Scenes from Groove

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A couple of Halloweens ago I went with a big group of friends to a rave called Monster Massive, and for my Halloween costume I decided to dress as a candy raver. You probably know what a candy raver looks like even if you think you don't -- it's the stereotypical raver garb: big flouncy pants, visor cap, furry animal backpack, pacifier, glowsticks, maybe a dust mask and lots of plastic bracelets. Girls may add cute accessories like bug antennae or angel wings, and boys may add goofy accessories like Mickey Mouse gloves. The point is to look child-like and even a little silly -- and despite the protests from the it's-not-about-the-drugs camp, it's all about connecting with other people on Ecstasy. Ecstasy rollers love anything adorable, and what's more adorable than a cute girl in glitter makeup and angel wings, or a full-grown guy with a Tickle Me Elmo backpack bouncing between his shoulder blades?

For my Halloween outfit I managed to obtain the following. Gobs of plastic jewelry. Pacifier. Visor cap reading "Ecstasy Street" (a la Sesame Street). Blinking light that attached to the visor cap. Bright yellow Nike t-shirt (candy ravers are label queens as much as anyone else -- Nike wasn't quite as hip as, say, Kikwear or Abercrombie & Fitch, but it would do). Wide-legged blue flannel pants polka-dotted with smiley faces. And the piece de resistance, a Hello Kitty backpack. I was ready to, ahem, roll.

Monster Massive was a dreadful event. The promoters hadn't hired enough security, and between the backlog at the pat-down stations and the armies of line-jumpers, it took us over three hours to get inside. Once inside there were more long lines for water and bathrooms, the sound was bad, and it was impossible to find out what DJs were playing where. I had the time of my life. For that night I was a candy raver, and of all the various bizarre subcultures that populate the dance music scene, candy ravers are by far my favorite. They have taken the lessons of ecstacy to heart, so even when they're not actually on the drug, they tend to act as though they are, bouncing through the event with happy, light-hearted bonhomie and greeting everyone they meet with the same warmth and enthusiasm. They do this even when you're just some guy who happens to be at a rave, but when they think you're part of the tribe, their acceptance of you is a little overwhelming. All night long I danced and whooped exuberantly with total strangers, some in standard candy garb and some in exactly the sorts of Halloween costumes you'd expect candy ravers to wear -- Powder Puff Girls, Pokemons, Winnies and Tiggers, butterflys and superheroes. I traded bracelets and swigs of water, got treated to hugs and light shows. More than a costume, I had donned a temporary identity, and I loved it.

You might wonder why I only allowed myself to do this on Halloween, and the short answer is that I'm 32 years old. There's no law that says you can't be over 30 and still be candy, but it's a little suspect, and with good reason, I think, since your typical candy raver is more in the 16 to 23 age range (they used to be even younger, but candy ravers seem to be winning over fewer new recruits these days, so the demographic is creeping upward). I have a few friends my age who dress candy and get away with it, but for me the sense of denial that comes from sucking on a pacifier is just too great to ignore. So Halloween was my chance to regress for the night, to pretend not only that I was candy but also, by implication, that I was about ten years younger. The visor cap hid my receding hairline and I got to add a little Peter Pan wish fulfillment to the joys the evening brought me.

But even if I really was ten years younger, I don't think I could ever do the candy raving thing full-time. All my life I've had an aversion to group mentalities, and on the dance scene I'm no different. I don't dress a certain way. I don't have a regular group of friends that I hang with. I'm not purely in any one musical camp -- my favorites are house and trance, but I've had techno and breakbeat DJs make my night, too. I'm older than most of the folks in the scene, but a newcomer compared to the people my age -- I didn't discover I actually liked electronic dance music until 1998, when I heard a DJ named Ollie Wisdom spin a sunrise goa trance set at Burning Man and through an acid and ecstasy haze thought, "What the fuck is this?"

When I first starting going to raves and dance clubs, none of this mattered to me, and it seemed to matter less to everyone else, too. Part of the beauty of the dance music scene was that there really was no "scene"; just a collection of misfits like me, who were there because they loved this weird underground music that no one else listened to. Now, when BT is remixing Britney Spears and Kernkraft 400 is getting played at Yankees games, the music is less underground and there's more of a scene again. I hear dance music went through another cycle like this back in the mid-nineties when Prodigy and Chemical Brothers were making the charts, but I don't really know because I wasn't around for it. Some people believe this is just another of those cycles, but most seem to think it feels different this time. Dance music is really and truly becoming mainstream, and like all things mainstream it's gotten big enough now to where it's begun splintering off into little factions -- the Asian Nordic trackers, the ghetto hardkore kids, the candy ravers, the neo-hippie desert rats, the Armani house club set, the baggy-jeaned, "keepin' it real" old schoolers.

As a misfit, it's easy to grouse about all this identity-making, but being a candy raver for a night reminded me that there's nothing inherently wrong with it. There's a joy that comes from celebrating your tribe, and even dissing the tribes of others is no big thing so long as no one's throwing punches over it. Besides, none of these groups is especially exclusive -- if you're like me, you can just accumulate an eclectic wardrobe and switch tribes whenever the occasion calls for it. Last year I was a candy raver; last week I wore a fashionably tribal-looking t-shirt for Moontribe DJ night at Club Sugar; this weekend I'll don something shiny and synthetic and queue up with the other plastic fashion divas at the Saturday night mega-club. Just think of me as your roving undercover scenester, the quick-change artist of dance music journalists, helping you channel-surf the latest subcultures devoted to the almighty cult of the DJ.

But there will be just as many occasions where I won't feel like playing the "scene" game, and I'll show up to the mega-club in jeans and a t-shirt. At heart I'm still that misfit, still determined to make being the oddball look cooler than blending in. Dress codes? Those are so last century, dude. Fashion comes from within.

So that's why I'm calling this column "Edge of the Dance Floor". Because that's where you'll usually find me -- not out there in a dance circle busting choreographed moves for my friends, but hanging off to the side, maybe dressed the part, maybe not, maybe dancing, maybe not, but always observing the moment and never quite totally in it. Dropping in on different scenes, forever scoping out what's new and different or just so far out there that it'll never find a mainstream market -- broken beats, psychedelic trance, happy hardcore, nu skool breaks. Because half the fun for me is in watching how dance music continues to parse itself down in a frantic effort to stay underground, even as it takes a certain sneaking pride in its continuing seepage into the mainstream.