Riaan Wolmarans
Let’s face it. Raves are getting a bit boring. You have your big venue, your carefully label-dressed crowd of several thousand, the laser lights, VIP ticket holders glaring snootily from some balcony … it could be a description of any of the big dance events of the past few months. Now don’t get me wrong, everyone still enjoys it all, but it’s high time for rave organisers to get their creative juices flowing and do a bit more than just rent an old warehouse and some fancy sound equipment.
Therefore, you can imagine my joy when I found out about the BrainStorm D-Rail dance party which took place on Saturday July 3. A rave on a train sounded like just the thing to relieve the usual weekend tedium. Sure, it’s been done before, but that did not prevent the 300 excited ticket-holders from rushing to Johannesburg Station on Saturday night at eight. On platform 13 we found our fellow passengers huddled together, waiting to embark on the trip of a lifetime (on the train, of course).
An hour or so later, everyone was aboard, cheering as the train chugged out of the grimy station. Five carriages, or cabbages, as a friend of mine insisted on calling them, carried the 300 party-hungry people into the night. Two dance carriages catered for the energetic bouncing types, two chill carriages for those in need of a dark corner and a soft seat and a bar carriage providing the water and energy drinks on which most ravers survive. A balanced diet turns out to be no more than three bottles of mineral water and two sticks of chewing gum.
The train traversed Gauteng’s railways for 10 hours. Inside, the party was really going, with hordes of sweaty dancing people, pumping sound, really cool strobe lights, you name it. Every now and again the train lurched as it changed tracks, making everyone lose their balance and making me feel like the captain of the starship Enterprise in the midst of an alien attack.
Periodically the train stopped at strange little stations in the middle of nowhere, and you’d see wide-eyed locals swaddled in blankets coming up to the train windows and peering in at the equally wide-eyed ravers. It was reminiscent of that Telkom television ad in which an Eskimo and a Bushman touch hands in a meeting of two completely different cultures.
With the Gauteng winter sun battling its way through the air pollution, we arrived back at the station, completely baffling the early-morning commuters who were suddenly faced with a wave of dirty, rather haggard-looking revellers – there are few things as scary as ravers in the daylight of the morning after.
As we tiredly shuffled to our cars, I realised that this was probably the kind of event that will eventually save the rave scene from becoming as extinct as Eighties parties in your parents’ garage. Small, well-organised parties, offering something new, innovative or different – I’d much rather spend my hard-earned dosh on these than on a big teeny-bopper-filled warehouse bash.