ONE FOOT IN THE RAVE

The biggest gig that never was: Tribal Gathering Ireland ‘95

In 1995, Cavan was set to host Tribal Gathering with The Prodigy as headliners. However, it was cancelled, in part due to concerns sparked by an unsanctioned rave held near Virginia months earlier. Despite the setback, mid-90s dance culture thrived, especially along the Border, where raves became the unlikeliest safe space, blurring the lines to unite youth from both sides of political and religious divide...

It was supposed to be epic. Biblical even. A 17-hour electronic symphony of basslines, strobes, and serotonin. But instead 30 years ago this week, September 30, 1995, Cavan missed out on what would have been one of most iconic music events ever staged on Irish soil.

Agreements were reached, flyers printed, and tickets sold. Tribal Gathering Ireland ‘95 at Cavan Equestrian Centre promised The Prodigy in their pomp, the psychedelic swirl of The Orb, and a line-up of other dance-floor deities imported from across the globe.

But bureaucracy and the low, anxious hum of institutional hesitancy managed to kill it off. The Tribal Gathering Ireland ‘95 dream was suffocating under the collective weight of those it seems never quite got it.

Illicit to Iconic

By the mid-90s Tribal Gathering had earned its stripes as a powerhouse brand on the UK rave scene. The May 1995 edition at Otmoor Park, Beckley, near Oxford, featured The Prodigy, Orbital and Moby. It attracted a crowd of tens of thousands and barely a whiff of serious trouble. This was rave legitimised - licensed and loud.

“It was a big success. It sold out. I think we had about 30,000 people there and it ran to six or seven in the morning,” remembers Mick O’Keeffe, formerly of Mean Fiddler and current owner of The Market Bar in Waterford.

When O’Keeffe speaks about those years his reflections are suffused with the sense of having been on the frontier of something transformational.

A chartered accountant turned music exec, O’Keeffe moved to London in 1991 where he immediately sought out Mean Fiddler, founded by fellow Waterford man, the late Vince Power. He introduced himself via an old-school letter. Two sons of the Déise drawn together. They “hit it off” straight away and a decade-long collaboration followed.

Steep curve

O’Keeffe helped broker the deal with pioneering dance brand Universe, a veteran of the heady late ‘80s acid house days. After the 1994 Criminal Justice Act made unlicensed events illegal Universe needed legitimacy. Mean Fiddler had it.

“They were starting to come down heavy on all the illegal raves,” says O’Keeffe of the law. “So once we found a way around it, Universe came to us because we were a legitimate company already running big events... So we hooked up with them, and that really was our first move into dance music.”

Buoyed by the UK success, the Tribal team believed Ireland was ready for something similar.

Early publicity promised cutting-edge sound, lighting, lasers, and themed décor and four tented stages. ‘Commence countdown and prepare yourself for an exhilarating voyage into house hyperspace and beyond, at Ireland’s most outrageous, orgasmic organic orgy of underground dance music ever.’

In hindsight O’Keeffe admits to “not realising” that local authorities, law enforcement, and even public attitudes were far more cautious than the UK - at least a decade behind the curve.

Owner of Universe, and founder and CEO of the World Famous Group, Alon Shulman has been hitting dance floors globally since the Second Summer of Love.

Like O’Keeffe, Shulman has worked extensively across the entertainment industry, focusing on culture, film, events and electronic music. His career spans ground-breaking events such as Magna Carta USA, Carl Cox in the Metaverse, and later Sunset at Stonehenge.

He too saw Ireland for its untapped opportunity.

“The scale of the scene and the freedom that the open air environment created meant that people were ready for festivals to take place and that the expectation for quality sound, lighting, staging, attractions and of course music was in place to enhance the experience,” he explains.

The plan for Ireland was just as ambitious: a legal, licensed, all-night dance festival featuring recognised headliners, impressive staging, and a crowd of thousands.

