Raver Madness 1.2

8/14/2019 Raver Madness 1.2

1/23

Raver Madness(a shocking yet true tale

of youthful folleyand

misadventure at the hands

of the Zippies)by David Dei

(and the Domain of the Cuddly Deity)(and the Domain of the Cuddly Deity)(and the Domain of the Cuddly Deity)(and the Domain of the Cuddly Deity)


2/23

NOTE ABOUT THIS PART BOOK

I am releasing this part book for free, as a freely redistributable ebook.You can download it, put it on a P2P net, put it on your site, email itto a friend, and, if youre addicted to dead trees, you can even print it.Why am I doing this? The Zippies were the original free spirits of the Internet. To do something

for Zip is to do it for FREE or next to nothing, ZERO, NADA.

Now more than ever, in the Age of Zip, FREE needs to be given a second chance. Even if doingso much for so little made no sense at the time, and I still struggle to figure out why we neverbroke even back in the days of WEB 1.0, I like being part of a greater global culture and planetarymovement than the isolated Well community in which the Zippies first made their voices heard.Thanks to Cory Doctorow for reminding my why I support the creative commons.

So heres the deal: Im releasing this part-book under a licensedeveloped by the Creative Commons project (http://creativecommons.org/).This is a project that lets authors roll our own license agreements forthe distribution of creative work under terms similar to those employed

by the Free/Open Source Software movement. It still is a great project, and like Cory, Improud to be a part of it.

Here's a summary of the licence:http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0Attribution. The licensor permits others to copy,distribute, display, and perform the work. In return,licensees must give the original author credit.Noncommercial. The licensor permits others to copy,distribute, display, and perform the work. In return,licensees may not use the work for commercialpurposesunless they get the licensor's permission.No Derivative Works. The licensor permits others to

copy, distribute, display and perform only unalteredcopies of the worknot derivative works based on it.The full terms of the license are here:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0-legalcode

If you support this project please let me know how to get furtherparts, editions online at no cost and without a budget. Your help

is greatly appreciated.

Contact the author at: PO BOX 4398, Cape Town 8000 SouthAfrica, [email protected]


3/23

FORWARD

Burn baby burn! - Disco inferno!

Burn baby burn! - Burn that mama down!Burn baby burn! - Disco inferno!!Burn baby burn! - Burn that mama down!

Burnin'!Disco Infernoby The Trammps

The nineties club scene had birthed out of the Second Summer of Love whichhad catapulted rave culture into the headlines. Acid house, technobeats, ecstasyand a new style of music called trance, would all coalesce out of the resultingcyberdelia. Whereas the hippies had promoted peace, love and psychedelics,the zippies placed their faith in technology. More than a few heads missed thedistinction, and embraced an all out Dionysian revolt that included a lot more

than the Internet.

The resulting digital rush towards the end of the millennium and the zeros orzippies, would be more than merely a reiteration of the classic myth conjured upby bands as diverse as Orbital, Prodigy and Dee-Lite. It involved the Politics ofFree freedom, rave culture, the end of the world, and a lot more besides.

With the Shaman falling prey to the likes of Terence McKenna, and Tim Learymaking an electronic come-back, everything was considered possible, includingthe insane notion that a small band of clubbers could take on America. This is aslice of the larger picture, in which 15 club kids from Britain staged a media prank

that landed them on the front page of the New York Times. Who or exactly whatwere the Zippies back then? Why was Wired Magazine presumably in on thedeal, and why would the Zippie end up being blackballed in the same way thehippy was killed off in 1967? You are free to figure out the answers, as I attemptto relate my side of the story involving one of the biggest media pranks of the 20thand 21stCenturies.

David Dei

Nutopia


4/23

Chapter One

"Your commands shall be obeyed," said the leader; and then, with a great deal of chattering andnoise the Winged Monkeys flew away to the place where Dorothy and her friends were walking."L Frank Baum, Wizard of Oz.

IN THE aftermath of the much vaunted "Zippy *Pronoia Tour to US", in which 15club kids were taken from London and put on a publicity tour by Wired Magazine,Cubensis, aka John Bagby the magic mushroom-advocate and self-proclaimedcommunications director began relating a wild story, in particular a tale about onefateful night at the Crash Palace on Divisidero Street in San Francisco duringJuly 1994, and a moment that signaled the break-up between various factions ofrave culture vying for attention. The publicity tour started by Wired Magazine topromote their new online news service, would continue in the absence of FraserClark, the man responsible for a particular brand of "technoshamanism" and whohad ostensibly coined the term "zippy".

(* The sneaking suspicion that others are conspiring behind your back to helpyou. And you them.)

The legendary one night event called "Zen Inspired Performance Publishing"(ZIPP) achieved mythic status on his website. Cubensis, in his own words says:"This event originally began as an idea of Mark Heley's (publisher of ClublifeMagazine - SF). It was to be the launch of the Zippy Times USA, created in alive, interactive, creative environment. Unfortunately, this was the same week theZippy Pronoia Tour split with its spokesman Fraser Clark. Seeing as Fraser wasthe original editor of the UK Zippy Times, we thought it inappropriate to create a

"Zippy Times".

Annoying for some, I was to become part of Clarks "lifelong, unending mega sci-finovel," -- and later, de facto"editor of the Zippy Times USA" . But to put this nutin a monkeyhouse -- I was never party to, nor a part of that stylish ZIPP party --neither the "Zen Inspired Performance Event" nor the much touted "OmegaRave". However I came to know Clark intimately and followed him for much of


5/23

the period subsequent to the split. This is a tale about youthful folly and my ownmisadventure if you can call it that.

