Everybody In The Place: An Incomplete History of Britain, 1984 1992 by Jeremy Deller

No me either.

Used to be that Afro-Caribbean/Asian people were fairly happy to call themselves British but not English - being British is on its way out all over though.

I thought it was a great documentary. I am old enough to remember but I was far too indie at the time - I suppose I got a flavour of the scene in attending Meat Beat Manifesto and Orbital gigs circa 1991. As previously stated the documentary had to downplay the impact of drugs, the Daily Mail would have had a field day with "BBC spends your licence fee on sending remoaner lefty artist into school..."

well in any case it was paid for by Gucci

Got around to watching the doco - Matos had spruiked it to me a couple of weeks before the thread, so I feel especially lax. The film does a dazzling job of expressing its theses and combining all those sources into a broadcast hour, but I loved Deller talking to the class so much that I wish it was a series, with him coming back to present material and ideas sparked by their interactions. (Even a two-hour version of this would have been richer. Or including half an hour of the classroom rave at the end for release.)

Whenever Deller's work has intersected my awareness, it's been where he's drawing lines between devaluation of the working class and the relief & expression afforded by music. EG the Acid Brass project in 1997, the All That is Solid Melts into Air installation in 2013 - which, when I saw it at the Manchester Art Gallery, was paired with an exhibition of local music artefacts, spanning punk through acid house, drawn from the collections of individual fans and participants, not archival collections. Here that element was obviously aimed at multiracial students who've spent three of their most socially formative years growing up in Brexit turmoil, but he's just good generally at combining talking to them on their level with a gentle authority, and making connections that bring history alive to them.

In Scotland in 1986 the soundtrack in mainstream, predominantly heterosexual clubs was to all intents and purposes gay. Hi nrg (and the tail end of Italo) was the predominant soundtrack and the first wave of house records fitted right in.

I got schooled on house during its UK pop breakout from an explainer in Smash Hits, that delineated Hip-Hop, House and Hi-NRG for kids that were suddenly needing to understand these new sounds. (The local edition was 93% content from the parent magazine, with an article or two on Neighbours stars thrown in - house made far less of a chart or radio impact in Australia.) That article clearly & calmly made the point that elements of Hi-NRG had fed into house, that house had in significant ways evolved from disco, and that these were largely gay musics being straightened up for a pop listenership.

(In another explainer around the time, Smash Hits happily informed its readers that Rob Halford was the only out gay man in Heavy Metal, a solid decade before US metal audiences were horrified to discover the Hell Bent For Leather hitmaker was hell bent for leather.)

Ppl who think Britain looks alarmingly white in that vintage footage, try 1993 Sydney on for size:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzaEC95zEYA

The phrase "Let's get some guitars and have a party" has been haunting my thoughts lately

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jun/30/off-their-heads-the-shocking-return-of-the-rave

I keep reading about how raves are set to come back in a big way. Not that illegal parties ever really went away but there feels like there's a different energy to way this has been discussed in the past few months - the idea of lockdown, and the obvious and correct perception of the UK as a country working on very clear lines of social inequality and cultural fury, contributing to a collective moment of communal escape and pleasure.

Which is more deserving of scorn - young folk raving in the midst of a pandemic when social contact has been limited, or old 'clubbers' berating young folk for being irrespibsible. Tbh I'm not having any trouble answering this question for myself.