Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, May 28, 1995                   TAG: 9505260024
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DIANE STRUZZI STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long

RAVE

BEFORE YOU ENTER there's a muffled throb. Once you're inside, the driving beat pulls the heart into step, swirling around your body, drawing you into a vortex of sound.

The dance floor is a sea of bobbing heads and hands. A strobe flashes to electronic beeps and blurts. Movement is frozen with each pop of light.

Dancers suck pacifiers and lollipops, press cuddly stuffed toys close to their chests and sniff Vicks Vapo-rub from surgical masks. Thin stainless-steel hoops crowd their earlobes, dangle from their lips, noses, eyebrows, belly buttons. Tongues are skewered by silver-posted balls.

Bare-chested boys wear sunglasses. Halter-topped girls glitter with sparkling eyeshadow.

Boys and girls alike sport short-cropped, peroxide-blond hair with dark roots and oversized pants that flirt below the hips.

Anything goes. Everything rips.

Raving at the Iroquois, 1995. A futuristic traffic jam of sight and sound. Adrenaline percolates.

Here, you don't feel the music. You are the music.

"We're really going to phat it up," 19-year-old Matt Brown says. "There are all kinds of brothers in here and we love them all. Peace and love make the world go around. ...I just love it. It's so positive."

On the stage a woman dances with the air. Tight top. Baggy pants. She clenches a pacifier between her teeth. She is tripping on LSD. Below her, someone tosses baby powder onto the dance floor, making movement easier. She sees the white mess and jumps from the platform - a breeze of sour sweat and warm air as she passes.

"For me, it's somewhere where I can finally fit in, where I can be me," the 20-year-old says later. "Really there's no way to explain raves except passion. It's an acquired taste."

You hop, skip, sway from side-to-side and weave your hands. You hold sticks of neon liquid that sweep fluorescent green and red in the air. The hard-pumping dance pushes you beyond the limit of exhaustion.

In mid-movement you walk off the dance floor, out a side door, into the alley, in search of cool air. Your heart races uncontrollably. In the distance is the throb. You find a cigarette stashed deep in a pocket, take a drag and re-enter.

Nothing can stop the rave.

It's disco-era heat, lights and music blended with the psychedelic idealism of hippie love thrown into cyberspace, all set to the pulsating, synthesized drums, cymbals, jungle noise and occasional breathy exclamations of a singer.

Ravers talk to each other on the Internet. They gather at all-night parties. They drop LSD and wafers of Ecstasy, a newer hallucinogen, to feel the sounds and hear the lights.

In Roanoke the parties have names like "I Want You," "Love Bug" and "Transformation," events spiriting hundreds of participants on a journey toward the millennium and beyond. On Saturday, promoters hope to create the biggest rave yet in the valley, drawing 1,000 to the Roanoke Civic Center for the "Evolution."

Ravers eschew "gangsta rap" because of its violence. Alcohol is an attraction for only a few. People greet each other with a hug. And outside, in the parking lot, ravers air out, hang loose and get high.

Raves emerged from England's "acid house" music scene in the 1980s - underground, nonstop and risky. After clubs closed at 2 a.m. partiers broke into warehouses, brought in lights and speakers and blasted a mesmerizing melee that transported the listener beyond the present.

The parties were known for how they were advertised, generally by word-of-mouth. Locations were kept secret until hours before the doors opened.

Stateside, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles became the scene's nirvana. Dance clubs and warehouses filled their space with the rapid-fire sound of techno music. Ravers took speed to keep up. But the drugs of choice remained Ecstasy and LSD. The psychedelics kept the experience fresh and the trip moving forward.

Drug use is a part of it for some Roanoke ravers; others come to indulge solely in the music.

In Los Angeles, ravers say gluttonous drug use killed the scene, turned some to violence and clouded the music's message of harmony and fun. But the rave raged on, into other cities across the country, where teen-agers and young 20-somethings still flood the clubs to stay up all night and melt into the music.

Raves are the great equalizer, a place where there is no right or wrong, no pressure. You come as you are or how you want to be. It's a raver's very own virtual reality set to mind-boggling music and laser-fast lights.

Like groupies of the Grateful Dead, ravers travel from city to city to dance with the DJ that presents the best "vibe," to meet new friends and to connect with a generation.

