Norman Cook aka Fatboy Slim cooking in Ibiza.

REPLACING THE RAVE

Damian Harris looks at what’s next for the hedonistic dance music generation as they hit middle age.

“Do you think we’ll still be doing this in ten Now that everyone and his sous-chef are on years time, when we’re like, thirty?!” Facebook, it is much easier to observe this transition. Training for and running marathons Although our early 90’s post-club antics might are popular pastimes. Practising Yoga is another. have seemed chaotic and spontaneous at the time, Aromatherapy courses and doing re-edits of there were certain things amongst our group that old disco records also feature. Of course there you could set your watch by: 3am someone would is also reproducing, then posting pictures of dream up new and increasingly dangerous ways your kids looking cute, which can eat up a lot of ingesting more drugs - acid in the eyeball, Es of hours in the day. Golf used to be a cosy way up the bum and the slightly more creative ‘Rising to slip into middle age, but it doesn’t seem to Amyl Blow Back’. At 4am someone, (usually the hold much allure for ex-ravers. I blame tinnitus; recipient of the R.A.B.B.) would suggest everyone golf requires balance, something that’s hard to get naked, then by 5am one girl would always achieve when you’ve 20 years of nightclub abuse start getting emotional and start talking about ringing in your ears. her relationship with her father. Come six, when the hi-jinks had slowed down and we’d entered Danny Rampling was all set to hang up his the gurning on the sofa stage, one bloke in headphones and open a restaurant; Norman particular would always ask the above question. It Cook has invested in, and has even done a was annoying, as it allowed an unwanted dose of couple of shifts at New York’s excellent Spotted reality into the party. Another bloke would always Pig. James Murphy’s Facebook album called ‘The declare he was “hardcore till I die” - he was never Gout’ shows pictures of the fine wines he has going to stop, and to be fair to him, he hasn’t. Yet drunk on his post-LCD Soundsystem travels. not one of us said, “I’m go to carry on until my late Matt Edwards, who once worked with the band thirties, then really get into cooking”. at EMI has just opened his own restaurant after a successful run on Masterchef. I have been ‘out of the game’ for a few years now and, as my generation hits their forties, I Of course in the early 90s cooking wasn’t the have to admit to a mild obsession with what enormous industry it is now. In the 80s, DJ & people will do next. What happens when the chef were both fairly functional occupations, a lure of nightclubbing fades and weekends spent bit of a hobby perhaps, but certainly neither competing in the Ketamine Olympics leaves would have featured much at the careers office. you unable to function before Wednesday? We were just starting to witness the rise of the superstar DJ, but it would be another ten How do you replace the rave? years before chef’s were elevated to a similarly And why have so many chosen cooking? lofty status…somewhere just below the gods.

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