Pioneering free party crew Grace Sands and Harry Harrison reflect on the group's Castlemorton origins and their enduring anarchic spirit.
Harry Harrison, Grace Sands, Pete “Foosh” Birch and Simon “DK” Smith travelled to Worthy Farm with a group of fellow ravers and DJs on Friday 22nd June 1990. They had been throwing club nights and house parties around Nottingham for the year prior, but having made some friends, they took over a tent with a sound system and spinning house records for hours.
“It was the last time Glastonbury had a free field. It was a hippie festival and we went out onto the free field on a Friday night and fell in love with some tourists,” Harry recalls. “They'd never heard of house music and we had the decks and a mixer. It was a match made in heaven.”
The open air and the open crowd gave him a new perspective on what a party could be, and shaped the thinking that would become the foundation of DiY Sound System. “We had crazy crowds. We had the KLF, the Happy Mondays, Hard Kiss “These are people traveling around the world doing what they want with music,” he continues. “That was our lightbulb moment. We were totally into house music and that lifestyle, and all of a sudden it was like, OK, we can do this outdoors and there are no rules.”
DiY became one of the most influential free rave crews in British history. In their heyday, they threw outdoor raves and club nights every weekend and pioneered the sound of early house music that they imported from the US and remade in their own image. While other crews turned to hardcore and thumping techno, they focused on groove and eventually founded an influential record label that lasted for over a decade.
Pete and Simon sadly passed away in recent years, but the rebellious, radical spirit they nurtured through the party and its community lives on. Harry is writing a book. Dreaming in Yellowis a throwback to the early days, bringing together a diverse group of ravers once again at Glastonbury this weekend to celebrate 35 years since they hosted their first rave. Ahead of that, we spoke to Grace and Harry to reflect on those early parties, Castlemorton and 35 years of DIY ethos.
What inspired you to set up DiY?
Grace Sands: Like Harry, I moved to Nottingham in '86 to study. We met at university through my friend Aubrey who worked in a vegan cafe, and that's how I met Simon “DK”. [Smith]Pete, who passed away almost a year ago. [“Whoosh”] Birch was a friend of Harry's from Bolton and we were basically a bunch of like-minded free thinkers in this post-punk world. [vibe]We were alternative, we liked hip hop, thrash metal and the nascent house sound – that's what brought us together.
Harry Harrison: We're all from Bolton and Stockport in Greater Manchester. We're Hacienda veterans, having been there before it was even good. [Grace]He writes in my book that our meetings were “nightclubs, pubs and drug deals.” And then we met Simon, our first DJ; he was into house. Matthew Collin called us “the anarchists of house music” when we were first introduced nationally. iD Magazine. We came from the Free Festival [scene]Our influences are pretty much everything from anarcho-punk to hip hop and Nottingham's trendy fashion scene.
GS: We were inclusive from the beginning. We knew different people and we brought people together. We were a disparate group, but we still come together under the same umbrella.
HH: The funny thing is, once we got going, people were like, “Your events are always full, so it's OK.” But our first events weren't full. Our first club night only had two people come, but they were both on the guest list. We were really blessed. When we were still underground, Graham Park played really good house music every Saturday night. We started squatting in '89 and did a few house parties around Nottingham, but house parties just weren't enough. We could only fit like 100 people in the house and the police would come at 2 or 3 in the morning.
GS: The first big party was Rhythm Collision. [at Nottingham venue The Green Club]we put LFO on the week [their eponymous track] LFO It had the Forgemasters and the Man Machine and Simon, and it was the only place you could watch a movie at 6am. [finish]That was massive. Then Sasha and Carl Cox came along and it was 2,000 people and it was the biggest rave Nottingham has ever had. So our first, second and third events were two club nights and a rave. And then in the middle of it all was Glastonbury.
Our Traveler Friends [who we met at Glastonbury would take us] We started throwing parties in a car park on Pepperbox Hill near Salisbury. People just had to turn up. We just said, “Here's the address,” so there was no idea what it was going to be like. It was free, there were no security guards, no checkpoints, no barriers, no one told us what it was going to be like, it was just a party. It was very diverse – locals, tourists – and very inclusive in terms of queerness.
What was the atmosphere like at those early parties?
HH: It was wild. As wild as any new scene can be. Think rock n' roll in the 50s, hippies in the 60s, punk in the 70s, acid house in the 80s. Whether there were 20 people at a party or 2,000, the energy was wild. At first there were no free ravers, there were students, tourists, fashionistas, clubbers, everyone, and at first they didn't care that they were different. Then I guess things solidified again into a divided society. But those first few years were new, exciting, illegal, and very idealistic. We were driven by the idea of free, and we were building on what the hippies had done. But we didn't have instruments. We had decks and a sound system, and we could go on for days.
GS: Obviously, ecstasy was something that people were discovering for the first time at that time too, and it was kind of fused with acid house, but it was taken outside with no restrictions.
You've stuck pretty closely to those liberal ideals over time, haven't you?
GS: The hidden theme of the free parties is that it costs money to have a sound system and tracks, so we always did club nights in Nottingham and had free parties.
