For those of you who’ve never been to one of these, STS is basically a free/illegal outdoor rave which takes place in a secret location somewhere around Bedford roughly once a month. They give out the directions to the location at the last minute via someone’s mobile phone voicemail message. Anyway, after elation – one thing leads to another and Jen, Astraboy and myself all end up sitting in a Tesco car park (somewhere near Royston) at around midnight on Saturday waiting for the voice mail message to change from ‘please call back between so and so’ to ‘the parties over here’. Finally the directions are given out and we all hit the road in a convoy of cars heading out into the sticks where you would proper shit yourself if you broke down – you know what I mean – full on blair witch type stuff – IT’S THE SAME TREE MAN !!!!! Anyway, we’re bombing along and we suddenly see this dude in the hedge waving a torch around so we look for a place to turn round, he lead us into a field just off the road where everyone was parking their cars. No music at this point as the rig was still under construction by the organisers, we all looked on (despite the fact that it was dark) and watched a speaker stack go up which was about the size of a house! Most people were just standing around having a chat whilst all this was going, they were all very friendly, approachable ravers and we felt instantly at home with it all - I must have been offered drugs by various people about twice every five minutes! Once the rig was complete they started off with an Altern-8 track, can’t remember which one but it was old skool breakbeat for the first few hours which rocked the place totally – everyone was bouncing around like space hoppers! They even opened a little bar off to the side of the main rig and you can tell these people aint in it for the money when you can buy bottles of water for 50p a go! Respect! There was a period of Jungle that came on after that, which I wasn’t so keen on as I myself am not particularly into Jungle – but the crowd didn’t die down, they all continued to bounce around and wave bright objects around in the air! So Rhod and I had a wander around, first thing we discovered was that the old bill had turned up and had blocked off the entrance to the field so that no more people could get in. They didn’t have the man power to stop it so they thought they would try and prevent it getting bigger.... MUFF MUFF MUFF MUFF MUFF MUFF MUFF MUFF MUFF MUFF FUZZY FUZZY MUFF MUFF MUFF.... ....which didn’t really work as people just parked their cars on the road side and jumped over the nearest hedge – but hey, they’ve got to be seen to be doing something haven’t they? Incidentally there must have been at least 300 ravers present by this point. There were various people doing fire dancing and someone had built a bonfire off to one side so we all went and warmed ourselves by that for a bit. I kept find ants on me whilst I was sitting by the fire – which was nice :) The sky was beginning to lighten and the music changed over once again, this time it was some proper hard Techno! We all went back over the speaker stack where everyone was dancing to have a stomp. Now… if you’ve never been to one of these – this next bit I am about to describe is in itself a single qualifying reason for coming and trying one of these raves out; THE MOSCH PIT And I am not joking either, its not like a heavy metal mosch where everyone is really crammed together and all trying to scramble over each other – it was more like pinball with ravers! This one was way bigger than the last one too – I could only take it for about 10 seconds before my legs gave way, but I’m no spring chicken anymore so I expect most of you youngons could take it!! Even if you don’t allow yourself to be swept up into it – its actually quite entertaining to just stand back and watch everybody writhe and seethe around together like they were in some kind of raving pinball machine – hehe :) The sun rose somewhere around this time, and I tell you – that was a sight to behold....there is something very ‘basic human instinct’ and tribal about dancing outside under the stars and watching the sun rise in the morning… not sure how to fully describe it – I guess you had to be there! Anyway, we had to leave around this point and we missed Caines freeform set – but never mind, I am sure we’ll catch you another time mate!! Quote of the night: “That’s not a lightning storm – THAT’S A f**k OFF BIG STROBE!!!!!” Shouts to everyone who I saw that night, I am propping my eyelids open with matchsticks just to finish this off so you’ll forgive me if I can’t remember to name names. All the best and I’ll hopefully see you all on the dance floor (err field) some time soon!!
