MovieChat Forums > Groove (2000) Discussion > Your Rave Experiences vs. This movie

Your Rave Experiences vs. This movie

posted 8 years ago by loopdloop11
4 replies | jump to latest

This movie is so good. It is kind of spot on.
I actually watched it during the peak of my going to Raves. I was 16 in 1999 when I went to my first rave in Indianapolis, Indiana. Indy had a rave almost every weekend.. I think it was part of a circuit or tour that would start in Chicago and make its way all around the midwest. Watching this movie back then, I had no idea how important the movie, the search for this film would be so many years later after the raves were outlawed.

My first rave was ROCKETSHIP. My favorite rave was MOO.. it was in the summer in an old Roller Skating rink. I remember thinking at the time (I was only 16 and in Indiana) Where the eff are all these cool people during the day??? Because it was wild. Hundreds of people dressed like typical ravers, glow sticks, fire batons, people wearing practically nothing, girl/and guys with wild braids that glowed. Boys with their boyfriends (that was new) and girls with their girlfriends who also had boyfriends, etc., and vice-a-versa lol
Nothing but love and drugs (drugs, btw, that you could have tested under a pink light) I just couldn't believe people were set up to test your drugs. I only ever saw pink lights used. Some people say they used Bluelights.. but I never saw them.
I think I went to at least 12-15 raves in total. I never went to a single rave that wasn't pure bliss, complete elation.
Raves were always illegal, that's how youngsters like me (at the time) could get in and party with the older crowds. I don't remember there ever being an age rule. But I think the majority of ravers were at least 18.. Indiana went a step further and passed a law that really tore into promoters in 2001 (fines and jail time) to the point RAVES literally died over night.

But since then... I've looked for this movie for so long.. to buy or stream and couldn't find anything anywhere that wasn't priced way above my threshold. 40 bucks for what may or may not be a legit copy? whatever.

Then two nights ago HBO, out of nowhere, played it. I dvr'd it and am never going to delete it.
Because although there are great clubs to go dancing at in 2015 in almost any large city. None I've ever been to have ever been the same as a rave. And there are a lot of reasons why, obviously.. I'm so lucky to have gotten in right before they were outlawed.

This is where It gets similar to the movie. Half the fun of going to a rave was just getting there. In Indy we'd go to a coffeehouse called the Abby. They'd have tons of flyers with a phone number on them. The flyers were works of art (I'll talk about them much further down in this post) Typically you'd call the number the day of and the person would give you the address where you'd either get another number to call for the location or a person was there to tell you where it would be. Sometimes you might have to make up to 4 stops before you even got to the rave. Sometimes you'd call the number and they'd just tell you (but that was very rare).
The secrecy was vital because fire marshals in Indiana shut those things down as fast as they could find them. The best raves were the ones that lasted the longest, obviously, so they were always the best hidden. Only 2 were busted in my experience and it wasn't really scary at all. You just saw lots of police telling you to leave.

Drugs were almost always free. It took me a while to figure out why people would get ecstasy (there were different kinds.. "green boogers" and "versaces" were the most popular with my friends) and then just give it away free. "Are you rolling?" If I said no.. well.. to not incriminate myself, my friend Cassie would often have people just take a pill out and place it in her mouth.. or hand hehe.
People just wanted to love on the stuff. They wanted you to be there with them in that place of love and community.
Water was golden. Bottled water was almost always the most expensive stuff at raves I felt. $5 a bottle. Crazyness.

And like this movie.. the spinners were everything. That's what we'd call them, then. We were too cool for school.. never called them DJs. But the spinners were like Gods. And they always seemed to be from Minnesota...lol

When I got done watching this movie, it was so nostalgic, it was soo cool to look back on how the tech back then.. very very very basic email and A-drive floppy discs were ... I just can't imagine what the scene would have been like with smartphones and instagram lol
The only thing that was different for us from the movie were.. we didn't take pleasure in sitting down unless you could find something to sit on. The floors were disgusting. Always wet and dirty from.. God only knows what combinations of fluids.

So after the movie, like I was saying, I decided to google some of the raves I went to.. and I used GOOGLE.. the other engines didn't find anything. I found a site that was all about preserving Rave flyers and reviews. Then I found a site where people who had old rave flyers would mail them to you so they didn't have to junk them. I'd do anything to find someone with extra copies of the Rave flyers that I went to. I found a couple in the archives but printing them is hard since they are on "curated" sites.. and the flyers themselves were usually on thick paper or poster-like stuff.

So, anyhow, what were some of the raves you went to.. and were your experiences close to mine? Sorry so long-winded. Just got very nostalgic watching this movie. It really takes me back.

[–] JahWoo 8 years ago

I'm a bit older than you but sadly never got to experience a true illegal warehouse party type rave. Been to handful of massives and the like...loved electronic music before I even knew what it was....but wasn't a scene that I knew of when the late 90's electronica wave hit the states..and then in the military when the end of the rave days kind of hit...so all I can say is at least I've got the massives...lol...and at least a few in the early 2000's had some of that "Rave" vibe to them....although people, mostly those who are younger, will call the large legal events "raves".....they are far from the same thing ESPECIALLY with the mainstream crowds that are there ONLY for what at least I consider to be the wrong reasons but I'm a purist that goes for the music. (though I've learned to enjoy the people who are there for whatever their reason while still enjoying it for the music too)

[–] MarkDaFunky1 8 years ago

Here in Las Vegas, the underground scene was basically how you saw it in the movie "Groove" (minus the cheesiness, of course). Of course, all good things come to an end. When the "Rave Act" was passed, this made it very difficult to throw events and saw the decline in the scene. Eventually many of us transitioned into the club scene (before the mega club explosion & EDM). While they did play good music, the scene was just so plastic & fake and never had that true feeling like the underground had.

