Sheryl Garratt - Adventures In Wonderland: Acid house, rave and the UK club explosion

364 pages
Text(s) by Sheryl Garratt
22.8 x 15.2 cm 
Language: English
Softcover
Publisher: TCL Publishing
2020

"Adventures In Wonderland is the ultimate, definitive account of the scene. Precise factually and perfectly articulated, it transports the reader to that unique, life-changing period. Sheryl Garratt was there, reporting from the core energy of the scene that we collectively created." - Danny Rampling

"The book about rave culture that you can't afford not to read." - The Face

The definitive history of the acid house explosion and its reverberations across popular culture, Adventures In Wonderland has been out of print for more than 20 years. This new edition has been updated slightly, with a new introduction and final chapter.

Former editor of The Face and one of the few journalists writing about clubs in any detail in the 1980s, Sheryl Garratt weaves her own experiences in with hundreds of exclusive interviews with everyone involved. She talks about Ibizan clubs and the Wigan Casino, the key role of reggae and soul sound systems, and the one-nighters and illegal warehouse parties of 1980s clubland. Tracing the music back to its roots in New York, Chicago and Detroit, she reports from the underground clubs in those cities and offers in-depth interviews with its originators, from Frankie Knuckles, Marshall Jefferson and Farley 'Jackmaster' Funk to Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson and Juan Atkins.

This is the acid house and rave explosion, as told by the people who lived it: door staff, dancers and drug dealers; gangsters, blaggers and promoters. From the real stories behind the huge illegal raves of 1989 to insider accounts from DJs such as Norman Jay, Trevor Nelson, Paul Oakenfold, Danny Rampling, Graeme Park, Mike Pickering, Carl Cox, Sasha and John Digweed.

But this isn’t just a book about the music. It’s about being up for it, out of it, and right in the middle of it.

It’s about the Paradise Garage in New York, about dancing under the stars in Ibiza or Goa, about the house we built in the UK at Future, Shoom, Spectrum. Clink Street and the Haçienda. It's about Ecstasy and community and a scene that grew with breath-taking speed because we needed to feel that the world was changing.

It’s about dodging the police to get the party started, and the joy of dancing all night in the British countryside, with thousands of others on the same high. About Madchester, Blackburn, and a new understanding between rock and dance music. And about what came after, from drum’n’bass to the rise of superclubs such as Ministry of Sound, Renaissance and Cream.

But most of all, it’s about having the time of your life. And who wouldn’t want that?