Briefly, ZIPP was not the only such event, in which performance art andpublishing became intertwined with zippiness and human destiny. However what

is significant here is the fact that Fraser Clark, the "Columbus of Rave Culture",and the leading figurehead for the Zippies as far as the media were concerned,was obviously "not exactly there", the result of a "split" between two factions of"zippies" which was to impact on my life for years to come.

While this parallel universe was unfolding, and a lot of counter-cultural hocuspocus was busy being organised in and around San Francisco, I "joined the tour"and in the ensuing confusion left people wondering whether or not there wasactually one tour or many? Undoubtedly there are bound to be several differentversions of the same theme of Zen Inspired Pronoia or whatever, each with itsown team of zippies, yippies, psychodippies.

One Pronoia tour itinerary I downloaded from the net is mysteriously dated "03-April-97" -- perhaps there was a repeat performance? As I write this monographof sorts, there is precious little, in the way of fact -- no way of knowing for sure,whether or not anything actually happened during 1994. Could we all be victimsof an elaborate hoax? I raised this issue with Jules Marshall who had written theinitial story in collaboration with John Battelle, then managing editor of Wired,and his response was to write a background piece, giving more substance towhat had really been an over-hyped "confab".

"Could you play up the tour a bit more?" Battelle had apparently requested,

setting the tone.

The result was a record smashing cover story by Marshall, syndicated around theworld, including appearances in Polish Playboy and Paris Elle. Batelle'scyberdelic passion "play" had taken on a life of its own, promoting Wired's newtarget market and Internet services as the Zippies struggled to hold onto theirown interests and began to swim in a semiotic maelstrom that is still beingcontested to this day.

As an obviously smarting retort from Wired suggested recently: "In May 1994Wired Magazine [had] "announced that a confab of techno-pagans at the Grand

Canyon in August would spark a cultural wildfire that could change Americaforever. It was the next Woodstock, the inauguration of a millennial culture."

The same magazine then went on to dismiss Marshall's cover story as "one ofthe most heinous examples of a non-event accorded disproportionate attention.In fact there is some question as to whether the people involved were simplycirculating a hoax, with the deliberate aid of Jules Marshall, its author."


6/23

"A cynic might view the scene as a willful media hoax. To Clark and his loopyposse of Zippies (or Zen Inspired Pagan Professionals) it's yet another symptomof "pronoia" -- the sneaking suspicion that others are conspiring behind your backto help you." Sarah Ferguson, High Times, Feb 1995.

Presumably, as one of the contributors to this media prank, how did I end upbecoming party to an open conspiracy, a global intrigue or confab as Wiredwould have it? How did I end up typesetting the same "Zippy Times" that wouldprobably have also been part of the "Zen Inspired Publishing" night sponsored byMark Heley, and why had Clark decided to seek my help, in renaming hispublication "The Megatripolitan"? I don't claim to know all the answers, but what Ipresume to tell here, is a semblance of the truth and at least my half of the story.

*******

It is mid-morning in October 1994. I'm living in an unfurnished room with my de

factogirlfriend at the time Rehane X**, opposite the "projects" in the LowerHaight district of San Francisco. Fraser is on the telephone: You see David,there's this Orb of History, and we all dive into it, and we will wonder one day whywe never did this before..."

"Gosh, that sounds like incredible fun, come over." I reply, "let's do it."

When the "caramel maned" rapster arrives at my rented room in an unfurnishedapartment and inexplicably insists on paying me for my rudimentary services. Idon't pretend to kick up a fuss or strike a big movie deal, because I need whatlittle money there is, even a fiver would do, besides the man is flashing a clipping

from Newsweek, which describes him fending off a couple of rangers in Arizona'sKaibab National Forest. The rangers offer him "a list of reasons why amplificationand lighting equipment are prohibited on national forest land." and Newsweekdescribes the plot: "Behind the rangers backs, a white truck carrying two dozenspeaker cabinets and 24 000 watts of power bumps its way up a closed seven-mile road -- sans headlights." Heady stuff.

With the polite "approval" of the establishment, Clark has committed some kindof an eco-crime and it all seems so normal, in spite of warnings that: "Theconfluence of subcultures gave the remote area the aura of a 21st centurytribalism, a dash of Mad Max mixed with a Robert Bly retreat in the midst of a

hippie love-in." I ignore the advice from my cute facto de girlfriend, who tells meto "flee, before the hippies get to you."

And so I eventually extricate some kind of a commitment from Clark: "Not toworry," says Clark, "I'll pay you for the flyers" he promises. "Zippies are not justhippies, I tell my brown-eyed factotum. "They also have a lot of professionalpeople helping out, you know, like Internet experts and sound engineers and thiscould lead to bigger things."


7/23

I would soon learn to my detriment, the difference between making a sane careerchoice and "a paradigm jump off the Grand Canyon. Joining a bunch ofpranksters stumbling along on some kind of a peyote laden joy-ride is not exactlysomething one puts on ones resume. Hell, these were real Zippies -- ZenInspired Pagan Professionals hacking the system for all it was worth and doing it

all for free.

Jules Marshall acknowledged this when he agreed with me "to be honest...therewas an element of hacking wired," but while the Zippies did everything for free,others were simply making money. Wired Executives would end up getting farmore mileage out of the Zippies than the core group of original Zippies, who werecontent merely with a couple of airline tickets and the publicity and undergroundcred they received. It is a moot point whether there was ever a fair and equalexchange between the digital capitalists who promoted Net-freedom, -- thepolitics of free -- and those who were expected to contribute to the free-culturethat had sprung up around the Internet without any thought of financial reward.