A venue was secured - Rostella House in Kilbeggan, Westmeath - offered up by local landowner Seán Nyhan. Everything seemed set. Then it began to unravel.

Ryefield Ripple

To understand how Cavan missed its moment on the dance floor, we need to talk about a field. Specifically, rewind back to April 1995 and an unsanctioned rave at Ryefield, near Virginia (See next week’s newspaper).

Planned as a covert party, the kind that pops up in a message on a blocky Nokia 2110, it instead attracted an enormous Garda operation marshalled to strangle access. What made it past the barricades was a mere ghost of what the event promised.

Hundreds of ecstasy tablets were seized in the swarm. The ripple effect was massive. Ryefield heightened already existing fears about drugs and public safety - the negative perception that rave culture came with chaos.

Stephen Wynne Jones is an award-winning journalist, magazine editor, DJ and business commentator. His 909originals online platform is dedicated to uncovering the stories behind some of the greatest electronic music tracks, artists and venues of the past, present and future, including the failed attempt to stage Tribal Gathering in Westmeath and then Cavan back in 1995.

“The limited number of venues playing underground dance music at the start of the 90s meant that many ravers travelled long distances in search of beats,” he says.

Sir Henry’s in Cork and Sugar Sweet in Belfast were early adopters, and Wynne Jones states: “This in turn led many clubbers to try their hand at promoting themselves, approaching under-used venues about the possibility of putting on nights - some of which became beacons of Ireland’s emerging clubbing landscape.”

Even though Gardaí had no powers to stop the Ryefield rave outright, the backlash saw Tribal Gathering caught in the cross-hairs.

Death at the Depot

If Ryefield was a warning shot, Dance Nation at the Point Depot in June 1995 was the hammer blow. A 19-year-old died. The mood soured and ecstasy became a household word, not to mention a tetchy political talking point.

The Minister for Justice of the day, Nora Owen, responded like a one-woman editorial. Unyielding she framed Ecstasy as a cultural threat from the Dáil floor. “Many see this drug as an integral part of the so-called rave scene,” she said, fanning the flames. “I ask the national media, both broadcast and print, to be careful not to fall into the trap of glamorising this drug. They have a responsibility to the community not to give young people the impression that this drug is in some way cool. I consider it a matter of deep regret and highly unhelpful that this drug has had such a propaganda effort mounted on its behalf.”

Planning Paradox

What ultimately sank Tribal Gathering though was a landmark High Court ruling handed down in June 1995, which declared that all large-scale music events - especially overnight ones - required full planning permission.

The ruling came during the scramble around Féile ‘95, which had to abandon Mondello Park for a late-stage reprieve in Cork. Féile got lucky, Tribal Gathering not so much.

Hundreds attended a public meeting, packing out St James’ Hall in Kilbeggan that August, where promoter Melvyn Benn was joined by landowner Mr Nyhan in putting forward a strong case as to why Tribal Gathering should go ahead.

“This event is not about hippies or New Age Travellers,” said Mr Benn, now managing director of Electric Picnic organisers Festival Republic, addressing that particular shared fear.

Despite reassurances, the concerns were the same: drugs, noise, and moral decay. Where Slane and Féile had normalised big crowds and live music, thoughts of an all-night dance event seemed somehow dangerous.

“At all times, we must keep our dignity in the fight against this event,” one speaker - a school teacher - told the Kilbeggan meeting.

Another said: “Help the community to protect our youth and our elderly people.”

Shulman believes Ireland was an “obvious” next place to stage events. He insists their plans were sound: “It wasn’t seen as a testing ground- just another territory where young people wanted to come together and dance.”

When Westmeath folded, the promoters pivoted, found a fallback: Cavan Equestrian Centre.

It had hosted music events before, including American country music singer, songwriter Don Williams the year before. Owners, the Clarke family, were on board and importantly the feeling was planning permission wouldn’t be a problem.