[–] shandelle 8 years ago

I came across this post a while back because I also noticed HBO had Groove available and watched it! I actually do have a super old copy of Grove on DVD but hadn't watched it in years. I remember going to the movie premier party at some theater in Castleton that was torn down years ago! I grew up on the north side of Indy (Westfield High School) and was going to raves around the exact same time as you. I remember both Rocketship and Moo. I still have 3 big shoeboxes full of Midwest raves flyers in my closet up here in Chicago dating back as far as 1998. Speaking of I was just looking through them a week ago and posting some pics on instagram. They definitely are works of art and I'll never get rid of them! I was picking up flyers and stuff anywhere I could-- UNiViBE, Luna Music, The Abby, etc. Those were the glory days.

I went to as many raves as I could sneak out of the house and get to. haha. My friends and I all had pagers and knew we'd been busted if our parents started paging us to get home! I had to emergency leave more than once when that happened as I, too, was only between 16 and 18 the years I was going. Raves hit my high school in a huge way after that and I'd start seeing tons of people there which soured it a bit for me. I was a bit of a social outcast, known for being into punk and "weird stuff" and wearing huge pants and UFO pants to school. So when all these people started coming and taking over my precious raves, I was a little sad about it. But soon after, it became too hard for Indy to have them anyway. I graduated high school and went off to college and I maybe went to 2 or 3 more raves around Purdue and stopped really paying attention to the scene.

I still love electronic music with a passion and even though I live in Chicago and we have some decent clubs, it's just never the same. All these millennials and their EDM... so lame. These laptop "djs" don't hold a candle to anyone who can mix vinyl on 2 turntables with the talent and finesse I witnessed at the raves during my youth. I miss it dearly. Right after watching Groove a few weeks ago, I looked up some of the local Indy djs I remembered. Shiva is still really active. Slater Hogan appears to be hosting parties at some club in Indy. Beyond that, I'm not too sure. I'm guessing around Indy and Broad Ripple there may be electronic nights and such but I doubt it will ever be what it was during those late 90s/early 00s rave days.

Til then I have tons and tons of pictures and those boxes of rave flyers I can reminisce over!

[–] djanimor 7 years ago

Great post. I also happen to be from the Midwest.

My first rave was December 9th, 2000, in Dayton, Ohio, 8 days before my 18th birthday.

It was a rave called Bass Reaction 2 and it was at a place called the Dayton Gym Club. I would end up attending a handful of raves at that place and it was my favorite rave venue of all of them, but I went to raves in Dayton, Columbus, and Cincinnati. Each city was within an hour or two of each other and between the three of them there were raves going on every weekend. I usually went every other weekend (basically on the weekends I got paid at my local pizzeria job), and did ecstasy most of those weekends as well. I went regularly from December 2000-Fall 2003

But back to Bass Reaction 2....

What a magical night. As loopdloop11 said, they all were magical and euphoric.

I went with my best friend Jesse and a new girl at school I was really digging, Zina. Jesse went to his first rave with his friend Tyler the week before. Zina, who had just moved to Ohio from Texas said she had been to a couple raves down South with her boyfriend.

We got to the Gym Club, which was a big gymnasium floor on the main level, with a large balcony overlooking it on 3 sides, with another room in the basement. It was, imo the perfect venue for a 2 room rave.

The balcony above, hidden in darkness, was an awesome area for cuddle puddles, K-Hole odysseys, or to just watch the action on the court below.

The basement room was a sick little spot for Drum N Bass.

Jesse's friend Tyler got his our pills. For me, it was the 3rd time I would try rolling but my first rave. I had no idea what I was in for. I also wore jeans, which would be the first and only time I'd do that again. I put gift cards to Hot Topic on my wishlist the next day haha.

We probably started feeling the E around 11. Like the OP, I too was simply blown away at how open and accepting everyone was. I instantly felt like I fit in. I loved all of the beautiful female peers there, and they all got more and more beautiful as I kept rolling harder and harder. People would walk by me and say "E", or "K" , or "Rolls"....

Amazing

If you just wanted to find drugs you could just go to any rave at the time and find whatever you wanted within 10 minutes.

I know people will frown at me for writing that but anyone who went to parties in the Ohio/Indiana area in the early 2000's knows it's true.

Back to the first rave....

As I was rolling harder and harder my vision was getting dreamy. Everything felt so right. Everyone loved everyone.

And for some reason this girl in the basement looked really familiar...I started talking to her and she knew my name. She said her name was Julie. She said it two or three times. Finally, I said "I know you, right?"

She laughed and said "It's me Julie. I'm in Human Relations class with you!"

HOLY CRAP! THIS IS JULIE! THE GIRL I'VE HAD A CRUSH ON THE LAST TWO YEARS!"

A girl I had a deep crush on for pretty much all of high school, a girl I thought of every single day, had been standing right next to me for probably 10 minutes and I was rolling so hard I didn't even recognize her. I told her I had a crush on her and she asked me if I wanted to kiss her.

And I did. Then I told I wanted to french kiss her and I did.

Yeah it might be really corny but here I am at my first rave, which by itself can be a euphoric experience, rolling my balls off, and the girl of my frickin dreams is dancing with me making out with me.

It doesn't get much more magical than that. We kissed for what felt like eternity but was probably only 20 seconds. But it turned this already unreal night into the best night of all time up to that point.

It made me become a regular. I don't go to raves these days (I would if they existed, but then again wouldn't it be weird for a guy in his mid-30's to go to one?), but I still love EDM and it was my love for raves that gave me that.