One Foot in the Rave: Part 2

Recalling the infamous 'Rave at Ryefield'

Councillor Shane P O’Reilly still remembers the scene that greeted anyone arriving into Virginia town early on Tuesday April 18, 1995. Turning onto New Street, face squashed against fogged up glass, he tittered with churlish glee at the small but bedraggled bunch of 20 to 30 somethings - leftovers from the main talking point at church gates and GAA grounds over the past Easter weekend.

“A rave! At Ryefield?” exclaims Cllr O’Reilly, his voice lifting, still amazed at the sheer audacity of what had occurred 30 years before. “A rave at Ryefield of all places. Would you believe it?”

He was a second year pupil at Virginia Vocational School back then. Still only a kid. But you never forget the moment your world gets fractured beyond the norm.

Then again, no one could ever have envisaged how what happened at Ryefield would impact future events, crucially the biggest concert ever planned - Tribal Gathering ‘95 with The Prodigy headlining Cavan Equestrian Centre (September 30)- ultimately getting cancelled.

Left behind

Normally a place of cows and early-to-bed farmers, one pub, a shop and a football pitch, Ryefield was a place where generations were reared and died all in the same acre without ever once uttering the word “rave” in a sentence. Beyond farms and neatly appointed houses, there are bare fields, and then more fields beyond that again.

In an era a lifetime before Uber, anyone unfortunate enough to have unwittingly relied on the scaled-back Bank Holiday bus service, were forced to stay on an extra day at least.

Where had the ravers come from? Dublin, mostly. Belfast, Mullingar and Longford even. It had been planned months in advance. Quietly. Word passed through the club scene grapevine and corridors of student unions, through word of mouth and on Internet Relay Chat (IRC), a precursor to modern day social media. Tickets cost £20 IRL. A rave. In a field. But where?

Stop the bus

Come that fateful Tuesday several elderly women gathered and stared. Crouched and kneeling next to the bus stop in Virginia Town were the remaining few ravers - huddled, barely upright, faces slack with exhaustion. They petitioned for the souls of these soft-ankled stragglers - slept in clothes and stretched out pupils - still navigating the brittle dawn like confused apostles caked in mud and that unmistakable mist of regret.

The ritual was a small but moral defence against whatever had attracted a rave so close to their homes, like a spaceship landing smack in the middle of Time Square. Their distain evident.

There is something deeply Irish about the way the rosary is recited - rattling, cranked up in notches; novenas peeling skywards, saints invoked, and Marys - immaculate, sorrowful or otherwise - beseeched.

And then, with the soft push of a trademark red setter, the unwelcome strangeness was gone. Normality returned. The streets cleansed. Job done.

After party

Back at Ryefield, bottles, glowsticks, and mementos of the previous weekend’s late-night/early-morning philosophies lay scattered like battlefield ephemera. One group unthreaded the marquee, others packed up the generators. The circus disappeared just as quickly as it had arrived. No more thudding drum and bass, just grass and bare memory.

“You’d hear about things like that on the telly, or maybe down in Dublin. But hardly Virginia. Sure back then no one even had sex before The Late Late Show was over,” laughs Cllr O’Reilly.

Even now, part of him still can’t believe it happened. That this sleepy townland - more silage and Sunday Mass than strobes and the sesh - could, even for one surreal weekend, host a such a thing.

“This sort of stuff didn’t happen in Ryefield. Jesus, not in Ryefield,” he delivers with mock indignation.

Hitting the headlines

The following Thursday the headline in The Anglo-Celt said it all: ‘Garda raid scuttles Virginia rave party’. It may as well as have read: ‘Ecstasy rave rocks quiet Ryefield’.

The report by staff journalist Sean McMahon described how the ‘normally tranquil’ Ryefield was thrust into chaos by this illegal rave party, equipped with a massive marquee, powerful sound systems, industrial generators, dozens of portable toilets, and an expected audience of thousands.

However, thanks to swift garda action - involving forces from Virginia and Kells - the turnout was significantly reduced.

Clampdown

Gardaí did not have legal authority to cancel the event, but their objective was clear: stem the flow, search the vehicles. Over 200 ecstasy tablets and a quantity of cannabis were confiscated, with three arrests made, including one individual found in possession of 100 tablets.

Local residents, unprepared for such disruption on their doorstep, were said to have been deeply disturbed by the loud music, which continued throughout the night.

Parents, meanwhile, voiced outrage, fearing what influence drug-fuelled events might have on their malleable-minded children.

The party, originally planned for a site in Wicklow, was at the last minute mysteriously relocated to Ryefield. Gardaí hadn’t known the exact location but early intelligence suggested it would take place somewhere near Kells.

