So if anyone is wondering what Mario and I were doing in the 90s, this pile of old rave and club flyers gives a good clue! I’ve mentioned before we were DJs in the Los Angeles club and underground rave scene. During my closet clean out project last week, I also stumbled upon a plastic shoe box sized container stuffed full of these flyers.

Talk about memories! That particular time – especially 1993 to about 1998 was the golden age of the rave scene in my opinion. And even while it was happening, we all had the wherewithal to realize it was a special moment in time that would never be replicated quite the same way again. That was one of the reasons why I saved all the flyers.

This was an era where a group of people with a stack of speakers, 2 turntables and generators would set up in abandoned warehouses in downtown L.A. and have a dance party basically until a fire marshal or the police would show up to break it up … then those same people would truck everything to a new location and start it up again. To keep the locations as secret as possible, early promoters would hand out flyers at other raves, clubs, parties or record shops that would have a starting “map point” on them. You’d go there and basically get another flyer that would tell you to go somewhere else. Sometimes you’d do this several times before ending up at the actual location.

There were also parties out in the desert. These were some of the most memorable ones I can remember. There was a group who called themselves the Moontribe who were especially known for this. One night, we all drove 6 hours into the desert to get to a rave. Looking back on it, it was absolutely insanity, but we survived.

There were also plenty of “legal” (permitted) raves. These would often happen on big holidays like 4th of July or New Years Eve. They got fairly large even back then, renting out places like the fairgrounds, or a number of city blocks downtown. I think that is basically what that scene morphed into through the 00’s and into 2010 and beyond … just giant festivals. Which were definitely not the same thing we experienced, “back in the day”. It’s probably like old hippies talking about the first Woodstock.

And then there were all the events we actually DJ’d at. Granted, we were never headliners or anything (although I can’t say we didn’t have groupies … that’s a whole other story!) and didn’t play out every weekend, but did get out here and there. We even through a couple clubs of our own during this era (one happened in the back room of an Ethiopian restaurant).

The best part about a lot of this is that we didn’t have smart phones back then. There were people who had video cameras (there’s some great, grass-roots style documentaries about the scene in the 90’s that have some early footage), but it certainly wasn’t the same as now. People went for the experience and were fully present for it (even the ones who chose to “enhance” that experience with various and sundry “substances”).

I remember it was at a rave in the mountains that Mario first officially said he loved me.

So yeah, flood of memories in that box that I’ll never forget.