Tickets went back on sale, priced at a relatively pocket-friendly £25, and promotions resumed. The Prodigy- explosive, in-your-face feral, unmissable - were locked in. The dream once again flickered.

Decisions

O’Keeffe didn’t personally travel to Ireland though he did keep an eye on logistics as they unfolded from his London desk. He saw flyers, budgets, and stage plots - but never the rumblings of small-town unease. In the spirit of compromise and to try soothe wayward nerves, organisers scaled-back the original line-up and brought forward the cut-off time for Cavan from 7am to 4am.

Then with just two weeks to go, the council citing the legal precedent from June, and with the ghost of Ryefield still howling in the background, applied the handbrake.

Gabriel Cullivan worked in Cavan’s planning section 30 years ago. He doesn’t recall all the intricate details, but he does still remember the prevailing mood at the time. It wasn’t good.

“There was a lot of concern,” he remembers about what had happened at Ryefield. “The safest thing, from the council’s point of view, was to not have [Tribal Gathering].”

The decision to be strict with planning on Tribal Gathering wasn’t his to make, and would have been made by those far higher up the corporate food-chain.

Had Ryefield not happened, Gabriel suggests Tribal Gathering might have got the nod.

“Everyone was running scared,” he admits. “If Ryefield hadn’t happened, maybe the equestrian gig would have. But nobody wanted to take the risk.”

Vince Power of Mean Fiddler lashed out publicly, accusing Gardaí and councils of discrimination. A country and western gig, he claimed, wouldn’t have faced the same level of scrutiny. His phrase “the kind of people they assumed might attend” cut deep. The biggest Irish rave of the decade now hit headlines for all the wrong reasons.

Certainly O’Keeffe feels that Irish authorities were “behind” the times in their understanding of rave culture and what the scene really represented. It was a fundamental and fatal misunderstanding. “They were a bit more reactive to the scare stories and the whole drug side of it.”

Lessons learned

The irony is, Tribal Gathering Ireland ‘95 - the rave that never happened - taught organisers more than the many that did go ahead.

For starters O’Keeffe believes it confirmed the size of the Irish market. It showed the hunger and the scale of the potential. It also highlighted how unprepared the Irish authorities were at that time to accommodate youth culture beyond perceived traditional norms.

Eventually, Mean Fiddler found success with Homelands at Mosney Holiday Centre in 1999.

Lessons learned from Tribal Gathering helped shape it - with stronger planning and fewer assumptions. The maximum ambition back then of a “party until 3am outdoors” O’Keeffe refers to seems modest by modern standards.

Alon Shulman puts it more simply: “A lot of people didn’t take drugs but were caught up in the excitement of the events and used natural energy to dance all night. Like a club, lots of people would leave at a ‘sensible’ time so as to be up the next day or get home easily, while many more would dance all night.”

And the beat goes on...

In time, things changed. Rave didn’t die, it matured. While Britpop dominated headlines, 1995 was a quietly becoming a landmark year for dance music and the age of hedonism - the era of Leftfield, Underworld, Goldie, Tricky, Daft Punk, and The Chemical Brothers. For all the moral panic and tabloid horror, rave became the beating heart of something bigger.

If Tribal Gathering had happened in Cavan that year, those attending would have witnessed The Prodigy in their Jilted Generation pomp, just before global stardom hit with The Fat of the Land in ‘97. They would have also caught Carl Cox, a master of his craft, in full flow.

Ireland today boasts events like Electric Picnic, Life Festival, and All Together Now. Dance tents. All-night parties. Nobody panics. Nobody calls the Bishop.

“If you look back through the media coverage of the rave scene throughout most of the 90s, it is almost entirely negative,” opines Wynne Jones 909 Originals. “Scare stories about ‘ecstasy deaths’ and ‘dens of iniquity’ that overlooked the fact that Ireland’s youth were embracing a powerful new movement.

“In the years that followed, there was no stopping its momentum, as what had previously been dismissed as an evil, passing fad, became intertwined with popular culture, and society at large.”