This was a "bone fide youth trend" however and people wanted to get in on theaction. Steering clear of the millions of users and hangers-on who had wizenedup to the wizards tactics would become a full-time obsession for Clark, who quitefrankly, should have retreated back to Britain as soon as the press got wind of alooming legal battle over ownership of his club -- Megatripolis -- and thesubculture he had created behind it -- Zippie.

However even the "fact" that Columbus had discovered rave culture not"invented" it, would fall into question, like so many things that start off being solidand then disappear in a shower of sparks, fire and brimstone. More on the "who

created Zippie dispute, later.

To get back to my story, I was stuck and didn't have any money, flat broke in aforeign country, when Clark suddenly called, and that's probably why I jumped atthe opportunity. I trusted Clark and he saw me as his lap-top toting secretary orso it seemed. Making a couple of dollars doing some flyers and a newsletterabout free stuff was about as far as my "financial" ambition over this zippyphenomenon extended. It was no big deal, I was just a writer who had happenedto be at Megatripolis UK the previous summer. Clark had actually even invitedme then to join him in his conspiracy "to tour America". But as luck would have, itall sounded too much like a proposal you make when you're a bit stoned, notsomething as serious and illicit as hacking Wired Magazine and haulingequipment through the Kaibab national forest, so I politely declined.

It was August or September 1993 and I had made my way to Britain from my owncountry, South Africa, had then bumped into one of Clark's "Megatripolitans" onthe tube, a modern merry prankster who had handed me a flyer for the club nightYou have to "experience", a night with the "Zippies" hadn't I heard about them?"The future perfect state every Thursday at Heaven." In fact Clark and I had


8/23

already been corresponding for a while via his "Encyclopaedia PsychedelicaInternational" or Epi for short. Nothing particularly unusual, for the editor of asmall counter-culture zine in South Africa, isolated from the rest of the world bysanctions and a cultural boycott.

I had edited Kagenna, an irregular fanzine, from 1989-1993. The only way ofkeeping in touch with the outside world had been to write letters and trademagazines, one of them being Epi. As RU Sirius can probably testify, I had beenwriting letters to a number of west coast publications like Mondo 2000 and hadeven had letters published under various pseudonyms like Ted Head. So you cansay all my "sneaking suspicions of positivity" were confirmed by finding a copy ofClark's next venture, the ^evolution in a bookstore in West London, with a smallcontribution from a South African "Buddhist queen" called Samten, a regularcontributor to Kagenna, the magazine I was now hawking around the globe.

So I end-up on the tube, going to one of the Megatripolis parties, basically a

great big technoclub with a nice ambient lounge and good vibe. Mixmaster Morrison the decks, couple of kids taking acid, probably for the first time, and of course,a dancing granny and a small inner circle surrounding Uncle Fraser, who seemedlike a warm old man who wanted nothing more than for everyone to have a goodtime. It was all rather innocent, until he took me aside and mentioned offhandthat he was going to America, and "won't I join him, I can introduce you topeople, you know -- like Tim Leary".

I laughed it all off as some kind of a practical joke, and left for Camden with oneof the many rabble-rousers on the night-bus. If anything, Clark's offer onlyconfirmed my own plan to go to San Francisco, do a tour of West Coast Counter-

Culture, and basically meet people like "Tim Leary" on my own steam. Leary, asfar as I was concerned, was making a drug-free come-back with virtual realityand his new stance on pushing computers instead of psychedelics had intriguedme enough to actually publish an article by him on the "new wave" of cyberdeliapeaking in the 1990s.

I bought a cheap six month return ticket to California, (which later turned out tohave a one-way code) and hopped aboard a United Airways flight to SanFrancisco, not expecting that it would take a while longer than I expected to getback home.

After interviewing people like RU Sirius in an Indian Restaurant in Berkeley, Iheaded for LA, to meet some Extropians, and hang with them for a while. This ishow I got to meet Tim Leary on my own steam. While this was all happening"according to plan" I suddenly got caught-up in an earthquake, lost my return air-ticket to the scalpers and spent a good few extra months simply eking out a living-- struggling to survive. Then suddenly the "Here come the Zippies" coverappeared. "Cool!" I thought, "They've actually gone and done it." I myopicallycontemplated jumping aboard a bus right there and then, heading for Flagstaff


9/23

right away to join the tribe, but this plan was quickly dropped as beingimpractical, besides, I had no money.

Nevertheless I enthusiastically followed events as they unfolded in the papersand on the Internet. The alt.culture.zippies topic on usenet was one of the most

popular topics and hundreds of postings mere made, but compared to what washappening back home in South Africa where a country had just been liberated,this was kids stuff, "let them have a good time," I thought, "maybe I'll go to arave". Some of the Extropians on the West Coast were dismissive. "Youth nazis"they said. "They're good guys, what's the problem?" I responded.

By the time I got back to San Francisco, Megatripolis West was about to belaunched. I spotted a flyer in a clothing store and simply pitched-up. It wasOctober 1. "Free Festival at the Trocadero" "Opening night speaker -- John PerryBarlow (Grateful Dead/Cyberologist/Founder of Electronic Frontier Foundation)talking about "The trouble with You Kids today." "Your participation is invited in

our opening ceremony with Aum dancer and the Kiwi Theatre." "Everybody is astar" and so on. I join the crowd outside and Clark is welcoming a long line, averitable queue of guests. Practically everybody in San Francisco.

"There's a familiar face" says the "lord of the new techno shamanarchy"(according to the New York Times), greeting me.

(Note: **Rehane X = Rehane Abrahams, an actress and performance artist fromCape Town, South Africa.)


