Wayne Anthony - Class of 88

Hedonism was set to be our seventh event in a matter of weeks and Genesis was now infamous throughout the country. No other promoters would even think about staging an event on the same night as we did. Most people that came to our events had never experienced anything quite like this before. Once they entered this world they became instantly hooked. There was nowhere on the planet that could compare to what was taking place in London.

A lost generation had found its direction and secured a place in cult history. Punks, mods, rockers, hippies, skinheads, rude boys, Hells Angels, soul boys, teds, casuals and now, in 1989, the Acid House phenomenon. Popping pills has been a part of most cults since day one: back in the Sixties people dropped uppers and downers like there was a world shortage. Blues, Dexys, Valium, Black Bombers and Mogadons were just a few examples of the tablets that were taken back then. However, these pills didnt draw anyone together or break down any barriers between different cultures.

Then the LSD factor came into play and the Western world went psychedelic. The hippies were very much in line with our Acid House dream except that they didnt unite all races under one roof. It was too soon after the oppression of the Fifties and the masses just werent ready for it. The hippie movement was a peaceful fun-loving cult who loved and respected all life and their fellow man. I can 100% relate to this, except we didnt have the option of free love like they did back then. The Aids factor came into play in the Eighties and left the next generation with no alternative but to seek pleasure and enjoyment elsewhere.

Yet Ecstasy united black, white, yellow and brown people as one.

At any big dance party there was an across-the-board mixture of races holding hands and giving out total love and respect for one another. Ecstasy is an upper and was completely different to any other drug. The hysteria whipped up by people going to dance parties caused a massive surge of positive energy. The E generation became the We generation. We were making history, boldly going where no man had gone before.

1988 was a new dawn. Gone were the days when our parents could confidently claim that nothing could ever beat the Sixties. We still salute the artists from that era, The Beatles, The Stones, Hendrix and T Rex, but for us the men of power were Todd Terry, Larry Heard, Frankie Knuckles, Derrick May, Lil Louis Vega, Steve Hurley, Jamie Principle, Robert Owens, Jesse Saunders and Marshall Jefferson.

The hardest aspect of staging a huge event was finding the right venue. Sometimes wed 'gain entrance' to four or five buildings before making our decision. Our hunting grounds were mainly industrial estates in east and north London. Our enthusiasm could sometimes lead to us being careless, which could easily have had dire consequences. There were times when we found ourselves hiding out in warehouses while police squads searched the area for us. It only needed one person to spot us jumping over the fence and call the Old Bill and we could be in serious trouble. The very last thing we wanted to do was get nicked for breaking into an empty warehouse.

The partnership between us and Tony was working out, so instead of heading our separate ways we decided to throw a series of extravaganzas in various warehouses around London. If we could have found a suitable legal location wed have offered the landlords a mint and Keiths bird too(!), but finding such a gaff was nigh on impossible. Landlords were scared shitless by politicians and the threat of imprisonment, or at the very least a hefty fine.

Virtually every day wed hit the road in search of warehouses, driving through industrial estates by day and promoting our events by night. We located a venue just off the A406 which was on two floors, and after a quick butchers through the window we decided to crash it. Arranging the meeting point for this party would be easy because the North Circular is a major route to the M25, which meant most people wouldnt have to drive through town; people driving in convoy through the city would attract police interest.

As a rule, we never broke into the building before the night of the gig because a peek through the window is a good enough inspection and will provide you with the information needed to know if the gaff is suitable. Derelict warehouses were avoided for safety reasons as the police would never let the party go ahead if the gaff had loads of broken windows or rubble piled up outside.

The ideal solution was a disused building available for leasing.

It didnt even matter if the electricity wasnt working: our sparky was a magician. Sometimes hed even wire our sound and lighting systems to a street lamp, which had the capability to run every piece of equipment we needed. Wed be giving out flyers outside clubs almost every night: the sheer buzz of our achievements kept the harsh, Antarctic conditions at bay.

Enter the Dragon, Future, Camden Palace and Loud Noise were on our flyer distribution list. On three nights a week Heaven and the Soundshaft presented special club nights which were the focal point of the whole dance-party movement and were the longest running successful club nights in the whole of England. Once word got out from this circle that a particular party was in the brew, everybody waited in a state of excitement for the night of the gig.

Our next selected warehouse was on an industrial estate and surrounded by other storage warehouses. We wouldnt use a factory building, because most of them had old industrial machinery bolted to the floor. Around 5 p.m. on the evening of the event, under the cover of winter darkness, we slowly drove on to the estate. We knew exactly where all the night-watchman offices were because wed cased the area during the week. Our pre-planned route took us around a labyrinth of buildings to avoid being seen, until we reached the loading-dock entrance to our chosen venue. We jumped out of the motor, armed with steel bolt cutters, and clasped the padlock that was holding the metal doors together. One movement of the arm rendered the lock useless and we drove the car inside.

We shone three torch beams to light up the huge interior. Keith started to look for the fuse box while we ran to the other end of the long building. There were around 100 cardboard boxes, approximately two feet by one foot in size, piled up on the floor. We ripped one of them open to see what was inside. It was full of brand-new leather handbags, roughly twenty to a carton.

We could easily sell these bags for a few grand, but this was a drop in the ocean. Our problem was where to put them. We shone our torches to see what was around us and saw, in the left-hand corner, a staircase which went up to a large square alcove.

Perfect to fit the boxes into.

ANDY found the electricity source and switched it on, saving us having to call out WD and waste precious time. We unloaded the backdrops from the motor then blacked out the windows on the ground level, which took an hour. The building could hold two to three thousand on each floor, and was clean and didnt need tidying up. We ran out of backdrops so the windows upstairs had to be spray-painted to stop the morning light spoiling our special effects. Telephoning the equipment crew, we instructed them to drive to the warehouse loading-dock.

Within five minutes, two sets of headlights approached the entrance, which we quickly opened, and once they were inside the gates were padlocked with locks and chains. Nobody was allowed to leave the building until all the work was completed. We fixed the projectors to the walls along with strobe arc lines, smoke machines and fanlights. The sound system had 5k upstairs and 5k downstairs, with two different rigs and DJ consoles with double decks, all supplied by a guy called