In April, at least 30 ravers from Roanoke descended on The Ritz at Raleigh, N.C., in search of the energy at "Bubble." The double-decker warehouse crammed 1,400 ravers inside.

"It's like a big family," 20-year-old Roanoker Hoss Pence said at The Ritz. "Here, there's an inner love that everyone pulls together."

In Roanoke the scene began nearly three years ago in the dank and clandestine brick warehouses downtown beside the railroad. When police busted up a couple of the parties, the scene moved upscale. Party hosts learned quickly that they wouldn't lose profits so easily if they went legal.

Jeff Alderson, hungry to sponsor and spin at parties like the ones his friends in Florida had shown him, started Sonic Life Productions. At his first party he lost $1,000. That was nearly two years ago.

In February, the rave he sponsored at the Olympic Skating Rink in Roanoke County made him a profit of $4,000 and drew nearly 900 people. The party did for him and the Roanoke rave scene what Elvis' gyrating hips did for rock 'n' roll. Raves were no longer innocent.

Partiers were seen snorting white powder from the tile on the bathroom floor. Undercover officers arrested two ravers on drug charges: one for possessing marijuana, another for selling Ecstasy.

News of the arrests spread rapidly. Within weeks a partnership of parents, community leaders and school officials met about the risks raves presented to minors. The goal is not to shut down raves but to make them a safe place for teen-agers, said JoAnn Burkholder, a student-assistance program coordinator with Roanoke County Schools and member of the partnership.

"A small number of people tried to bring the drugs here," Alderson said. "They made problems for me and the scene. Raves were fine all along, we just got a couple of bad eggs. The ones we know of we keep an eye on."

Raves cater to an age group - primarily 13 to 26 - yearning to experiment, a reality Alderson says he can't change. Every scene has its drug, he says.

"To me, the drugs aren't a part of it. To some they party hard," he said. "But it's probably easier for some of these kids to get drugs than it is to get alcohol. ...I want these people to remember what I do, and if they're on drugs they can't."

His company professionalized the Roanoke scene, announcing upcoming parties on colorful fliers, holding them once a month at the Iroquois. Alderson, also known as DJ Spice, spins at his parties, bringing in local DJs and talent from around the country.

The party's success comes down to the DJ. An expert spinner can transcend a rave from mere fun to a voyage through the music. Poised on a dais above the ravers, the spinner cajoles a crowd to move into the music, dance to the beat, rise to another reality.

The music is at times haunting, monotonous, so loud it smothers the eardrums. Making it is sheer magic.

Scott Dixon learned his craft in the small disc jockey booth at The Park, a semi-private club on Salem Avenue Southwest in Roanoke where gay men, lesbians and hard-core night-clubbers go to boogie. He began spinning six years ago, when he was only 13. Now, Alderson regularly features Dixon at the local raves.

"It's like a religion, or when you love somebody," Dixon said of the music. "It's so weird. You express your feelings loud and it's coming through the speakers. You're playing knowledge on the dance floor."

Dixon is DJ Friction. When he works, he watches the dancers, sets the mood. In his bedroom studio he composes his own tracks of artful, soul-searching techno.

The thriving scene is expanding. Between raves, Alderson now hosts less intense gatherings, called techno parties, where ravers can dance into the night without throngs of people.

And there are other entrepreneurs making their own niches. This spring, Christian Webb began holding his own techno party every Friday at Night Lites on Campbell Avenue Southwest.

"If I'm not throwing parties someone else will," Alderson said. "It just seems to be getting bigger no matter what I do."

March 29. Techno Party. The Comedy Club. Ravers avoid the nighttime cruises down Williamson Road into the old-world suburbia of strip malls, fast-food joints and parking lots. Boring. Simple-minded. Blah. The big indoor malls are amusement parks of ridicule, they say, where a visit can bring catcalls about their dress and hair.

"There are a lot of people who are weird and strange and take pride in it," said one 17-year-old boy seated underneath a table by the bar.

"Here you don't have to be afraid," said a 19-year-old girl on the floor beside him.

"When I go out in public I've had people throw stuff at me," said Antoinette Volley, 18. She wears combat boots, wraps a dog collar with a lock around her neck and supplements her income by exotic dancing at Girls Girls Girls on Franklin Road.

