The quarantine raves: Top one, nice one, get Covid?

A bunch of people in Greater Manchester went raving last night. 

This would not normally be news because, as we all know, 100% of people in Manchester are raving 100% of the time.

However, these raves happened in the middle of the pandemic, and it's kinda not okay. A tonne of party-goers descended on two sites in Trafford and Oldham for 'quarantine raves'. Several videos on Snapchat caught lots of revellers half-heartedly swaying to fairly commercial dance music. 

In the aftermath, Warehouse Project founder Sacha Lord slammed them as "morons" and "selfish idiots", while local volunteers collected over 200 bin bags of rubbish from the mess they had left behind. He's right. Top one, nice one, get Covid? If you went to one of the raves last night, you're a wrong 'un.

I understand the need to be at events like this. Hold on. Let me clarify. I wouldn't be caught dead at crappy park raves where WKD-glugging drones cheer as the DJ drops Get Lucky. But I do get the need to go to places with speaker stacks banging out tunes; to feel the heat of the bodies, the music and the lukewarm sweat dripping off the ceiling. I miss clubbing.

But surely us ravers can keep our glow-sticks in our pants for a bit longer? The more these Superdry-wearing sub-Parklife plonkers go to illegal raves like this, inevitably spreading the virus because that's how viruses work, the longer the rest of us wait until we don our party pants. And the longer the club industry will take to recover.

It has also occurred to me that if Covid hangs around for a long time, we may never go raving again. We'll have to go to clubs in human-size hamster balls, zorbing our orbs against each other like a kinky lottery machine. It sounds weirdly appealing, but raising our hands in the air like we just don't care is going to be a logistical nightmare.

I can cope with people protesting in large numbers for #BlackLivesMatter, because that is about a threat that is every bit as immediate as this pesky virus. If you disagree with that sentence and you're white, you've just proved the need for #BlackLivesMatter. But a bunch of rave babies dancing to low-rent wedding reception dance music because they feel stronger than the virus? No thanks. 

It's like they listened to the chorus of Rozalla's Everybody's Free without paying attention to the verse: "We are a family that should stand together as one / Helping each other instead of just wasting time." Together is a metaphor: that means staying home, you clubbing Covidiots. Also, I bet that was the only track the DJs had: just Rozalla over and over again.

If you want to support Greater Manchester clubbing instead of frightening a bunch of hedgehogs in a field in the middle of the night, then support United We Stream.

Edit: Since posting this, the news story has advanced. In addition to the idiocy of a quarantine rave, there have been some pretty serious crimes at these events. It's pretty depressing reading.

Further Fats: "Short of performing a skiffle set on the grass, we were going to have to pull the show." (2011)

Further Fats: Review – Daft Punk's Random Access Memories (2013)