10/23

Chapter Two

"Tell me something about yourself, and the country you came from, said theScarecrow..." L Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz.

AS FAR as Clark was concerned, I was already a part of his "conspiracy." Whilehanging at the new club, I found myself quickly roped into doing things for himand the obvious reason why any of this is significant to you or anybody else, isbecause the media event created by Jules Marshall's "Here Come the Zippies"cover story, had mutated into a plethora of verbiage on all things Zippydom.

As I would eventually learn, the High Times version of events was onlyscheduled for publication in February 1995 of the next year. Hampton Sidesexcellent imitation of Tom Robbins' new journalism appeared only at the end of1994 in December. If the meme carried by the Daily Newspapers had seemingly

dried out, and Wired Magazine's letters pages had begun to slip into sneeringcondescension about "the zippie techno poseurs" it was only because the rollercoaster had stopped to take on some passengers "still in the stone age ofpersonal computing" -- and all of us, including those who were merely in it, for thehell of it, were still very much part of the cyberdelic ride. For some, just beingnear the tickle of America's latest orgasm would produce media convulsions.

So we're back at that morning in early October. A phone call from Clark etc etc.And now it's later in the morning I'm just casually doing my small task, for a man,a friend, who I know very little about actually, when suddenly my complete andtotal attention is demanded. (Folks - nobody can be accused of holding a gun to

my head, I simply acquiesced in following the leader but it's a diabolical plotnevertheless)-- one minute you're following the yellow brick road, the next minuteyou're being transported by flying monkeys to the palace of Brumhilda the BadWitch with the Tin Man --- Basically I'm picked up in a car driven by someone'smom. As far as everybody is concerned this is hype heaven in hippyland. "Weneed more zippies" says Sionadh Craigen, packing us all in.

Fraser's adolescent girlfriend is basically in charge. We drive off and I struggle toremain composed, nonchalantly I tell her that seriously all I promised Mr Clarkwas a flyer or two, nothing more.... and it all seems to happen in slow motion. Iguess you could also say I was abducted by a flying saucer never to return hometo normality again. I'm a little queasy in the pit of my stomach. "We need morezippies." A strange inexpressible emotion, -- "you don't even know me that well,and already you're telling me who I'm supposed to be", but foolishly I ignore thewarning signs, my own inner voice, and float downstream, go along with thecarnival. What I probably should have been doing is making an appointment withthe "teenager inside my twenty-something body", if only to reassure him that allthis was not a commitment to a lifelong fraud, a simple hoax, a publicity stunt, a


11/23

media prank -- Hey I'm just a professional, an associate, an equal, my whole lifeis still ahead of me.

Quaint stuff like this would soon melt under the pressure to become an arbitrary,totally anonymous "Zippy".

As I write this, Time magazine has published a cover story called "Secrets of theTeen Brain". Apparently research is "revolutionising our view of the adolescentmind -- and explaining it in mystifying ways."[Time June 7] No doubt the mysteryof life is unfolding, but research like this invariably comes too late to save mefrom teenage expectations of who and what a Zippy ought to be, even way backin 1994.

As those who are perhaps already familiar with this demon of an issue, gettingtreated like a new species of teenager was only half the problem of beingassociated with Clark's new "posse". The other problem was putting up with

"adults" like Peter Booth Lee, a perpetual four-year-old, who had literally takenover the cultural persona of Wired's "Here Come the Zippies" cover -- knittedcap, techno glasses and all. Rather brave I thought, since Wired was accused byirate readers of "plastering zombie nerd-boy all over the cover" of something thatshould usually be "left on a coffee table." If Lee, a freelance photographercovering the tour for Clublife, had been serious, he would have probably gone allthe way and "outed himself" as a Zippie, but to do this would mean living up tothe expectations created by "Pincus the Cyborg" who had joined the tour in NewYork. According to Clark, Pincus been earning a living posing as a cyborg statueon Wall street before being pressed into the service of pronoia.

Net Item: "Pronoia" by Sunset Magnet North, Album, "Cooler Perspective", 2001.

Despite fears that young and impressionable ravers across the country hadsimply transformed themselves into zippies and that technology was being used"simply to legitimize a cult which is little more than a kind of violent Wayne'sWorld on Internet" The tour proceeded apace, with or without the fashion police."Zippies?" commented one fashionista: "one, a fashion failure wearing virtual-reality goggles, graced the May cover of Wired magazine, the 18-month-oldguide to technohip that's the biggest marketing success since Rolling Stone, andalready not as good as it used to be." (Sheila Lennon, The Reader). Of course,zippies were really "technohippies from England who deftly mix the music andmultimedia of the rave club scene, Druid religious roots, psychedelics and thatold hippie freedom trip. Their tour is called Pronoia -- the sneaking feeling thatothers are conspiring to help you -- and their goal is evolution, a revolution inconsciousness".

I'm no better off in a maroon bomber jacket, grey tracksuit and khaki trainers --since I admit now to the entire world, that I wouldn't have been able to figure outthe street fashion of San Francisco in '94 either, even if Nike had paid me $1000


12/23

000 and told me to like swoosh. I'm lost in the fashion stakes, much to Sionaidh'sdismay. While we're driving in the car to yet another "photo opportunity" I ask herwhat's up. She updates me in her boho lilt: "the zippies have already had a pressconference, and a eco-friendly fashion show, you know, like with hempproducts..." and it all sounds terribly cultish, and exciting and I want to be a part

of what one could call the carnival of free, but like whose backing the zippies?