It's about fitting in, feeling safe, being comfortable.

"Raves bring a lot of people out of the woodwork," said Amy, a 20-year-old who didn't want her real name used. "Raves produce the punk rockers, the homosexuals that come from the Park; it brings out people who were not `in' in high school. I can dress funny and no one looks at me weird."

March 24. "Transformation" Rave. The Iroquois. Nightclub owner Shirley Thomas stands at the door checking pockets and watching the movement of the crowd. Dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans, she is a motherly, vigilant figure.

By midnight, a fog of cigarette smoke and dry ice surrounds the dancers. Thomas walks among them. Seeing someone with a beer, an uncommon sight at a rave, she jerks his hand up to see if it wears the stamp of legal age. It does.

The party has just begun. Hundreds will come.

People don't walk, they groove from place to place. Others mill by the edge of the dance floor, ready to plunge in when the beat feels right. There's plenty to choose from - the pumped up, hip-hop of phat beat, the repetitive, primitive sounds of tribal song or the airy, enchanting ambient/trance tracks.

2 a.m. in the girls' bathroom. There's the baby doll look, hip-hugger '70s attire and '90s grunge - short skirts, teeny-weeny tops, bell bottoms that whisk the tiled floor, crocheted hats and oversized sweaters.

Two girls disappear into a stall. Later, one says they took a snort of crystal methamphetamine, which some ravers take to stay up all night.

"Crystal makes me feel up so I can dance," she says, leg tapping furiously. "I've been doing it about a year and half. I snort it. I started shooting heroin a few months ago."

She pulls up the sleeve of her gray wool sweater to show two pin pricks surrounded by bruises on her left arm.

Outside the dancers have moved into every nook and cranny in the club. It's claustrophobic. The crisp odor of menthol emanates from surgical masks. Ravers say it enhances the effects of Ecstasy and helps them breathe through the heat and smoke.

On the pool table a 26-year-old man wearing a leather vest, pacifier attached to his pants, watches the strobing light. He is tripping on Ecstasy, which gives a heightened sense of reality, a starburst of tactile sensations.

The light, "is sort of like the center of the universe," he says. "And God is in the center and he's sending signs - 'You know I'm here, come to me.' It's not chaotic. Wow, that is really nice."

In the first half-hour to 40 minutes after taking Ecstasy there's an intense rush. As the drug metabolizes, stimulating the brain's neurochemicals responsible for pleasure, it deepens the person's sense perception, making them want to touch, cuddle and talk. Coming down causes dry mouth and teeth grinding, which is why ravers suck on pacifiers.

Ecstasy, like LSD, is not addictive, drug experts say. But it can be dangerous. The purity of a capsule or wafer is rarely known, said Theo Petrocci, a Roanoke substance-abuse counselor. And ravers say it sometimes is cut with heroin.

In England, where raves still draw thousands, more than 25 ravers have died after taking the drug, overexerting themselves, dehydrating and becoming hyperthermic. Last summer, two ravers on Ecstasy died in Florida in a similar fashion when the air conditioning was shut off in a nightclub, said Deborah Harlow, a drug addictions researcher at the Harvard Medical School.

Some promoters and ravers now tout a herbal alternative to Ecstasy that goes by the same name and is advertised in magazines geared at Generation Xers. The all-natural capsules create a similar trip without all the side-effects, according to the manufacturer.

Drug use is common at raves, said Harlow, who has studied the parties in San Francisco and New York over the past six months. She found that the musical progression at a rave reflects an Ecstasy high - rushing forward, hitting a consistent tempo and finally chilling out.

"The younger you were, the more likely you were to use your first illicit drug at a rave," she said. "But there was little open dealing. It was only once we got to know people did we learn about the dealers."

That experience echoes the local scene, where ravers say they buy only from those they know and rarely at the party.

"I'm running from the scene before I get busted," said a 22-year-old who used to sell LSD. "Everyone's so scary here. Everyone thinks everyone else is a cop."

Police say they monitor the parties but have not seen flagrant drug use. Last month, they charged a man outside the Iroquois with selling LSD.

"I'm not ready to say everyone who goes to a rave party is inclined to do drugs," Roanoke Vice Lt. Ron Carlisle said. "In fact, I'd say a minority. We believe the partiers are leaving the raves, ingesting the drugs elsewhere and then returning."

