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“At this point I’m undecided what I’m bringing. I’m doing my best to bring light but I’m no Messiah, man. I’ve been an asshole in my life; let’s make that clear.”
Sitting in a crowded Muswell Hill pub, Love Organisation chief Otiz F. Angel is the first to admit his relentless evangelizing for rave culture is not without its costs.
“At one point I made a decision- I had to make a decision because we all have a choice,” he says earnestly.
“I could be nicely happy, sitting behind the Love organisation, making money, having people coming to my clubs, saying to them ‘Have a drink at my bar, that’s it, now **ck off’. That doesn’t feel like my destiny. I suppose I’ve got too much of a big mouth but I always believe people should try to be the best they can be. The spirits will guide you then. When I see how the scene has developed and the potential it still has I’d be a frigging asshole just to sit down and milk it, man. No way, the scene ain’t got udders,” he laughs.
Largely ignored by the mainstream music press throughout his 20 years living life in the heart of global culture, he speaks with the passion and vision that reflects his status as one of the genuine pioneers of acid house and its myriad extra spin-offs. Coming up through London’s gang culture of the 80s, his multi-pronged clubbing career is intricately documented in new book Rave Story, an entertaining autography of parties, pills, thrills and spills, in which he also outlines his wider philosophy
“I think it was necessary to have a book like this because a lot of people have stepped into the club scene who don’t know what the scene is about,” he explains.
“They just think you go to a rave, you take some pills, you jump up and down, cut your hair a certain way, wear certain clothes, then you’re all good. But the scene’s a lot deeper than that. Maybe I was naïve but I always believed the scene had a lot more potential than it ever seemed to achieve. The fact that 10,000 people were all chilling out together in 1989 was remarkable, mate, remarkable. If you consider what was going on before that, with black parties there and white parties over there. That shit was revolutionary.”
Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): What made you decide you wanted to write a book; had you written much before?
Otiz F. Angel: “No, I could just about string two words together, mate. I don’t see myself as a writer, no, the whole thing was almost an accident. It all came about after my club got busted in Shoreditch several years ago (Love took over the old Bridge & Tunnel for almost a year before being shut down by overzealous councillors in 2005).
Otiz F. Angel: “Looking back I was feeling a lot of anger and aggression and I had this mad urge to keep on expanding. So the more we kept on going forward and meeting new people the more we grew then when we got to Canada someone asked me ‘what’s your story, how did you end up living in this nightlife.’ I skirted through it and they said ‘you should do a movie’. And they happened to be movie makers. So initially we had the plan of writing a script. And after writing the script we got some great reactions and before long there was a team of people sitting round a table, working on it and asking me questions about what I knew about the scene. That turned into Rave Story, the book.”
Skrufff: What was it about rave culture that inspired you so much?
Otiz F. Angel: “You’d be at parties and you didn’t know who you were standing next to or what their vibe was about but there was a good chance you’d find out. Everyone was shaking hands and sharing, I’d never seen that shit before. Before that it was soul, with everyone hiding away from each other, before that electro with its break-dancing, when you were battling people. Then suddenly everyone was hugging each other. I never saw that coming and it changed my life, and a lot of people’s lives. I’ve always felt the scene has a part to play socially. And now in 2007 the scene’s got a lot to play environmentally and f**k me we’ve got a lot to say. The whole point of a music revolution is to have a mind revolution too. I remain a little bit radical I suppose.”
Skrufff: Do you remain optimistic about rave culture’s potential?
Otiz F. Angel: “I’m always optimistic, always. I know there’s other brothers out there just like me, I’m meeting them every day and sooner or later, we will become the majority. The book’s not a vehicle to enlighten everyone, it’s just about what happened to me and the way I think. I believe that we’re got to try and develop a unified message between ravers and club people throughout the world that benefits us and our children’s children. At least let’s have an agenda. That doesn’t mean we have to be all radical.”
Skrufff: The book talks in detail about crime, how did you decide what to include and what to leave out?
Otiz F. Angel: “That book has about 40% of what happened, to be honest I couldn’t write everything and we had to change a lot of the names of people involved. The names that are not changed are not changed for a reason. We had to create fictitious names for a lot of people because a lot of those brothers are still out there, out and about in the club world, some bringing light and some bringing darkness.”
Skrufff: Darkness?
Otiz F. Angel: “Well take crack, the only reason that was allowed was because everyone was working as individuals rather than as a real movement. Because it if had operated as a unified scene then crack couldn’t have infiltrated the jungle scene. It couldn’t have infiltrated the garage scene either and it couldn’t have branched off and made it’s own little grimey scene. That’s the last f**king thing we need right now, we need some positive scenes. Sci-trance is looking good. Electro is looking good, there are some real togetherness scenes out there that are prospering. It’s time now not to censor, but to make sure the rave scene is the better half.”
Skrufff: You talk in detail about your experiences in gangs during the 80s, what do you make of today’s gang culture in London?
Angel: “Now it’s out of control and I f**king hate it to be honest. When I look at my brother’s generation and his gang culture from the 70s, it was pretty bad but it was about something, whether hooliganism or whatever. To be honest there was a lot of race problems in those days especially where we were from so there was a lot of skinheads out there which meant there was a reason to be in a gang, to make sure you were secure. In my generation in the 80s, I suppose it was cool to be in a gang but we also had things like break dancing so there was still things mellowing out. So you’d occasionally have gang fights with fists but at the maximum it might involve knives. Now it’s progressed to a state where every f**ker is in a gang and worse of all, you’ve got little kids running round with guns.
The main reason they’re doing that is because they’re too afraid to put their fists where that gun is. So in their fear but still in their goal of trying to earn their stripes, they’re committing crimes that even in gangland are considered atrocities. There is no honour, there is no respect, there is no loyalty, it’s just rubbish! My take on it? Boy, I suppose everybody’s free, they’re free to make whatever choice they want to make but it would be nice to see them making different choices. Maybe these people holding guns should think about holding a book or holding a girl. How about that? Make some love, man, that’s what life is about. Life is short. For people to run around tripping out like that; God, what a waste of everyone’s time, man.”
Skrufff: Do you consider yourself as being more tuned in that other people?
Angel: “Not at all, I see myself as being driven. We’re all running, at different speeds. It would be nice to run alongside some cool people.”
Skrufff: What happened with your club in Ibiza?
Angel: “We basically looked at the money and how it had worked out for us at the end of last year and took stock. There were a lot of ‘politics’ involved, which will be covered in Rave Story 2, so you’ll see why Love Ibiza is shut for now. But we’e re-emerging, hopefully for next year, we’ve found a new venue and all is well. At the end of Rave Story 1, if you notice for when we get busted at Shoreditch, I was running, running, running and I realised I was running away from myself. I wanted to make that success now. I felt I’d been robbed. One minute I had the club full of 600 raving each night and I was stepping out of there with ten grand a night all the way down to nothing. Nothing.
I went psycho, man, I wanted everything, I wanted Love everywhere. One thing led to another. But every time we opened up Love in a country there was something or other there standing against us. Our company implode at one point and I woke up and realised I wasn’t doing good business anymore, I was just being emotional. So now we have our various clubs still, we lost a few. Now I have to come back into this game with a business sense, one step at a time. But I still want a big piece of the fucking pie, because ambitious, I definitely fucking am. We’ve got Hamburg, Krakow, Sharm el Sheik. Hamburg’s our key club now, that’s our base.”
Rave Story- the book, is out now.
Article by Jonty Skrufff (Skrufff.com)
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