Early on in his Between the Beats documentary about the Bay Area rave scene (which he helped to build) and all of the intersectional communities that made it thrive, Martin O’Brien explained that, before he threw massive raves, he was always the last person on the dance floor at any party, yelling at the DJ for more.
That passion for music and movement led O’Brien, who later became the founder and CEO of holistic health service Berkeley Patient’s Care Collective, to become one of the ground floor builders of the Bay Area rave scene in the early ’90s. He threw raves called the Gathering that were known for meticulous care when it came to the quality of the music.
His film has been a long time coming: a 2010 Kickstarter campaign by O’Brien and DJ Jenö raised over $27,000 in pledges, many from people who were a part of the local rave scene. A distribution deal with Gravitas Ventures was only recently announced in September. The reasons why it took so long to make aren’t revealed in the film, but the final result is inspiring. As a participant in that scene, it’s worth the wait, and it will be educational without being too insular to those who weren’t.
A lot of ground is covered here, connecting the raves to the acid house era in the United Kingdom, the local gay party circuit, the online community built by young Internet site Hyperreal (1992-2004), psychedelics, early techies, and the network of independent record stores that supplied DJs with the hottest vinyl 12-inch records from here and beyond. The inclusion of Galen from another groundbreaking rave crew, Sunset Sound System, which is still going strong, represents how this homegrown culture still thrives through his party community, which has thrown annual events all over Northern California.
A lot of the old and grainy photos and video footage is made more visually compelling by being cleverly framed with collages of flyers or enhanced with 3D technology so that the viewer can dive right into, say, a photo from Bonny Doon Beach in Santa Cruz, site of Wicked’s Full Moon raves, seminal events in the scene’s formation from a crew that is also still going strong. And the many original interviews all have their own interesting locations or backdrops, inside old party warehouses or outdoor hot spots.
The documentary perhaps inevitably skews male in terms of talking heads, all of whom have valuable insight to contribute. But several prominent women who helped throw and inspire the scene are interviewed, including Toon Town promoter Diana Jacobs, who describes early technological advances at her parties; and Sharon Virtue, of A Rave Called Sharon, a party named for how much her DJ and event-producing friends loved watching her dance.
DJ Dan and Doc Martin are revered around the world and closely associated with Los Angeles, but Between the Beats finally gives them their due for having an incredible influence and impact on DJs and the rave scene in San Francisco, even after they moved south. Both are funny and brilliant in their observations.
Jenö and Graham Shrimpton (aka DJ Darkhorse) did an accurate and commendable job with the soundtrack selections, a feat that could have taken years just in itself to secure. Some of the songs that were frequently played at parties at the time appear on the legendary cassette mixtape sets that were released by the Gathering, treasures that still have a prominent place in my physical music collection. Now those tracks are available for everyone to hear and see how they moved the Bay Area.
BETWEEN THE BEATS is now streaming on Apple TV and other digital platforms.
Tamara Palmer is the founder of Music Book Club and a DJ who started in the ’90s rave scene in San Francisco.
