A disclaimer first: we were involved in a little background work (figuring out e.g. dates of parties) for this documentary, so what you are about to read is a little biased.
I had been looking forward to Aaron Trinder’s documentary for a long time, and even though I had heard plenty of positive feedback from others, nothing could replace experiencing it for myself. It was well worth the wait. This film is joyful, inspiring, and nuanced, and provides a crystal clear view of times that we often spent in a euphoric cloud. The main achievement for me though was that, considering the subject is so multifaceted, the view of the scene is nothing short of panoramic. Trinder has wisely balanced this out by zooming in on pivotal aspects of the history. He, however, managed not to get too bogged down in the nitty gritty of the chronology. Figuring out the right dates for everything, working out which sound system or DJ was at which event, and making orderly lists, as I may have mentioned before, is perhaps the least pleasurable aspect of chronicling our scene, and Trinder thankfully seems to be of the same school of thought!
Even though there are plenty of hard facts for the avid rave historians among you, parts of the documentary are as colourful, psychedelic, and disorientating as befits the topic. In fact, they are reminiscent of the coming up sequence in Beats*.
The introduction describes acid house, but it is not lingered on unneccesarily. The absence of the Achilles heels of acid house (the pound signs reflected in the glistening eyes of both organisers and opportunistic criminals, the cops getting on top) were transformed into some of the strengths of our movement, at least for a couple of years…
We meet key figures in the scene but are never told that certain individuals or particular crews were more important than the others. Collectives like Free Party People, Spirals, DiY, Bedlam, Warp and Tonka are the main focus, with a nod to the second-gen deep housers influenced by DiY and some footage of more recent UKteks at the end. Important forerunners such as Circuses Normal and Irritant, and pre-acid house fluoro lunatics Mutoid Waste Company are also invited to the party. Early and reasonably unsung heroes such as Fun-de-mental and Sweat get a mention too.
Inclusivity and cooperation are central themes, as they should be. It is great to see the sentiment that ‘everyone is Spiral Tribe’ expressed here. It is a principle many of us partygoers were aware of at the time, but this aspect of Tribe history is often forgotten in the rush to canonize the core Spirals, and turn back the clock to the idolisation and guitar solos the house and techno scenes of that era were moving swiftly away from. The Do it Yourselfers, too, were welcoming, unless, as Grace says, ‘you’re a total knob’.
Although I am not fully in agreement as to the importance of Glasto ’90’s place in the discourse as number one mothernode of free party folks and travellers, the argument made in the documentary for this is very strong, and the elements of a great oral history are all there: the KLF turning up with a tape, the spangled Mondays, the dancefloor horse.
On the last leg of the road to Castlemorton Common the embattled Spirals are plagued by stormclouds of doom and paranoia. After the police brutality at Acton Lane in the spring, and a Roundhouse party in the new year where everything seemed to go pear shaped, the mood was dark, and the Tribe escaped to North Wales to, as was said in the sixties after the first flush of psychedelia passed, get it together in the countryside.
There are of course plenty of fond reminiscences about the golden years of the free party and the rebirth of the free festival, but not everything is projected through a rose-tinted lens. The racket and the mess that was made at the larger events, and how that affected locals, is one of the issues touched on. Mark Spiral, outside the courtroom, having just been acquitted, seems genuinely spooked and contrite about the scale and noisiness of Castlemorton, a huge contrast with the other bookend: the trial began with an militant platoon of shaven-headed Spirals in their uniform Make Some Fuckin’ Noise Ts marching in to the court.
We learn about the free festival’s musical progression, from the original space rock riffing to the future sound of pumping techno and house. The legendary pyramid tent is used to illustrate this (r)evolution. It belonged to Nik Turner of Hawkwind and covered the main stage at Stonehenge free festival from the early seventies, and a couple of decades later housed (pun intended!) DiY’s legendary outing at Glastonbury Festival’s Travellers’ Field’s colliding of cultures in 1990. The traveller-raver subculture clash is not glossed over, it is made clear that the new blood flowing onto festival sites was not always welcomed by one and all. Having said that, this shift meant that ‘Five years of suffering’ were over, at least for some of those who lived on the road. Don’t remember who said it (I will have to watch again!) but this is a beautifully expressed explanation of the ecstatic rebirth of traveller events half a decade after the violence of the Beanfield.
I hope that this film will serve not only to spread the word about what an amazing time we had back then, but more seriously to bring witness accounts of shocking of police brutality at parties such as Acton Lane to a wider audience. I see this as part of a broader movement (see also Dreaming in Yellow, A Darker Electricity) to document our culture as it was in the early nineties.
* Have you seen Beats? You should, it’s another great film about early nineties free parties, only it’s fictional. The visuals the protagonist sees soon after dropping his first pill are… well, you should watch it yourself!
P.S. We always add categories to our posts, and as you can see from the enormous list at the top of this entry, we went a little overboard this time! Any comments about the functionality and navigation of this site are most welcome 🙂
P.P.S. This is a short teaser version of a more detailed review, so if you want to read more, including the reactions of a certain blogger’s festivalgoing mother to the film, watch this space 🙂
P.P.P.S. Where can you see this documentary? Right now, your only chance is to catch it at a film festival near you. For the moment this is not available on general release or streaming services. If you want to help to make that a reality, please follow the link to donate: https://freepartydoc.info/donate Here is a list of upcoming screenings: https://freepartydoc.info/screenings-1
UK Free Parties and Free Festivals 1988-1994 