May 5. 10 p.m. Market Square. Roanoke. The Friday night before a big rave, teen-agers meet at the stalls. They sit on the sidewalk near Books Strings & Things. They run across the street to Mill Mountain Coffee & Tea.

Amy strides down Campbell Avenue Southwest, knapsack on her back, sketchpad underarm. There are only images on the first few pages of the pad - inked visions of faces and jumbled graphics. The 20-year-old is a hard-core raver.

She meets up with Claire, 18, and Amanda, 17, who have been given pseudonyms because they did not want their real names published.

"It's gonna be so bad," says Claire, describing the next day's rave. Amy and Claire start air-dancing, shadow boxing, moving their bodies slowly.

The techno party at Night Lites costs $5. Amy's got the cash, but Claire and Amanda are saving up for Saturday's rave, which costs $8.

Amanda's green eyes sparkle under the bright lights of the Market. Amy and Claire want to use their friend's car, so the three walk to the parking lot behind the market buildings.

"To some people, it's all about the music," Amanda says. "Some people are all about the drugs. But I'm not. If the music isn't good. I'll leave. ...I've never taken any drugs. I'm a straight-edged girl who can have a good time. And I get a lot of respect for that."

Amy and her dance partner crawl into the backseat.

"You go in and create your own world," Amanda continues. "You are yourself. No one can bother you."

Amy rummages in her bag and pulls out a hole-punched aluminum can. She looks around outside, drops a nugget of crack cocaine into the can, waves a lighter underneath, takes a drag and hands it to Claire, seated beside her.

Inhaling the smoke, Claire says, "I've been totally sober at a rave and if the DJ is so phat and you're just there. ...I don't need drugs on the scene. It's a family. I've never felt so accepted. There's a point you're dancing so hard, it gives me chills."

"Exactly, no lie," Amanda says, turned around in the driver's seat.

The lighter flicks. Amy puffs, then breathes in deep.

"You're tired, but you don't want to miss anything," Amanda says. "You've got it and you can see it."

"I think I'm in my experimental stage," Claire says. "I've been around drugs so long. I won't do them during the week because school is too important to me."

Amy tosses her head onto the backseat.

"I'm just rocked," she says.

The three return to the stalls, planning to meet up on Saturday. Amy walks down Campbell Avenue Southwest toward Night Lites, crossing against the red light.

"It's the first time in two weeks I've had any drugs," she says. "Drugs are cool in a way. But it's not cool to get hooked. Am I? I don't know."

May 6. 1 a.m. "I Want You" Rave. The Iroquois. Traffic in the parking lot is constant. A jeep pulls up, a high-heeled woman with platinum blond hair exits. She's not part of the crowd, she's just there to gawk. She walks up to Antoinette Volley, who wears her signature dog collar and has gelatined her hair into tall spikes.

"Can I touch it?" asks the girl.

"Just don't pinch it," Volley said. "Otherwise it will fall down."

The girl brushes it with her hand, smiles and gets back in the jeep.

"I appreciate what's going on," said J.C. Belial, who pulls up in a white pick-up truck to visit with Volley. "People go here to see each other and be seen. People come here to outdo each other. I appreciate it, but I just can't relate to it."

Many in the parking lot never enter the Iroquois. It's like an open-air anteroom to the rave.

Inside, Shirley Wold experiences her first rave. She came with her 13-year-old daughter and several friends, interested in what the scene is all about. She stands by the edge of the dance floor, perusing the crowd.

"I don't see anything that's violent here," she said. "These kids need a place to be, because if they're not in here, they're out on the streets."

Near dawn, dancers still throw their bodies to the ever-present beat. Some rest their heads on each others shoulders, closing their eyes. At 5:15 a.m. the music stops. The silence is loud.

"I can't hear," one boy says to his dance partner.

There's an after-rave at Night Lites. It costs $2 to get in. Some ask their friends to spot them a couple of bills. Inside, the club looks more like a country diner, with ravers seated at tables covered by plastic blue-checkered sheets. They drink coffee straight and smoke.

In the darkened dance room the turntables are set up. The chatter of conversation is the only noise.

Then static crackles from the speaker. Then an electronic bounce. A flash of white light. The pumping sound takes over. And the beat goes on.

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