As becomes apparent from the introduction, this book was pieced together by Iain Donnelly from Keith’s freeflowing notes. Had I not read the introduction, I wouldn’t have realised this, and it’s worth bearing in mind when you read it. Donnelly, in the Editor’s Intro, characterises those notes as ‘often disjointed’ and holds that Keith ‘tended to throw down words on paper like a dysfunctional beat poet. It was my job to find order in the chaos’.
This turns out to be a rather different kettle of fish to the other free party memoirs (A Darker Electricity on Spiral Tribe and Dreaming in Yellow on DiY) on the Velocity Press imprint.
Why? First of all, the timeline is more… twitchy. This doesn’t affect the reading experience negatively, and in fact it might make for a more interesting read! Secondly, there is not much by way of politics. Finally, the way women are written about is… well let’s just say that I reckon some of the source material this was compiled from was somewhat old. Nevertheless, this is a great, if rambling, read. There’s colour, chaos, regular clashes with authorities, an often childlike impulsiveness, and plenty of humour.
Although I never knew Keith, I feel the book gives the reader a reasonably accurate idea of what he was like, faults included. Even though he has a tendency to be headstrong, he has a degree of self-awareness about his shortcomings that makes him relatable. He could certainly be classed as an unreliable narrator, but this adds to the charm. Even though seldom touched upon, it seems likely, knowing what we know now about racism in police forces, that they treated Keith more harshly due to his mixed ethnicity. It is certainly clear that the local cops recognized him very quickly and felt he was a thorn in their side.
Even though I had never been to a Desert Storm party, I had of course heard about them and Keith, and the Bosnia trip years before. Oh, and of course this slice of genius: Desert Storm – Scoraig ’93
I was pleasantly surprised to discover a thread leading from DS to Bassline Circus (a personal Fusion Festival favourite, as it provided a home to the kind of sounds not generally favoured by the average Fusionist). They also interfaced with Spiral Tribe (more of that later), Reclaim The Streets, DiY, and the anti-Criminal Justice Act movement.
Speaking of which, it’s unusual for two books to have the same image on the front, but whoever decided to put Matt Smith’s iconic image on the cover of this one had the right idea. Keith peers into the lens, left hand seemingly on the steering wheel, right clutching a mic, leaning precariously out of the Desert Storm van. The camouflaged vehicle, roof laden down with giant speakers and with Sheona, hands in the air, climbs the hill past the Plaza cinema towards Piccadilly Circus, leading protesters on one of the three marches against the Criminal Justice Bill.
The tale begins in Helmand’s Green Zone in Afghanistan. Keith, mid-battle, decides he doesn’t want to die, at least, not until he’s written a book. His decision to join the 52nd Lowlanders is motivated by a desire to take revenge on the Taliban after the failed 2007 Glasgow Airport terrorist attack.
Keith is the result of a fling in Moscow in 1968. His mum, a ‘slightly out-there hippy chick’ was there to research communism, while dad, a ‘dodgy Marxist..activist from Sudan’ was there due to the fact that he ‘had escaped from [Sudanese] jail with the help of the Soviets’.
Young Keith takes an interest in mechanics, and has a short-lived hobby of making bombs out of stolen ingredients. This sets the tone for the risk-taking and rebellious life he went on to live.
An early interest in music leads to his role in forming the not-terribly-originally-named House and Garage Club. Tipped off about a stall on Camden Market, Keith makes his way to London by train, dodging ticket inspectors on the way. Following this he somehow scams a free overnight stay in a hotel before travelling to Camden to complete his quest. The stall, run by a Simon Slime, sells tapes of the latest house (compete with track listings), and once Keith gets his hands on a couple of these he heads to Black Market Records on a buying spree.
One of his regular run-ins with the cops ends with Keith leaping out of a window and landing in a thorn bush. A major mushroom dosing misjudgement results in Keith and his friend Mad Dog entering what could only be described as psychotic states. A chaotic sequence of events, including trespassing on roofs, kickboxing cops, and attacking police cars culminates in the handing down an 18-month sentence, at which point Keith decides to fly off to Corfu with a new name, Krob.
Armed with a letter of introduction and the name of a bar, Keith, sorry, Krob soon lands on his feet with a regular DJing gig in the town of Pelakas. There he makes friends and enemies, fights, and gets involved in more than one holiday romance. On his return to Glasgow Keith hands himself in, then spends three weeks in a Young Offenders Institution. In the end, though, he only has to pay a fine. More DJing ensues. It is not long before Keith and his friends start thinking about ways around the restrictive licensing laws of the time. During 1990, when Glasgow was nominated City of Culture, clubs were permitted to stay open until 6 a.m. This didn’t last, and the old 3 a.m. opening time was reinstated on New Year’s Eve. The logical conclusion of the crew that would later become Desert Storm was that after parties simply had to be arranged, and the energetic Keith was instrumental in bringing some of these about. The tunnel rave he organised with the nascent Desert Storm was not a free party, but an unlicensed one costing £3. To make sure the punters found their way from the clubs to the rave, many of the crew left to flyer the clubbers as they left the venues, leaving some to guard the equipment. Before too long, cops are spotted near the entrance. Unfortunately the head cop recognises Keith. Thankfully, he gets away with it this time.
Inspired by the relative success of their first do, DS begin the hunt for a new venue. Due to the violent nature of Glasgow nightlife at the time, knife wielding idiots almost manage to ruin the party. In the melee, a car runs over a girl’s leg. Twice. This is all, by the way, before the after party even gets going. Then, after it has started, there’s the small matter of a punter with a serious facial knife wound. As Desert Storm’s parties grow more popular, more ‘dodgies’ start turning up. Would this, then, be the last DS event? History tells us that no, it won’t.
How does Keith propose to continue organising parties without the disruption from the spectrum of Glasgow heavies? By hiring the biggest, hardest, most-feared doormen, of course! Even Keith himself realises after a while that this is a mistake. There is a temporary sense of relief when the scary doorman and his equally-scary mates identify the knife-carrying punters with ease and disarm them (yes, of course they handed their weapons back at the end!) Not long after this, though, there is what Keith’s friend calls ‘the whirlpool of darkness’.
For another party, Keith and co. masquerade as a letting agency, looking for a venue for ‘a music video’ (that classic acid house trick). Abandoning the Desert Storm name for a while, a new venue, The Unit, is established, but, thanks to a machete attack on the venue (bit of a theme here!) security has to be upped.
Further adventures ensue, including a romance with a schoolgirl (!), skiing trips, near-shipwrecks, and crashes (both car and motorbike varieties).
The gist of the philosophical chapter can be summed up in these quotes, but Keith’s ramble also takes in Stephen Hawking, the wave/particle question, and many other avenues of tripped out enquiry:
- ‘Raves have something to do with the distortion of reality.’
- ‘Ravers are on a mission to investigate the meaning of reality.’
- At the rave, ‘You start to feel reality bend’.
Keith, however, offers an alternative suggestion:
- ‘or maybe this is all bullshit and people like to get out of their heads and have a good time.’
I suggest it’s a bit of both.
One interesting point he makes in this section is that, when travelling around Europe with mobile sound systems, the common ground he found with each and every of his fellow travellers was that they all took psychedelics in their early teens.
In 1994, the Desert Storm van, laden with speakers, leads the anti-Criminal Justice Bill march in central London, pumping out loud techno and Keith’s exhortations to ‘Kill the bill!’ Right at the moment the police are charging into the crowd of demonstrators and setting about them with batons, someone figures that it would be an appropriate moment to ask Keith if DS would be interested in joining an aid convoy to Bosnia for a New Year’s Eve party! Keith, being Keith, thinks that yes, this would be a very good idea. The Spirals, accompanied by a huge rig, are also at the demo, but they do not have permission to join the march. Keith gets acquainted with them, especially Debbie.
In the midst of the anarchic march, Keith needs a pee, and heads off to find a side street. He is confronted with a bunch of cops who he later finds out are TSG. Their shoulder badge numbers are covered up, and they are kitted out in balaclavas. In one of the more sinister passages of the book, Keith spies a ‘tray with strange little silver vials on it…the cops were snapping off the tops and necking the contents.’ They then notice Keith and he makes a quick exit. What’s in the vials, wonders Keith, ‘hippy-bashing juice maybe?’
Keith’s connection to the Spirals is cemented, and Mark, who’s experienced similar issues (see A Darker Electricity), suggests throwing parties for free. This would reduce interest from the authorities (no Public Entertainments License would be necessary for a free event) as well as discouraging gangsters (no door takings, no cash box to run off with, no threats of protection money).
