, WA
First medium scale Goa trance festival in North America
Ibiza, September 1995
Sarah Champion (journalist): ” It was the final Thursday of the season. At 5am I left the Cream/Perfecto party at Ku and headed for the hills where Tip and Blue Room were celebrating the end of the season with a free party. 200 freaks were dancing in a cloud of dust, going absolutely mental to Goa trance. From Spanish Romeos and beautiful French girls to Cockney drug dealers, everyone was losing it. Man With No Name kept everyone dancing well Into the daylight hours with mixes of his ‘Floor Essence’ track. Oakenfold made it. It was a launch party for Perfecto Fluoro. Someone called it an ‘alien airport’ and I had to agree.”
October 28
Sound Factory became Twilo
November
Wipeout released for Sony Playstation
December 9
Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness
