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Techno Grandad
Throwing superannuated shapes
It may have been a mid-life crisis, although it didn’t feel much of one. Crisis? What crisis? Or perhaps it was my second childhood. But doesn’t that come later? According to Shakespeare this is when you return to sans everything. I wasn’t there yet. Neither toothless or hairless. It was around the mid-nineties and I was only in my late thirties.
Friends of ours were into the whole techno trance rave thing. A couple were DJs so we started getting in on the guest list. Up to that time I hated it all. My love of electronic music orbited around bands such as Tangerine Dream and the Moog stuff of the early seventies prog. What I had heard of the music of the rave scene left me cold. I guess it was primarily an age thing.
But it was also about taking the right drugs. I had never taken ecstasy or MDMA. And I’m not about to promote drug taking now. Just talk about my experience. And even with my own experience, I have discovered that any recreational drug taking is a law of diminishing returns. It is chasing the ephemeral high. I have enjoyed a few spectacular evenings that I will always remember. I have no regrets. But any longer term prize is just an empty box. At some point, sooner rather than later, you have to take what you can from the experience and move on.
