STEP INSIDE SYDNEY'S EARLY RAVES, DOOFS & FESTIVALS
before social media and smartphones, a generation built its own dance culture from scratch.
CRAZE is a first-hand account of Sydney’s early rave scene, how underground dance culture organised itself from the ground up: who built it, how it spread, why it fractured, and how it’s being reborn
“High Fidelity
meets Human Traffic…
Australian style"
Noel Burgess (Vision Four 5)
explore flyers, photos, and more below.
“a unique perspective from someone who was there from the start."
Andy Rantzen (Itch-E & Scratch-E)
a journey through the rave crucible into the birth of modern electronic dance music.
explore the second summer of love through its farthest-flung outpost: Sydney, Australia.
ABOUT CRAZE
A deep-dive in to Sydney’s early raves, doofs and festivals, and though them, the history of Electronic Dance Music. A story shaped by those behind the decks and on the dance floor; written by a 35-year veteran of the electronic dance music community.
Trace the technological, chemical and musical strands that fed the Electronic Music Revolution. Dive into the Rave Crucible, experience the birth of Electronic Dance Music and explore the fracture that lead to both modern underground ‘Techno’ and main room ‘EDM’.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
In the 1990s, Sydney’s lower Oxford Street was home to as many as seventeen specialist vinyl dance music stores. Today, only one remains: RecordStore.
Founded in 2003 in the wake of BPM Records (est. 1994), it carries forward a culture shaped by the city’s queer underground, independent music pioneers, and dancefloor misfits.
The author’s journey from baby raver and BPM customer, to owner of the Recordstore mirrors the evolution of Sydney’s DJ culture itself.
For more than three decades, Darlinghurst has been his base: a place where music, community, and anonymity converged, and where this story took shape.
WHAT IS A ZINE?
Zines are hand-made, cut’n’paste mini-magazines — raw, personal, and often photoshopped in someone’s lounge room or photocopied at a local print shop. Popularised in the punk era of the '70s, they gave voice to people and ideas who didn’t fit into mainstream. But they trace their history back through sci-fi ‘fanzines’ of the mid 20th Century and arguably to the ‘pamphleteers’ of the late 1700s
In Sydney’s '90s rave scene, zines like Hallelujah and No Frills captured the energy of the moment. Hallelujah ran through 1992 with listings, interviews, and scene commentary, while No Frills had a more artistic bent and offered a critical take on life and authority. Both were passed hand-to-hand at parties and record shops.
Rave Naked With a Blue Light?
At some stage in Sydney, in the very early 1990s, a raver catching the train home one morning noticed something on the wall of a carriage.
It was a State Rail safety sticker that read ‘At night, travel near the guard’s compartment marked with a blue light’.
Using nothing but a humble key to make a few subtle modifications this sticker, our raver made history.
It wasn’t long before every sticker on every train in Sydney had been converted like this and so was the legend born.
What makes it amusing — beyond the imagery it evokes — is that in Sydney, in the late 1980s, the police ran blue light discos for ‘kids’ to party safely.
Craze is full of history like this and is available as an audiobook, e-book or in the form of a pulped tree.
PHOTO, FLIER and RAVE MUSIC ARCHIVES
PROMO VIDEO:
Crazy Journey Into Sound
Video editing: DJ Matrix. Audio Collage: pH (author). Original Wecome ‘92 rave footage by Tony Curry. Samples used listed below.