Tag Archives: glow in the dark

The Cowboy Raver of the Bay Area

Nationality: American
Age: n/a
Occupation: Professor at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 24, 2018
Primary Language: English

Background: I interviewed Professor Nye to talk about his raving experiences. He described his most active era to be from 1997-2001 in the underground trance music scene of the Bay Area. He attended many outdoor, open-air, camping events that are described as “underground” or not necessarily sanctioned in the same way that official music festivals, such as Coachella, or Outside Lands are.

Context: Professor Nye was at this point in the conversation reflecting on the colorful culture of raves, and the neon colors he associates with his memories of it.

“I’ll also introduce one figure from the mid to late 90s that I would be fascinated to know what happened to him. You’d see him at all these events. He was this amazing guy, I think he was – whether it was his regular job I don’t know- I think he was kind of a traveler who was a former cowboy or was a cowboy. And he would get dressed up and actually had, in the middle of these parties, a glow-stick lasso. And he’d be like lasso-ing with this glow in the dark lasso, or even multiple lassos, and that was pretty incredible. He was affiliated with this Bay Area trance scene that I was primarily involved in. Around ‘98, ‘99, 2000.”

Aside from the illustrious raver cowboy figure, there is an element of rave dance from the late 90s being shared here. The use of neon, glow in the dark lassos as part of the ritual of dancing in a crowd is an important aspect of the information being imparted here.

Glow in the Dark Nunchucks

Nationality: American
Age: n/a
Occupation: Professor at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: April 24, 2018
Primary Language: English

Background: I interviewed Professor Nye to talk about his raving experiences. He described his most active era to be from 1997-2001 in the underground trance music scene of the Bay Area. He attended many outdoor, open-air, camping events that are described as “underground” or not necessarily sanctioned in the same way that official music festivals, such as Coachella, or Outside Lands are.

Context: Prior to describing “glow in the dark nunchucks”, Professor Nye had been sharing his memory of one raver who was infamous for bringing neon and glow in the dark lassos to events.

“Really popular, at least in the Bay Area, because there was such a strong presence in the Asian American community- right by the glow-in-the-dark lassos you could see glow-in-the-dark nunchucks. The nunchucks were pretty great. Standard colors would be green or orange or blue were the most popular, yeah. Nunchucks, yeah.”

We were then joking how much festival security and concert security would quickly confiscate anything that could be construed as a weapon nowadays. These glow in the dark nunchucks have thus become a relic of past raves.