2nd Rave!! Wh00p! And a Wicked one too! We met up with everyone at the train station in maidenhead at 7pm, and waited for my mate Matt to come along, only it turns out he fell asleep!! FFS!! SLAG! Jody comes along red eyed and hair all over the place complaining of trees jumping out in front of him. No he werent on anything we explained to Everyone this is what hes normally like! Anyone who met him will know that Got to london bridge really early and there was no one in the queue. In an attempt to find the queue we actually walked backstage by mistake and the Very friendly security just laughed and directed us to the real queue (if you can call 10 odd people a queue!!). We queued till just after 10pm waiting for them to open up and to our surprised we were actually in before the guest list people including a couple of DJ's!! haha! Make way for these guys from maidenhead Ratpack & Vibes! We swiftly moved through the cloakroom and chillout areas which were really nicely set up (except the cloakroom took ages!!) . Bought some special whistles and glowsticks which i thought cost a fiver but actually cost £8 coz they werent the glow in the dark whistles (which they didnt have any left off AT THE BEGGINING OF THE NIGHT hehe) but the guy let me off for £5 TOP! We then proceeded to find our way around this class venue and it was nice to find the dj line up and times posted in several places! so we went into the Hardcore room and were greeted by the sounds of warm up DJ Easy-ED. He was playing some nice classics from the 96/97 period to start off like "Dream my little fantasy" and "if you see the stars tonight". Great tunes but the room!?! It was to be honest tiny (but then happycore is a new sound to raindance so we cant complain too much, its just nice to see it there) maybe a 200 odd capacity and of the 20 people there so far only about 4 were dancin so it was a very slow start. So we decided to head around the venue and see what was about, on the way we met andreww and jo (who forgot she actually met me there! *sob* how could you! heh heh I wonder ;)) and chatted to andreww for a while who showed me around what was obviously gonna be a great venue and didnt dissapoint! Soon the venue filled up and the hardcore room was heaving with people! The atmosphere was great and it was soon time for the first meet up (11pm)! We met up with Slammin sam, brekka, dave, steve, someone whos name i didnt catch sorry (but he was new to ush.net meetups and a couple of other people who ive now forgotten as im writing this review on January 20th 2000!!). I was surprised not to see kev and time around!! and By 12 me and andreww were gettin worried!! Especially when i phoned him to see where he was and didnt get an answer! KEVIINNN!!!? Never fear he showed up at the next meet up (1am) along with time and explained hed been queuing for 3 hours (shoulda jumped in with us matey!!). We hit the hardcore dance floor to the sounds of Vibes, Force & Styles and The happycore Dj's along with the USH net and Everyone was having it big time!. The Sets were amazing and unlike slammin, Force and styles played a fabulous set full of great tunes!! but did i hear higher ground among their set, yes i did, but that aside A great sign of things to come from these two! We then took a break in the dark arch and our mate who'd came with us actually managed to fall asleep!! (Tim at his first rave), which was Weird to say the least!!!! We then met two girls from america (new york) and had a chat to them for a while about UK raves, and general chat. They looked to be about 16/17 but were actually 21 (we now know why us lot get in!! hehe). The told us that raves in the US are gettin bigger and bigger and this can only be a good thing for the UK, hopefully we should start getting some more quality production coming our way to get the ball rolling again! The Security guy on the Side door then joined and showed he truly cared about the scene just like the ravers and talked to us about its affairs. Just to quickly say that guy was TOP!! at one point MC Storm shouted out to the music "1,2,1,2,3,GO!" and the security guy threw the doors open on the count of GO! it was a nice touch and was appreciated by the now boiling hot crowds! He also kept flashing his torch within the dark arch to check the floors so that no one would fall over while ravin in there! Respeckt That Security! After chattin with the girls from New York we hit the old skool room for ratpack! WHAT A set!! What a Show and what an atmosphere!!!! It has always been my goal to get to a ratpack set and i finally accomplished it and am i glad i did!!! The Old skool room was massive with perhaps a 1,500 + capacity! And the Tunes dropped like gold, tunes like Searchin for my rizla, Trip to trumpton and Captain of the ship!! All the usual ratpack stuff that u just never get bored off! The laser show was fucking amazing !! The pictures dont show it to its full glory it was mad, blistereing lights flashing raindance all over the place and laser tunnels and strobes to match kicked the crowds into a frenzy who had all came alive when "Take me away" was dropped near the end! And who did i see in the old skool room!! DJ LUKOZADE and DJ CHIS-E-MANIC!!!!!! W00h00! My DJ idol in the flesh and he was a very friendly genuine bloke!! I was chuffed to say the least! The guys id come up with Tim, Rich, Stuart and Paul left at about 2:30 (LIGHTWEIGHTS!!) We then chilled to the sounds of Jimmy J and to finish it off some Hardcore from DJ Bosha i think who played classic after classic and made it hard to leave!! Me and Jody decided we'd done well to leave at around 6:30am (a half hour later than the event was supposed to go on - nice touch from raindance to make up for the queues). Then a 1 hour cloakroom queue! ARGH! not nice when u just wanna get home and crash out but still we chatted to fellow ravers in the queue and time flies by when your chattin to people with such wicked past experiences of events like helter skelter and dreamscapes which i know i'll never get to experience *sniff*! We then went back on the train and by coincidence were sitting opposite the 2 girls we'd met from new york. We chatted until they left (they assured us theyd be back ravin in the UK soon with more of our US happycore ravers) and then fell asleep till we got back to slough. Jody told me it was his turn to sleep and for me to watch out for the stops. I fell asleep obviously and only just woke up as the doors at maidenhead were about to close so we just GOT back home in decent time (almost 10 o clock). We had a wicked night!! A few complaints about the small arena but that cant be helped as its an old skool event not happy hardcore , we're lucky they have a HH room! And the taps were turned off so they charged 50p for water! come on get that sorted please, its illegal! Apart from that it was wicked, great event, great promoter, great venue, great securtiy, wicked atmostphere and the music was just amazing!!! Wicked night we'll be there in February for sure!! Shouts out to Kev, Slammin’ Sam, Andreww, Jo, DJ LukoZade, Chris-E-Manic, Paul, Dave, Stuart, Rich, Tim, Jody, The girls from New York, Cakeo (Who we recognised from photos on ush.net), Billy Bass, Time, The Security Guy and all the raindance security) Brekka and everyone else we met!! Top night! See u at the next one!!
