Colin Angus, vocalist and instrumentalist for a British dance-music outfit called the Shamen, is discussing the likelihood that a wave of raves is about to roll across America. All-night dance parties that can attract several thousand participants, raves blossomed in Britain in 1988 and 1989, accompanied by a surge of acid-house dance music. Initially consisting of no- permit, semi-secret, underground events that were held in warehouses or open fields-gatherings that sometimes were brought to an abrupt end by police- the rave phenomenon has now come to include above-ground and legal versions, although the latter might spark some debate about authenticity among purists.
Angus, who has performed with the Shamen at both legal and illegal raves- and who at the moment is sitting in San Francisco, preparing for an American tour that brings the Shamen to the Vic Saturday-sees the United States as fertile rave territory.
”I think we`re going to witness the birth of something quite big in the U.S.,” says Angus, who clearly is not a disinterested observer. ”I think it`s probably going to start really happening in California first. In the rest of the country, activity seems to be centered pretty much on the clubs. But in California, there`s sort of a distinctly illegal vibe, and that`s what you need to get things exciting, things happening.”
While there has indeed been some rave activity, legal and otherwise, in this country, it remains to be seen whether Angus` prediction of ”something quite big” is borne out. But the softspoken native of Scotland certainly is doing his part to spark a rave boom here: The show he is taking through the States is, he says, an elaborate affair that lasts anywhere from four hours to all night. Besides including local deejays in each city on the tour, the show will tap the talents of Moby, a New York deejay/remixer/recording artist with a strong following in Britain, and Saffron, a former vocalist with the London techno twosome N-Joi.
Centerpiece of the evening will be a performance by the Shamen, now consisting of the core duo of vocalist/guitarist/keyboard player Angus and rapper Mr. C, along with new vocalist Cheryl and an assortment of support personnel. The proceedings, says Angus, will be augmented by a troupe of dancers and a slick light show.
”We`ve got not only computer-controlled lights but also visuals we`ll be projecting-slides, films, video-and atmospherics in the form of smoke and other things,” says Angus. ”The performance we put on involves quite an elaborate stage show, lots of dancing, lots of moving about, lots of lights.” Formed in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1986 by Angus and William Sinnott (who died last year in a swimming accident off Tenerife), the Shamen, after relocating to London in 1988, started a series of ”Synergy” nights at a London club that mixed deejays and live musicians. Originally a guitar-oriented indie-rock unit, the Shamen eventually moved into dance-music territory and scored a 1990 club hit both here and in the U.K. with ”Pro-Gen,” a song that in revamped and retitled form also became a recent dance chart entry as ”Move Any Mountain.” They have also gotten club play here with ”Make It Mine” and ”Hyperreal.”
While the Shamen might be associated with Britain`s rave phenomenon, their music is not necessarily typical of what`s heard on that scene today. Much of the music that fuels British raves these days is techno, a somewhat nebulous term once applied to Detroit`s version of house music but now generally indicating a driving, aggressive brand of dance music that hammers home rhythm and groove-and assorted electro noises-at the expense of melody and vocals. The Shamen`s music, on the other hand, while packed with insistent beats, comes across as more benign and melodic than a lot of techno, variously employing the metronomic thump of house, bits of tribal rhythm, percolating synth filigree and some relatively mellifluous vocals.
The Shamen`s current album, ”En-Tact,” serves up something that is certainly sharper-edged than, say, the synth-pop of Erasure but nonetheless has a certain blissed-out, peace-and-harmony quality. Its lyrics impart messages about positive thinking, altered consciousness and Utopian dreams, and the whole package exudes a communal good-vibes feel that, Angus says, was part and parcel of the initial rave scene in Britain.
”In the U.K., the music we play, the kind of people we attract, the atmosphere you get at the shows is very much an underground thing,” says Angus, ”in contrast to the large, mainstream-type raves which are happening over there now. The `acid summer of `88` lives on in the underground and in certain kinds of legal shows, including our own.
”The underground that developed over the years `88 and `89 is still in existence, but it`s quite hard to find and it`s on a small scale, with events of maybe up to 1,000 people. It spawned a rave overground, a commercial, sort of mainstream version of those events. Those happen on a large scale of maybe 5,000 to 10,000 people. Musically they are not as sophisticated as the underground events. They attract a younger audience, 16 or younger to 21, whereas the underground is much more for 20- to 30-year-old people. And the vibe you get at the mainstream versions, rather than being what it should be, of harmony and unity, is more an energy kind of thing. That peace/love/unity vibe is still there in the underground but to a lesser extent in the mainstream rave culture.”
Others concur that the British rave scene has definitely gone above-ground. ”Even the popular newspapers have good rave guides now,” says Andy Spinoza, a Manchester-based writer who has covered pop music for NME, the Face and Manchester`s Evening News. ”It`s very mainstream now.”
But Spinoza says that the presence on the rave scene of Ecstasy, a synthetic drug with hallucinogenic properties, sometimes brought a down side to the communal joy of early raves, at least around Manchester.
”When you`ve got people on Ecstasy, there`s a certain amount of fine-fellow feeling, a certain amount of underground, this-is-our-scene-and-t hey-can`t-take-it-away feeling,” says Spinoza. ”You got all that, but I was never blinded to the fact that there were quite a few nasty things going on behind the scenes, such as guys getting held up with guns over large shipments of drugs.
”There were a lot of gangsters on the scene. With raves being illegal, in Manchester you had guys moving in who may have been drug dealers-or who didn`t earn an honest living- etting up huge sound systems and then charging people to get in, seeing it as a quick buck.”
With its light shows, music, drug ingestion and (before it went mainstream) sense of separate culture, the British rave scene has shown some resemblances to the hippie tribal gatherings of the late `60s-a comparison Angus is getting just a bit tired of hearing but one he doesn`t dispute.
”I think it`s a valid comparison,” says Angus, ”although this is a much more updated and dance-oriented version of events. But the actual model goes back further than the `60s. It goes back to early history, in fact, when shamanistic societies existed, and once every couple of weeks they would have a moonlight dance-drums-drugs orgy. The model has existed for thousands of years, long before the `60s.”
Who: The Shamen
Where: Vic Theatre, 3145 N. Sheffield Ave.; 312-472-0366
When: 10 p.m. Saturday
How much: $20 (18-and-over show)