My naivet about the dialectics of zip would eventually get me into hot water butfor the meantime I was content to ruminate about the publics current fixation.You know I know the Zippies like as in Fraser Clark created them and the Zippiesare US, but is that one ZIPPY with a "Y" or many Zippies with an IE? Whenyou're having the wool pulled over your eyes its usually because somebodywants you to be a sheep, -- Was I slaughtered simply because I was "white",South African, and nobody thought Y?

We end-up downtown in silicon alley. RU Sirius, my cyberpunk friend is there,

being interviewed for a television spot I guess, and it's an interview conducted bysome young brat who is covering the incipient counter-culture, probably with astudent loan and his dad's video camera. I'm told to just sit on the floor or like"wait in the kids room". If I had a portable rocket from the future I would get out ofthere, but all I manage is to chirp-up that actually, in reality, I'm nearly 26 and apublisher of sorts, in fact I have published zines down under in South Africa etc,etc. The video guy just looks at me, like I'm worse than a redneck or white-trash,on the inside of his politically correct televisionland brain.

Fraser does the interview. I try to network a little: "Names Dave Dei," I saystruggling to appear cool and using one of my newly acquired net-names (as it

turns out, from the Domain of the Cuddly Deity). Big mistake. Because, sinceShionadh doesn't know that Fraser already knows me from London I am markedas some kind of an attention-getter or worse, one of those complete nobodieswho grab microphones while you're still on stage, grandstands a little or goes outof the way to steal your thunder.

Jules Marshall wrote recently in his "Decade after the Zippies" piececommissioned by Wired Magazine about something familiar to all of us: "I caughtup with Fraser at a party just outside Santa Cruz." says Marshall, "Fraser wasintroduced to speak beforehand, when suddenly this weirdo called Pincus,dressed in body armour, fur and cow horns as I remember, grabs the mike andannounces HE is Fraser Clark, and goes on to spout complete gibberish for tenminutes." According to Marshall "This guy had at some stage attached himself tothe zippies, or one half of them as it had become by now, it seems."

If the man bothered to read the script between the lines, it is quite obvious frompostings made by myself and others on the Well Bulletin Board, that I had byimplication then "attached myself" to the other half. Yes there was a split and no,I wasn't even party to that split. What happened in reality, it that I had become a


13/23

useful part, of what Clark would always term "the reinforcements we were waitingfor" and as such was an easily expendable commodity in both media terms andin terms of THE ZIPPIES, after the news story seemingly dried up. What am Idoing here? Obviously the problem is not too difficult to sort out looking at it fromthe year 2004.

As High Times says: "Clark decided to pull the plug on the Zippies' Canyon partyand re-direct his energy towards opening a Megatripolis-style club in SanFrancisco... Then he caught wind of the European press, which was hyping themega-rave as the Woodstock of the 90's... hype had overtaken reality; the showhad to go on."

While Fraser was being touted by the press as some kind of cult-figuresurrounded by a horde of acolytes, on the one hand, the reality was completelydifferent. On the other -- there were no "true-believers" only variations of whatcan only be described as a rag-tag army of techno-hippies and cyber-anarchists -

- the reinforcements he had been looking for since the sixties.

While people like Earth Girl and Michael John seem to pop-up in story after storyabout the Zippies, it is probably because they were already well-known andAmericans to boot. Very little is ever said about the actual tribe that accompaniedClark from London, and this criticism is not a new one. In fact in a piece postedon the web shortly after the tour fell-apart, (the Pronoia Tour was supposed tocontinue on to Hawai and a 1/4 million rave with the KLF, followed by an Eclipseafter-party in Peru) an anonymous author makes the startling point: "Take thevery question of who these people are: How were they educated? What parts ofBritain are they from? What do they do for a living? Who are their parents?"

And comments: "This was barely touched upon for those who were the nucleusof this movement, and not at all for the late-comers, who form, by [Marshallsestimates] about half of the 200 000 zippies."

I'm not trying to include myself, here, but Americans like to honk their own horn,and it is probably safe to say that the closer you were to the nucleus surroundingClark, the least likely you were to actually get heard --- since the man was quitecapable of telling everybody to shut-up while having a conversation about topicalprofundities like "we don't want to be all commercial or have stars". The thoughtpolice and people like John Bagby were only too happy to oblige in followingorders.

We return from yet another fashionable appearance at the Marconi ConventionCenter, go up to the apartment and one of Clark's goons, from the bad side ofLondon clubland, asks me "are you gay you know like a fag". His name isRonnie, and he's shooting a movie about the tour, and "do you get it in thebackside, you know, like in the arse?"


14/23

"Can't say I do....do you? I seem to reply, but instead I play dumb, not wishing toappear so ultimately stupid, but then what is Ronnie actually doing here, makinghistory with a capital H, with a bunch of gay-bashers in San Francisco of allplaces? According to Ronnie, the Zippies are having trouble with a bunch of clubqueens (in particular one promoter) and they need a couple of extra zippies, you

now like for the support.

The totally anonymous monkey creature inside of me still wants to shout sometotally queer and outrageously camp expletive: Sure I'm a Zippy supporter, whatclub soccer do you watch? Zippies FNL, Zippies Guiness Cup or the ZippiesUnited Local?

Except where I'm from this kind of cultural bickering is taken seriously. Politiciansoften feel the need to feel popular by rigging the polls, bussing in supporters whohave no idea what they are supporting, and press ganging people with little elseto do, except go along for the ride. I ask myself the question -- am I just one of

the crowd -- the mob -- the passing parade whose presence has no effect on theoutcome of events whatsoever?

