And the fight at the rave is back.

It is really alienating, after something like 35 years, to see that nothing has changed in Italy yet. I am referring to the story of the clandestine raves, which are talked about constantly, as if they were absolute evil. And without saying why they are born.

The Rave, or Free Party, is the English-speaking name of something that also happened in Italy, and well before anyone bothered to give it a name. And they also existed in Emilia Romagna, although there were plenty of discos. Only they weren't called Rave. They were just "parties".

To understand this, we need to know what the horizon of a provincial teenager was in the 1980s. I'll tell a story. 1984. It's winter (I don't remember the month). An announcement appears in a mandatory newspaper in every bar in the town: Mötley Crüe are coming to Bologna. I read, I leave the house and run to my metal friends to break the news. Very well.

Two days of fighting with the parents and we can go there, as long as we sleep with an aunt. Ok. Now, problem: where do you buy tickets? We go to the bar to find the newspaper, and obviously the newspaper is no longer there. But didn't you keep it? No, says the bartender, I throw them away. Ok. So let's go to the good Ivo who buys and keeps them. But no, he doesn't keep them either. So we go to the municipal library and we discover that they keep the old copies of the newspapers (especially the obligatory one in Emilia, which started with U), but they have to wait days before they get the copy, because otherwise people don't buy the newspapers anymore.

We are in 1984. There is no internet. In the village the record shop has the Inti Illimani in its window. (there was a kind of agreement between the record shop and the municipality / party: since the municipal library bought him the surplus, in exchange the record shop had to keep only some music but not more ). However, no one can tell us where to buy tickets, how, and how much they cost. Result: no concert.

This was the cultural landscape of the province. Were there any clubs? Of course, you could choose between the Resistance (CSOA) and then end up in the beautiful world of heroin, or SPIM, and enjoy the Inti Illimani, Bowie, Pink Floyd and other acid paranoia of the 70s.

But they were places of such marked machismo that the girls didn't come. Is that so? And so the parties were made. But here came Die Partei, the party. But not the German satirical one. The PCI. And you found that your parties were disturbing. Sure, a unit party could fire smoothly at two in the morning to be audible in neighboring towns, but your party was disturbing. Always.

Then we could do something else. Look for some farmer who had a barn. Give him, as a collection, fifty thousand lire for the barn. They bought things to eat, things to drink, brought a stereo and speakers, and had a party. Make-up and more, mess, teenage bullshit and all.

Result? Half of the "comrades" also had the SIAE card, and they arrived on time, so it was enough to keep it secret and wait for the fog (which in turn muffles the sound) and you could also avoid the PCI and its thugs. (in the early 80s the PCI detested metal, and was reciprocated by metals).

This was not a rave. It was a group of teenagers, from 14 to 17, who secretly organized a party to escape the clutches of a series of mafia members (SIAE, PCI, ACLI, discos themselves) who intended to have a monopoly. They had to decide what they listened to, what they danced, how they had fun (equal to zero) and with whom. And the result was the homologating flatness into which the PCI plunged Emilia Romagna.

The phenomenon of raves proper came later, but it was not new to anyone. And initially it had nothing to do with social centers, which normally arrive 10-15 years late (they have the time zone of the Digos).

It was a question of escaping the "divertimentificio", that is, the political and economic organization of youth free time. The problem is not Covid today, just as it wasn't really musical stupidity. It was the entertainment factory, as they called it in the 1980s. An industrial organization that allowed you to have fun, provided that:

• you listened to the right music.
• you were dressed in the symbols of success of the 80s.
• you were "cool", whatever that meant.
• you were aligned with the PCI.
• you participated in a real fashion show. Being at the club wasn't just about dancing and having fun. On the track you were doing a show.
• the girls accepted to be commodities, that is, they were allowed to enter for free to "attract the males".

back then, the entertainment factory was alienating, because it was efficient . Each record was designed to make a profit. Either you bought some product or you made the place cool, that is, you were the product. If you weren't the product or didn't consume products, you weren't a disco one. If there wasn't the music you wanted and your group spent some time on the sofas, just to be in company, they would make you aware that the empty dance floor was not nice to see. Etc.

The point is, the fun was detached from freedom. The difference between fun and entertainment is the difference between a walk in the countryside and a Prussian march. One always goes from A to B while walking, but freedom is lacking. The entertainment factory leaves you no freedom.

When we were having a party, however, things were not like that. You did whatever the fuck you wanted, if you wanted you were on the sofa, you could ask for the music to those who put the records, the girls were all right and not just those of a certain type, (in the records there was the order to discourage “upholstery girls”) and so on.

When you can't stop teens doing their thing for their own sake, you know what you do? You terrify their parents. And then someone went to the parents to say that our parties were full of DRUGS and the girls' parents were told the most absurd erotic fantasies.

To give you an idea: in nightclubs there was drugs as if it were raining, and in the local CSOA heroin was endemic. But the problem was OUR imaginary drug.

This is the story of those who try to escape the "divertimentificio". It doesn't matter if it's a rave party in an industrial building or a party in a barn. (they arrived to send the fellow surveyor of the municipality at one in the morning to ask if the barn was habitable: consider that it was an element that "the pen dropped" at 12:30 every day, and you will understand).

The problem is that the entertainment factory has its own economy, and you can't think of having fun spending little money, spending less money, or spending it on whoever you want. You have to spend as much as they want, where they want, and when you don't spend you have to be attractive, that is, you have to transform yourself into what in the 80s were the "beautiful people" that made the place attractive.

This is the economy of the "entertainment factory".

Imagine today's scenario. With Covid-19 the era of discos is over. The "Ape" of the Milanese is dead. Happy Hour, and the whole party fueled by poor slaves who didn't have time to go home for a decent meal is a memory. The entertainment factory has stopped. The entertainment factory is fierce. He wants his money back.

And that's why I don't believe in a certain party narrative .

Because it's music I've heard before.

The charges could be debunked one by one. There was "loud music and alcohol". Damn. Alcohol from the parts of Trento. Something never seen before, for the region that notoriously shares the disgust for alcohol with the Taliban. The music was loud. Well. Given the place, it must have been a problem. All those people who do NOT live there, NOT bothered by "loud music". And they have violated the rules of the covid, not like those who are on the beach these days. I also remember that the place is outdoors, which in the rest of Italy authorizes you to dance. But they are in the entertainment factory . After all, everyone had to really believe the covid, if the first instinct of the carabinieri was to surround the area, that is to keep them locked inside the town. Brilliant. Clap, clap, clap.

And look what awful stuff they do !

I don't want to comment on the "dangerous for society": honestly, I don't know what a shitty place Folgaria is, but if any editorial staff can write things like that without being set on fire by a crowd with pitchforks, it's a shitty place from which the tourist should stay carefully offshore. To prevent them from taking it off that page, I take a screenshot. It must remain for posterity a place of shit inhabited by putrefied living dead, which it considers "a danger to society" of the guys who dance.

Anyone who wants to escape the divertimentificio always finds some accusation ready. Reading in the same newspaper I discover that they have "ripped up a bar". Unheard-of cruelty against an endangered species, the Trentino bars. The shelters are full of Trentino bars abandoned on the motorway. An "affront to memory", even. Only the usual competition in cristicide is missing, the shoah, the foibehs, and global warming (which is always there).

The persecutory rage towards those who make the Free Party makes no sense whatsoever. It is useless, it is not a priority for public order, and the fact that at 45 km from the party they stopped some drug dealers tells me little. But the truth is simple: the entertainment factory is injured, the entertainment factory is starving .

The entertainment factory is fierce .

That's all.