jello~ my name is shelly, but my raver friends knew me as
jellybean. i used to hate it. my myspace name was "shellybean" and i felt that the person who gave me the nickname (his name was hyperlink) was being super cheap with it and not giving it much thought. i never thought it would be the year 2021 and i would continue to use "jelly" in some form as a nickname (i took the name and morphed it into jellyworms sometime around 2018). shelly. jelly. jellybean. jaybee. jaybles. one half of jellybob.
i feel really lucky and blessed that i got to experience raving in the timeline that i did. the main stream had not caught onto edm yet, so our parties truly felt like our own freaky getaway at the end of every week. we still map point parties, where you wouldn't get the directions to the party until the night of, and after you drove to a certain location. the directions could contain things like 'reset your odometer and when you hit x miles, turn right.' our parties were out in the desert, in the forest, or at random (sometimes illegally entered) warehouses in downtown los angeles. the music was loud, the lights were flashing and my friends were some of the most colorful people in the room.
we truly came, saw, and killed the rave. we all knew the scene was heading for one its reinventions. we saw genres like dubstep gain in popularity, djs like skrillex turn to edm and make a big name for themselves, and the trendy mainstream kids from highschool who called you weird for listening to "techno" show up at
your nightly getaway. electric daisy carnival exploded out of los angeles (rip sasha), the massives became festivals and the scene never looked the same again.
i wish i could of been a little more present in those moments but you don't know you're making the memories of your lifetime when you're living them. i cherish those nights i spent dancing under the moon. i would not be the person i am today without those few years when i was just becoming a young adult. they were truly the best days of my life. inspired by rave books such as "dancefloor thunderstorm" and "map pointz, a collective memory", i'm here to make sure future generations have some type of archive of our monumental contribitions to southern california counter-culture.