Keith takes acid with the Spirals and, mid-trip, another hitherto-undocumented and highly disturbing episode takes place: Chris ‘Terminator’* warns the Spirals’ Glaswegian visitors to stop dancing as a drive-by shooting is about to happen. The music goes off, everyone ducks, and Chris wields his shotgun. No drive-by occurs, and, knowing what I know about Chris, I understand it was very likely all in his head, but that the shotgun itself was real. Chris then goes on to attack the RAC man who was there to fix the Desert Storm truck. He doesn’t like uniforms, apparently. Although there is much more to be said about this person, who was at one stage often seen around the Tribe and in their publicity shots, I will end by saying that his omittance from A Darker Electricity, as well as nearly all other accounts of the times by those closest to the Spirals, is very well deserved.
*I suggest we stop using the name Terminator too, as he was a real person, not a fictional one, and someone who is known in the community to have abused, seriously hurt and damaged people in very real ways.
Keith’s first visit to Bosnia is even more nerve-wracking, but there are, as always, moments of comic relief. There is the unfortunate cook for the aid convoy, whose vegan fare Keith describes as ‘lentil death’, throwing his pots and pans into a ravine after someone has cooked meat in them. Then there is the ‘morale hoover’, a name given by Keith to the member of the convoy whose very presence sucks the happiness out of just about everyone. The night before Christmas Eve, Desert Storm entertain a load of drunken squaddies in yet another surreal episode.
Why on earth do Keith and his intrepid fellow travellers, decide on taking a free party sound system to a war zone? Keith characterises music as ‘an essential’ and not a luxury. Keith’s attitude to music is reinforced when Dimethyltryptamine entities inform him, in block capitals, of his life mission: ‘YOUR JOB IN THIS REALITY IS TO PUT THE MUSIC ON’. Can’t argue with that.
The travelling sound system at some stage makes it to Italy, where the live set up is stolen. After putting out some feelers in the underworld, the thief is identified, but alas the kit has already been sold on. Unfortunately, even though the parties are free, gangsters still want a slice of the (drug) pie, and this time it’s the Camorra, a particularly nasty kind of mafia. Keith manages, at least by his reckoning, to defuse the tense situation before Desert Storm skip town.
More travels ensue, sometimes with a rig, sometimes without. Keith and his friend arrive in Venezuela for a gig. On the way to the airport their promoter stops off in one of Caracas’s barrios to procure coke for them. The cheap charlie causes all kinds of issues. The paranoiacs and coke-clouded situations in this part of the tale are fantastic anti-drug propaganda. There’s violence, there’s prostitution, there’s confusion. Coke doesn’t expand your minds, people, it makes them narrower.
Keith, ‘a little mental’ at a later juncture, finds himself in India straddling a Yamaha Enticer, armed with a replica 9mm. In a near-catastrophic misunderstanding (Keith is looking for a nightclub), our hero finds himself getting into big trouble at a Sikh temple for not covering his head or removing his shoes. Aside from this episode, the book doesn’t tell us much more about his Indian adventures, but the Publisher’s Note reminds us that Keith ‘slipped in and out of trouble with ease’.
Just when you think the book is over, there’s more: Ray Philp’s Epilogue, in which Keith explains a little about his army days, is followed by separate afterwords from Bstorm and Bizzy. Following these, there is a bunch of black and white photos. We see piles of speakers, more piles of speakers, and a New Year’s Eve rave in Barça. We see Keith as a child, at his mock wedding in Pelekas, without a shirt (but with a tie!) looking spun out next to a wall of cops at RTS, playing live sets, jumping off a bridge in Bosnia, and in his army uniform.
In Bstorm’s Afterword, the lead up to Keith’s death is laid out: ‘we were getting ready to go and do a rave out in Italy’. Bstorm hung out with Keith just hours before his death and didn’t detect anything unusual in his words or actions. They were due to travel to Italy the very next day, and Keith jumped into the Thames. Bstorm wonders if anything happened to Keith in the intervening hours, and acknowledging that Keith had been through a lot. We will probably never know.
What is Keith’s legacy? Firstly, Bstorm and others have resolved to keep Keith’s spirit alive with his tracks. Then there’s Bassline Circus (see above), and the immortalisation of Desert Storm in film, both documentary and feature. Indeed, the main party in Beats was apparently based around a DS party, and although this was something I wasn’t aware of when I watched it, there was a gritty realism to the party scenes. There is also footage of the Desert Storm van and some of their actual parties in the film, I’ll watch for these when I watch it again.
As for Keith himself, where is he now? His ashes are floating in space thanks to the space flight memorial fund.
UK Free Parties and Free Festivals 1988-1994 