I have no answers. The reality is that I've spent the last ten years thinking aparticular event was possibly significant, when in fact the truth is, it was just aside-show and as insignificant and impossible to believe as King Kong on arollerblades, dancing down the Nile, or as futile as owning one of those quaintdo-hickeys for someone else's brand new Beetle (1960s pretty boy reissue) --you know it does something probably useful, you know it is probably vital to theworkings of the man and his car engine but what? If it falls out and the car stillgoes, you do nothing, tell nobody and go about your business blissfully unaware,

and for all they know, internal combustion could be the result of a wormhole inspace-time.


15/23

Chapter Four

Your Messiah will arrive much later than expected.

"I am Oz, the Great and Terrible. Why do you seek me?" L Frank Baum, The

Wizard of Oz

THERE were always elements of the messianic about Clark's mission. Part of hischarm and allure was in recasting the yuppie as a hippie holding a computer withan innocent vision of dancing outdoors on the grass amidst a bigger dose ofmillennium fever than most. Indeed there is nothing wrong with beingcharacterised as some kind of holy man carrying a laptop computer while ridingon a donkey, even if this makes you look like the Jesus Christ of rave culture asTime or Newsweek would have it, (Christopher Columbus as I still maintain) it isanother thing altogether to actually tout oneself as G-d or to claim to embody thespiritual physicality of a Christ without stopping to consider that there could well

be a pantheon of gods out there that include Buddha and even the Zoroastrianembodiment of the god Mazda?

We arrived one night at -- Terence McKenna's ex-wife, Kat McKennashouseboat in Sausalito somewhere, and we are instantly thronged byworshippers who insist that I am Krishna and Fraser is like God. They all circle uslike pixies at a fairy wedding and dance and sing a song too horrible to imagine. Ithink it has something to do with Fraser's birthday, but I am too stoned toremember anything more than that.

It would be a while until the infamous "Smells like Zippy Spirit -- the stillbirth of a

supertribe" piece in OUTside Magazine was published, along with the terriblequote "I'm just a guy. Jesus was just a guy, too, of course." I could never figureout exactly why Hampton Sides wanted to pronounce the Zippies "Dead onArrival", but then you have to figure in the exploitation angle. The fact that noneof us were getting paid, and as the "new supertribe" multiplied, so did the numberof venture capitalists all of whom balked at the new economics created out offree. Not even the resulting dot-com explosion would compensate for the lack offaith, as calls came in from somebody who claimed to be from Merrill Lynch andAssociates, of all people.

"Being a zippy means believing in a technology-based spiritualism where, in

essence, the Macintosh is the messiah. For many followers, it's more than just anexcuse to indulge in a night of loud music and dabble in psychedelic drugs." P.J.Huffstutter, LA Times.

Being so close to a superego like Clark, can be dangerous. It is one thing tostand next to a real Saint, a Mandela or a Tutu, and to get a whiff of actualgreatness, but being situated next to Clark, at any time of the day, was, as thesaying goes, "like being absorbed by an unstable supernova about to explode,


16/23

"He had the ability, armed with a concoction of psychedelic folklore, to makeeven the smallest detail seem completely trivial and yet "oh, so significant", toliterally mesmerize your mind, hypnotizing you with his birdlike, rhyming verse --yes the man as so many critics like to tell us, had the real gift of the gab, and wasindeed some kind of stoned leprechaun spouting poetry and persuading you that

things were, far from being stillborn and over, just about to start .

"Zippies are a product of gene-splicing between Timothy Leary and Microsoft."P.J. Huffstutter

When the "Here come the Zippiest" story was breaking on the West Coast ofAmerica during 1994, Bill Griffith, the creator of a cartoon character named"Zippy" expressed his concern that people like myself were simply "cashing-in".Even though I could not afford to wash my socks, we were "cashing-in", perhapson Zippy himself?

"I've always longed to be a Mascot, says Zippy the Pinhead in the comic strip -"Yippee, its Zippier", about a "bunch of weirdoes who guzzle mashed enzymesand get communal and stuff" "Good!" says Zippos ultra-rationalist partner Griffin,"Fantabulous! Now I'll get this out on the' Internet and we can start licensing - Isee 'Zippier' screensavers, 'Zippier' flavored teas! 'Zippier' clam dippiest!! You'llbe huge!"

While it seemed to an ultra-rationalist as if Clark was making money off the odd

appearance, cadging a dollar here and there, and generally mooching his wayaround while conning masses of hysterical new age wannabes, all of whomwanted to be in on the action, he was far from being a Sai Baba or Maharaji. Infact being Jesus Christ was not all that desirable, since one of the side-effects ofbeing cast as an impoverished beggar on a donkey was that the apple power-book was always out of date or on loan, a simple prop. Indeed a marketingopportunity that failed to alert brand managers or the faithful to some potential


17/23

high-tech shenanigans that could conceivably have enriched those whose livesdepended upon making money.

Clark raised the issue of his status as "guru" one night.

"I'm reading 'On the Guru Trail', what do you think? He asked

"Dunno." I said. We haven't eaten for days."

Aside from the enormous marketing opportunities which failed to materializearound the promise of free freakonomics -- and the claim to a demographic thatcould be measured in the hundreds of thousands, and which still today measuressomething in the absurd region of a 300 million plus audience on the AsianSubcontinent (if you believe Outlook India), there were the association withtechnology companies that were exploitative, the media which exploited us, andthe expectations that if we were not already being exploited, or exploiting those

teen spirits, then who the hell were we to even ask for, g-d forbid, money?

When Clark eventually left for England, he went home to a council flat and awelfare cheque. I on the other hand, had to rough it back in Africa, a "third worldcountry" which sometimes makes India look like a summer camp on a hot day.