HH: We also started a record label and did an album for Warp Records. The idea was that if we made money from the label we could continue doing free parties. It wasn't that we deliberately didn't want to make money, we were just really bad at it. But we maintained our ethics. We paid everybody £75 – DJs, light guys, drivers. It was a kind of anarchist collectivist idea. A lot of people died from poisoning and death and people came to their senses, but surprisingly the people at the core of DiY are philosophically on the same page.
Can you talk about what first got you interested in house music?
GS: Simon DK was the leader of it all, he was selling all the punk records to House Records. Me and Simon used to shop at Arcade Records together. Jonathan Woodcliff was running the store and he was one of the biggest Northern Soul DJs and had all the US imports. '91 was this druggy post-rave sound with a bit of breakbeat in the background and some Italian dreamy sounds. Then from '92 to '94 came the golden age of the deep house sound, the beats got thicker and everyone was remixing in big studios.
HH: We were constantly travelling. We had about 15 DJs who covered a wide area. After Castlemorton we were in high demand as DJs and often visited Sheffield, Manchester, London, Edinburgh, Bristol, Exeter and in '92 we even made it to San Francisco and Ibiza. We were always on tour and could go to places like Eastern Bloc in Manchester, but what started in the East Midlands became global.
What do you think about the resurgence of '90s and early '00s house music? Younger DJs are digging up old records.
GS: It's been around for at least 10 years now. A lot of young people know the deep house records from '91 onwards. It's all there because of Discogs, you can see everything with just a click. But for me, having lived through the '90s, it has to be good to be heard. It's a sound I've been listening to for over 30 years, so I'm not just looking to recreate the '90s sound, but I'm also looking for other things. [don’t have] Now that I've bought all the equipment and can make it all in Logic, it's a digital deep house sound, but back then it took longer to make and it was more romantic music. It had a warmer sound.
HH: People were trying to recreate it when we were doing it. [mid-80s] Mr Fingers and that warm analog sound. You always look back.
GS: One thing that people miss is these mistakes – before, you would turn the equipment back on and it would come out wrong, but the great thing is, a lot of great tracks have been made by mistakes and now you have to undo them.
Can you tell us a bit about your role at Castlemorton?
GS: I was doing the free party scene in Avon and Stonehenge. [By 1992] There must have been 20-30 free party sound systems. [that all came together]The big ones were Spiral Tribe, Circus Warp, Bedlam etc. Spiral Tribe were summoned to court and accused of organising it but the great thing about Castlemorton is that no one organised it.
HH: I don't know how we ever did it without mobile phones. I would leave “Castlemorton Common” on the answering machine at my house in Nottingham. The modern free festival scene has been around since the 70s but it was mostly rock, it took a few years for acid house to make its way in. You could feel it in the air in the winter of '91 and then Castlemorton blew up in '92. Suddenly what was a little get-by all over the country was on the front page of the newspapers. And Tory landlords, authorities and vested interests all said “we'll make sure this never happens again”. That led directly to the Criminal Justice Act 1994.
GS: The tricky thing about Castlemorton is that people forget to mention how amazing it was – so relaxed, so self-controlled, so dreamy.
HH: It was a really good atmosphere, really sunny, but it was a big blast at the end.
GS: The problems with criminal justice law are not just raved about. [took away] They repeatedly got away with violating the right to remain silent. We ran a relentless campaign against it. We printed leaflets, New Statesmanbut in the end we lost.
How similar do you think this is to what has happened over the past few years, including the crackdown on the right to protest?
GS: It's just an extension of the same thing.
HH: The target is different now. It's not rave people, it's eco-activists. We've achieved so much. You can't get away with Castlemorton for 10 seconds now. And every government, whether Labour or Conservative, is happy to introduce tougher laws.
Do you think the radical, anti-establishment era is over? Raves have become more underground and squatting has become more difficult.
GS: You could gather 200 or 300 people in the woods for a rave, but it's difficult.
HH: And there are no more free festivals. [paid] The festivals were Glastonbury and Reading, but Reading was the worst. Now Glastonbury is on the BBC and there are hundreds of festivals and that rebellion has been packaged and resold.
Are there any places where that spirit still lingers? And where?
HH: Hong Kong?
GS: In continental Europe. Italy was just starting to crack down on raves, and there were these huge technivals with like 20 sound systems in Italy, France and Spain. There are some articles about raves in Kazakhstan. The idea of bringing CDJs to remote places is still going on, but people haven't figured out what that means yet.
What's it like hosting your 35th anniversary party at Glastonbury?
HH: It's old.
GS: Well, I’m still young at heart, so Harry just has to push himself a bit harder.
HH: To be honest, I'm surprised that this dynamic still exists. [present] When Simon had his wake in Derbyshire, everyone was there. Those years meant so much to people. It wasn't just about drugs and parties, it was about community.
Grace Sands will play at Genosis, the DiY 35th Anniversary Party at Glastonbury Festival 2024 on Sunday 30th June. Harry Harrison's book, Dreaming in Yellow: The Story of a DIY Sound System Published by Velocity Press.