I'm addicted to watching archive rave footage on the internet

Hi, my name is Louis Anderson-Rich and I am an archive rave addict.

Right, I see by the way your face has scrunched up that you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about so let me cut to the chase. Basically, like people who have been duped by money scams, Yahoo Mail users and Bad Luck Brian, the Internet has sucked me in and fucked me over. Not in, like, a malicious way or anything but… The Internet is just such an addictive place isn’t it? And I have an addiction - I just can’t stop watching videos of old raves on the Internet.

Whether it's old episodes of The New Dance Show or videos of people losing it in a Doncaster warehouse, Sven Vath chewing his face off at Love Parade or Underground Resistance blowing people's minds in 1992, I cannot fucking get enough. Just look at the sheer optimism in these videos. Here are people discovering dance music when it was a never-before-seen, cutting-edge youth revolution. And of course there's all the sick 90s gear.

If I said “YouTube hole” to you, it might help you understand. We’ve all been trapped down one in the past, staring at a screen as if to see who blinks first. They’re characterised by recommended videos that are just too tasty to not click, and if you’ve told yourself “just one more Carpool Karaoke video” before inevitably missing your bus stop and cursing James Corden’s slimmed down face then you know what I’m talking about. But I’m at DEFCON 1 with this shit.

When I get into a hole, I go deep – logged into the mainframe like Neo. Unfortunately the red pill, the one that awakens us to the real world, only comes in the shape of work or Twin Peaks. You know, things I actually need to keep abreast of. And even then I’ve found myself thinking it would be so much better if Dale Cooper lost the suit, donned a bucket hat and admitted the backwards talking in the red room was simply because Laura Palmer had been boshing gurners before she died.

Seriously, do you know how much material there is from old raves on the World Wide Web? Gil Scott-Heron famously said the revolution will not be televised but if the ’89 Summer Of Rave is anything to go by then he is completely wrong. From the excitement of hearing ‘Your Love’ for the first time in an Ipswich aircraft hangar, to the girl who wouldn’t stop dancing until she found her car, it all seems to have been captured on film and I’ve been sucked in. Sucked in by the YouTube comments that note the lack of people on their mobile phones. Sucked in by the comments about the white dove pills. Sucked in by the comments of love, freedom and stories of being at the coalface of a new scene. I can’t help but feel as though I MUST catch up.

Enough time has passed that house music’s origins have taken on a mythical status. Chicago, Detroit, Shoom, The Hacienda, Carl Cox, acid house – they are all part of the legacy and everyone wants to “see what it was really like back in the day”. But, fuck me, I’ve taken it to new levels. I spent the entirety of the 2016 Rio Olympics searching Paradise Garage footage on the internet instead of watching any sport. And my addiction has sent me to some dark places. Honestly, people think “For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn” is the saddest story ever committed to history but they haven’t read my “Footage needed: Ron Hardy at the Muzic Box” Tinder bio.

Why does the combination of grainy footage and old overplayed tunes do this to me? It’s a question I ask myself day in and day out in the cold light of a computer screen. I wasn’t even alive for most of this shit; I was born in 1990 for fuck’s sake! But as a 90s kid we seem to have a sense of nostalgia drilled into our psyche. From net art to Simpsons memes, VHS apps to Friends reruns, sentimental longing has become the vice of a generation. I don’t drink or smoke. I just mainline nostalgia through rose-tinted glasses into my frontal lobe. It’s obvious I’m in need of a hit when my eyes start wobbling and I inexplicably start searching for Fila gear on eBay.

It would have been easy for me to remain in my pile of filth, eyes on the laptop and a Google alert set for the key phrase ‘90s rave footage’. But I want to change because I’ve realised it’s time to embrace the future. We should all change for that matter. I see my affliction developing in new forms across dance music. The Hacienda Classical is a nice night out but it’s comfortable and will make you age faster than crack. You want illegal raves? I’ve heard of some wild ones in a Newcastle sewer. You want strong drugs? Pretty sure there are warnings out there for the purity of MDMA and cocaine. You want phones off the dancefloor? You won’t get that track you’ve been trying to discreetly Shazam for the last two months. I might be addicted to the past, but the constant evolution of our dance culture will get me through.

Louis Anderson-Rich is Mixmag's Digital Intern. Follow his trials and tribulations on Twitter