Picture a scene in a boho cafe off Height St, Clark surrounded by hordes of teenswho all want a piece of zippy nippy, and the promoters of this zippy spirit who allwant a piece of teen. Either way, I'm stuffed. Whether I like it or not, I still end upbeing some kind of purveyor of jail-bait at the end of a publicity hook that hadthreaded sharky school-moms who only wanted Fraser for dinner. Cut to the

Moscone Centre techno fair, innocent me, accosted by adult techno-tourists, andstill I go down in the history books as, " a new species of gibbon" to use HamptonSides' phrase, a "new age groupie".

Yet another appearance at the same venue, packed to capacity with SanFrancisco's youth. Fraser laughs and shows me the cartoon. I am introduced toan overfed, leering man in a suit as "a zippy" and still I can't even get a drink.Eventually all I manage is a glass of mineral water -- apparently zippies liveexclusively on a rare minerals mined at the bottom of the ocean. They don't eatmeat or drink wine like you or I.

The crazy thing in this image, is I imagine my beatific facto-facto girlfriend theretoo. I imagine her, fending off the teenagers, the both of us, escaping from thisweird scientific laboratory from the fifties. Dissected. Redirected. Injected. Allbecause of the west coast fantasy industry. The need by the media to possessyour soul and to literally own a piece of the new energy without actually payingfor it -- the new media the new techno resource -- and all because of Clark'soriginal sin -- the neat switch that created Zippy as the supposed antidote to theYuppie and the result into Jesus Christ with a laptop computer on a donkey.


18/23

Ashes and sackcloth beating a bible of "ravelations" on your forehead. Son --You can be a technopagan and still work in an office if you want to. Girl -- youcan be an office party and still live in the wilderness. We can all liberate ourdesktops from the dance floor. We can all club ourselves conscious, at least ifthere's still something conscious left to club for.

Zippy Pronoia Tour to US 94 Jupiter BashZippy Pronoia Tour to US 94 Jupiter BashZippy Pronoia Tour to US 94 Jupiter BashZippy Pronoia Tour to US 94 Jupiter Bash


19/23

Chapter Five

Unzipped: Saint Crasier Flark the Martyr and his highly originalFleet Street Philosophy.

"Hush, my dear," he said; "don't speak so loud, or you will be overheard -- and Ishall be ruined. I'm supposed to be a Great Wizard." L Frank Baum, The Wizardof Oz

WHAT Fraser Clark has in terms of a philosophy, is really not all that unique ordifficult to express -- Goddess worship, WoManity, Peace, love and a fairprophet. Then there's the "harmonise your hemisphere's racket, which ties intohemi-sync mythology created by cyberpunks. Rewire the brain, using chemicals.Listen to the beats at approximately 140bpm, (124bpm to be exact, the heartbeatof the human fetus in the womb according to Clark) everything else is like"banging" unless its "trance" but that's like synthesiser music with a metronome.

Sounds pretty surface hype, or is it?

According to pop theorist Mark Dery, "the archetypal cyberhippie featured inSunday supplement articles is largely a media fiction, synthesised from scatteredsightings." A being "wearing printed squirming sperm, leggings adorned withscuttling spiders," and "belled jester caps popular at raves." Furthermore, he orshe "meditates on cyberdelic mandalas like the New Electric Acid Experiencevideo advertised in Inner Technologies, a mail order catalogue of 'tools for theexpansion of higher consciousness'. 'Recreate the Summer of Love with this 90sversion of a 60s light show', the blurb entreats."

When one reads Clark in his multifarious forms, extracts from Epi, ^evolution, orZippy Times, you realise that the man is really just one of those incrediblyinteresting characters situated in a pantheon that includes the entire history ofpsychedelic pop-culture, from Ginsberg to Burroughs and beyond, part WavyGravy, part Sir Francis Drake, part Franz Anton Mesmer. But to understand himyou have to remember the period in which he speaks to various sections of thecommunity across different generations. For example -- There's nothing terriblyprofound about wearing a "smiley" badge, unless you're living in a fascist state,and this is where Clark becomes interesting.

He is the master of systems collapse, because everything the Tories and the

right-wing say about Clark and the Zippies are inevitably true. In the face ofPuritanism and the Christian orthodoxy, Clark is positively satanic -- a breed ofCeltic shaman and pagan hedonism that goes hand in hand with a form of anti-authoritarian mysticism.

"The zippies believe that word processors can be used to save the earth and askyou to project "negative vibrations" at the stock exchange to provoke economiccollapse." So goes the I-D story published in 1989.


20/23

Sadly, it is here that he expresses his early reaction against punk, an "anti-punk"attitude because "punks were the second wave of energy - a negation of whatthe hippies had become". Ironically the early hippy who created zippy, wouldcome unstuck on the issue of cyberpunk versus techno-hippy. Was there anydifference essentially with what was already happening on the West Coast at the

time of the Pronoia Tour? The failure of Clark's team to address this and otherpressing issues of cultural importance relegated him and the tour to the status ofoddity. Reactions were swift. Clark and his team were denounced as nothingmore than a bunch of hoodlums, who had come from England to disturb thetranquility of new-age America. As one Wired letter writer wanted to know: "wastechnology being used to simply legitimise a cult which is little more than a kindof violent Waynes World on Internet?"

It is one thing to repackage the sixties and to marry the techno tribes of the futurewith the earth people of the south, while plugging Marshall McLuhen and sageslike Ram Dass aka Richard Alpert or Alan Ginsberg in a club, and calling the

resulting combination "Zippie" it is another thing entirely, to try to doing the samething in hippy home territory. What was occurring at Megtripolis West and somany of the party's we attended, was that the audience was preaching to thegrand converter, the Zippie priest was being lead by his congregation. Clark hadbecome a victim of his own philosophy.

