Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture By Simon Reynolds Little, Brown 464 pages Modulations: Cinema for the Ear Directed by Iara Lee Produced by George Gund A L S O_.T O D A Y Blue Glow Labor Day TV marathon mania: "Planet of the Apes," "90210," "M*A*S*H" and Jerry Lewis [WANDERLUST] Raving in Goa By Karl Taro Greenfeld Into the dark heart of India's newest scene Y E S T E R D A Y Next stop, Hollywood By Charles Taylor Hollywood's glossy good-time gal movies put indie-hit "Next Stop, Wonderland" to shame (09/03/98) RECENTLY IN ENTERTAINMENT Sharps & Flats Reviews of new CDs by Belle and Sebastian, Keb' Mo', Juliana Hatfield, Willie Nelson and Six Finger Satellite (09/02/98) Home Movies By Charles Taylor "Haut/bas/fragile": The ecstasy of everyday Parisian life (09/01/98) Monicagate: The movie By Tim Cavanaugh Hollywood's hottest script doctor makes a house call -- to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. (08/31/98) 54 Reviewed by Charles Taylor Instead of offering a comic portrait of '70s excess, "54" is a disappointing '90s-style morality tale (08/28/98) Slums of Beverly Hills Reviewed by Mary Elizabeth Williams Tamara Jenkins' debut feature is a gritty, nostalgic trip through the wrong side of 90210 (08/28/98) BROWSE THE ENTERTAINMENT ARCHIVES FEATURES TELEVISION MOVIES MUSIC

The Ennui and the ecstasy SIMON REYNOLDS' "GENERATION ECSTASY" AND IARA LEE'S "MODULATIONS" DRYLY DOCUMENT THE RISE AND FALL OF RAVE. BY JANELLE BROWN | We are filthy and couldn't care less. Our feet have kicked a cloud of warehouse dust into the air. The laser lights overhead pierce the haze like alien beacons, but we're dancing too hard to notice. Tomorrow morning, we'll be sticky with dried sweat and grime, a paste coating our oversize jeans from where we lay in jellied heaps on the floor, telling strangers how much we really, really loved them. The grit and rhythmic ringing in our ears will be the only tangible evidence of the disappeared night, of our frenzied convulsions, of the ecstatic whoosh that swept down on us and carried us up, up, up into an endless tunnel of sound. It is 1992, and we -- the 1,000 or so otherwise sane humans who have converged on this deserted and cavernous warehouse outside San Francisco -- are ravers. We will continue like this all weekend, moving from after-party to after-party, following the sound systems to beaches and parks and abandoned train yards, stopping only on Sunday night, when we collapse, exhausted. Monday, at our jobs or in our classes, we'll extricate the party flyers from our crusted clothes and start planning our next weekend's debauchery. Rave is an amalgam of this half-century's various underground movements, a concoction of '60s psychedelia and '70s disco topped off with '90s drugs and technology. Like each hedonistic lifestyle that came before, rave looks somewhat ludicrous from the outside: House music is just senseless, repetitive noise, critics say; the parties are luvved-up spectacles for teenagers. It's impossible to describe to the uninitiated the joy in a collective high of adrenaline and sweat. It's been 10 years since British clubbers adopted Detroit techno and turned it into an underground dance scene. Rave (if simply defined as illegal, all-night dance parties fueled by ecstasy and techno) still exists, but most hardened veterans of the scene will argue that it's just "not the same." So it's nostalgia time in clubland, time for the cultural critics to come in and tell us all Why It Was. A thin trickle of rave reminiscences have emerged from fiction writers in the last few years -- most notably, Douglas Rushkoffs "Ecstasy Club," and Irvine Welsh's "Ecstasy" -- but few have attempted a documentary that would pick out what, exactly, made rave and techno culturally relevant. Filmmaker Iara Lee's "Modulations" and Spin editor Simon Reynolds' book "Generation Ecstasy," then, are in the difficult position of being the first mainstream documentaries created by "insiders" to try to walk the line between anthropology and cultural commentary, drug reminiscences and music criticism. PLUR -- Peace Love Unity Respect -- this is the mantra of the rave scene. We will change the world, the idealists say, simply by spreading the love. It sounds like something out of Haight-Ashbury, circa 1969, and in a way it is. The San Francisco rave scene in particular has always nodded to its cultural antecedents, and Timothy Leary and Terence McKenna both participated in the new scene. Like Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, the ravers wrapped their parties in Day-Glo and fluorescent paint, strobe lights and alien iconography, converting abandoned warehouses into psychedelic spaces. But unlike the '60s acid scene, rave was never political. Despite the ministrations of a few liberals, who disseminate idealistic literature or hold dance events in honor of "free speech" (i.e., please don't bust our parties), the scene has been more about escapism than activism. It's about creating Hakim Bey's Temporary Autonomous Zone, a place where the rules of the real world don't apply for as long as you can stave off the police. PLUR is just a justification for the party. N E X T_P A G E _| Is there meaning to the madness? - - - - - - - - - - - - ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTIAN CLAYTON