Yet busloads of young people did arrive and neither drivers nor their passengers were said to have been aware of the final destination until shortly before.

Thruster and yuppies

The Celt report observed that the event appeared to attract ‘a yuppie element’ who found rave parties a ‘cool and awesome’ way to ‘freak out for weekend’.

Many of the attendees were judged to be from middle-class backgrounds, mostly students.

Inside, the music was divided into three zones. A so-called ‘head clearing’ area was thoughtfully provided for anyone overwhelmed by the effects of any chemical induced over-stimulation.

Ambulances were put on standby, and barrels of water made available to avoid dehydration.

One paragraph specified: ‘The more powerful, tablets are called thrusters and they contain heroin and horse steroids. Users of these tablets experience extreme exhaustion, which immobilises them for about two hours, and they literally pass out. Ecstasy users dance in a repetitive manner to the rhythm of the music, which is caused by an over production of serotonin in the body. It is understood that many young people are initially introduced to the rave tablets free of charge and then when they become hooked, they are charged £15 per tablet.’

The desired effect the Celt report said was to give the user ‘stamina’ to ‘dance non-stop and jump as high as possible’.

Backlash

In the aftermath, a public meeting was held at Munterconnaught Community Centre, drawing a large and deeply concerned crowd.

Emotions ran high. A committee was swiftly formed with the aim of preventing any similar incidents from occurring in future. Plans were even made to invite drug awareness experts to the area to educate locals about the perceived dangers of drug culture and its apparent growing influence in Ireland.

The Celt has learned since that organisers of the rave secured use of the field under false pretences, claiming to be relatives of a nearby neighbour, and thus gaining the landowner’s trust without ever disclosing the true purpose of the gathering.

To this day, the identities of those behind the rave remain unknown.

A retired garda, who served in the south of the county in 1995, remembers being drafted in as part of the emergency response.

The field in question, occasionally used for stock car racing, suddenly became the centre of attention after someone noticed a marquee being erected earlier that Saturday. Until then, reports remained vague. “There was talk of thousands coming, but no one knew where.”

Send them packing

Led by Inspector Joe Sullivan from Bailieborough, the response was immediate, with gardaí mobilising to shut down all approach roads.

“Buses were coming from all directions, down these narrow country roads, but we had checkpoints stopping them.

“There were dozens on board, mostly kids. Some had brought tents. I don’t know what the organisers were thinking would happen. But it didn’t matter, the [Cigire] didn’t want anyone getting through. In the end, only a few hundred got by.”

The ex garda remembers reports that seemed to link the Ryefield rave to members of the New Age Traveller movement, members of which settled in Ireland during the late 80s and early 90s.

“Crustys,” he calls them.

“It brought a drug element too. There was that danger about the whole drug thing. I only know I didn’t have to arrest anyone. We just sent them packing, back the way they came.”

Later that same month, at a meeting of the Cavan VEC, Joe O’Reilly pointedly thanked the gardaí for their response; while Mrs M. Owens of Cootehill voiced concern about the prospect of such an event happening again.

Another board member, Mrs Cahill, considered that only for Garda vigilance, a potential “fracas” was prevented.

But like heavy rain that floods the road, there is always cause and effect.

Alon Shulman, pioneering producer and founder of the Universe brand (which had planned to bring Tribal Gathering to Ireland), believes tabloid headlines fuelled the backlash against the rave scene. It created mistrust in local communities where such events were planned.

“Many had experience of the unlicensed party scene so, when licences were applied for, they were often rejected, which ironically would sometimes result in more unlicensed events taking place.”

But on the whole Shulman feels looking back that law enforcement saw past the social bias to simply “see that people were enjoying themselves, largely trouble free”.

Decades and differences

Thirty years on, what’s interesting is not the Ryefield event itself or its consequences but what it reveals in hindsight. Raves are everywhere now - taking place almost every weekend - some in fields and out-of-the-way concrete-floored warehouses.

Cllr O’Reilly’s tone is softer too. He doesn’t see the organisers or attendees as having acted with any kind of malice.

“It was probably something that got way of the hand,” he suggests, likening it to the modern day out-of-control ‘Project X’ house parties inspired by the 2012 film or or real-life Dutch ‘Project X Haren’ Facebook event.

“They were just young people out looking for the craic! Was it anything worse than what you’d see going on today?” asks Cllr O’Reilly. “Certainly, as a young 15 year old, it was whole new thing to me.

“But in fairness, this was a generation who, rightly or wrongly and however they went about it, this was their opportunity to, I don’t know, find an identity, express themselves, to break from the status quo. Be different. Because we must remember - being different in Ireland is still something that gets frowned upon.”