If you read "Morning of the Magicians", by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier,first published in Paris 1960 as "The Dawn of Magic" you'll be amazed to find aform of new age patois current doing the sixties and the title of the first chapter,

just two innocent looking words- Future Perfect! If that were not clearly amazingin itself, there is an entire chapter on the thought of Gurdjief. Stuff like "A man is

immersed in dreams, whether he remembers them or not does not matter...[but]what is necessary to awake a sleeping man? A good shock is necessary. Butwhen a man is fast asleep one shock is not enough. A long period of shocks isneeded. Consequently there must be somebody to administer these shocks... aman may be awakened by an alarm clock. But the trouble is that a man getsaccustomed to the alarm clock far too quickly, he ceases to hear it. Many alarmclocks are necessary and always new ones." Sound familiar?

The idea that we "have to wake-up" is common to a lot of new age thinking. Whatisn't common, is that we have to "wake-up on the dancefloor" or "use a laptopcomputer" in other words, create a new-fangled alarm clock. It was Clark'sgenius to suggest elaborate methods of consciousness raising that really gotpeople. The man was more accessible than either John Lilly who "talked todolphins" or Tim Leary who had turned to virtual reality as a form of psychedelic,or Terence McKenna, who has gone from describing aliens and mushrooms, totalking about the I Ching and computers.

Clark didn't need a psychedelic, there was no prescription except acceptance ofan earlier state of conscious, call it an awakening - the "summer of love" which


21/23

had hit Britain in 1988 and crossed the Atlantic in 1989. The Berlin Wall camedown. The Cold War ended. Clark proceeded to create a "Magic Maggie HealingDoll", "You are invited to participate in the most important psychic experiment inhistory...whether you think Maggie is good, all bad, or a bit of both, the fact is thatshe in a position to affect the destiny of every psyche on this planet."

We were invited to make use of "acupuncture points" to help open "MargaretHilda Thatchers' heart centre. "this will fill her with peaceful energy and love forall life-forms, thus arousing the living goddess within her. We consulted a rangeof healers and acupuncturists about the prime minister in order to arrive at theseparticular points" and so it goes, in a classic example of what is known as "magicpolitics".

Reading Clarks' EPi, meant that you could partake of the counter-culture withoutnecessarily taking drugs. Drugs were just a side-effect, not the cause of a youthrebellion against the status quo, that had decided to use the iconography of the

sixties as its starting point. This innocence was lost on the Pronoia Tour, wheninstead of invoking the sixties as a counter-balance to the nineties, resurrectingthe swinging decade became an end into itself, an old-timers reunion, which wasnot surprising seeing as how literally every baby-boomer had jumped on theband-wagon, and expected us to deliver, not only hippies, but drugs, and evenbetter, young children smashed on acid or heroine to exploit, and a vision of medying at age thirty. My response is -- you must have wanted this insanity reallybad, you wanted it so much, look now you've even got another Vietnam!

Not only is Clark, a follower of Gurdjief, but he subtitled his club Megatripolis,(just another joke) "the future perfect state". However, to understand Clark, one

has to understand not just the people who inform his philosophy but the milieu inwhich he operates. The early nineties for instance were a hot-bed of counter-cultural activism and this activism eventually found its way into rave culture.Naomi Klein in her chapter "Reclaim the Streets", mentions a particular creativecombination of "rave and rage" which proved "contagious, spreading acrossBritain to Manchester, York, Oxford and Brighton, and in the largest single RTSevent to date, drawing 20 000 people to Trafalgar Square in April 1997." [Klein,315]

It was memes like this which created the "Zippy Intervasion of the UK" and the"Paradigm Jump off the Grand Canyon Rave". We wanted to reclaim the internetfrom the straights and use it to "spook John Majors Criminal Justice Bill, whichsought to outlaw dancing and banned "music with a repetitive beat." As PaulStaines says in "Acid House Parties Against the Lifestyle Police and the SafetyNazis". "Imagine a regime so totalitarian that it will not allow its young citizens todance when they want. Imagine that this regime introduced a law which banneddance parties unless they were authorised by the state, and even then theparties would only be allowed to be of limited duration and on state-licensed


22/23

premises. Naturally this regime would, in line with its ideology, only apply theselaws to parties held for profit."

Thereby forcing the "wicked and evil" dance promoters into the untenableposition of throwing parties for nothing. It was this ultimate sacrifice of the notion

of profit which would force much of the counterculture during the nineties, intogiving away virtually everything of value, including the music, which we all wereencouraged to "copy and burn". The result would be traumatic in terms of onespersonal status and bank account. Very few people actually made any money,and of those who did, invariably they were damned as the "sell-outs", artistssigned to studios and record companies producing industrial-issue dance musicthat had little going for it, except the beat and a passing reference to theunderground.

PART TWO We kidnap Tim Leary: To be continued.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Douglas Rushkoff, Cyberia Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace

Mark Dery Escape Velocity

Hampton Sides, Smells like Zippy Spirit, Still birth of a Supertribe , published

in Outside December 1994

The Zippies, ID February 1989

Sarah Ferguson, Raving at the Edge of the World, High Times, February 1995

For Peace and Love Try Raving Till Dawn, New York Times, August 7, 1994

Fraser Clark, Shamanarchy in the UK, May 1992

Jules Marshall, Here Come the Zippies


23/23

FURTHER ILLUSTRATIONS

1

Documents

Raver Madness 1.2