Class of 88 on Kindle, iPad, iPhone, iTouch, Mac, PC

Class of 88 on Kindle

I do love the advancement of technology and am always ready to get stuck into new devices that come onto the market. I'm not a gadget type person i love products with multi-functionality that i can fully utilise in my daily life. These days we carry so many electronic devices that most are opting for all-in-one machines that can do everything but brush your teeth.

Class of 88 on iPad

If when i originally wrote Class of 88 in 1998 i didn't think for a moment that people in the future would be reading my book on cell phones, flat screen pads or devices configured specifically for digital books, i probably wouldn't have believed it at first. Alas here we are, 2011 and though Branson's space travel hasn't quite reached the tourist sector, we appear to be making huge advancements in electronic delivery of digital media.

Class of 88 on iTouch

Although this edition is called The Special Edition it doesn't relate to the fact its available on new platforms, its special because its rewritten with over 100 pages of new content. So it gives me great pleasure to continually remind you of the kindle version (if i don't no-one else will) but also the fact you can read Class of 88 on PCs, Macs, Kindle, iPhone, iTouch, iPad…

Class of 88 on iPhone

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The audio of this video is a montage of interviews I've done on BBC, Channel 4, ITV

Smiley Face History - Good or Evil?

Feelgood corporate logo, acid house icon and txt msg emoticon: one chirpy yellow emblem has kept grinning since the first summer of love. Jon Savage celebrates the life of Smiley

In the official poster for the forthcoming blockbuster, Watchmen, the Smiley badge takes centre stage. The image shows The Comedian being punched out and you see the virgin Smiley a second before it receives the small "five to midnight" blood stain that is the Watchmen logo. As anyone who has read Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's novel will know, The Comedian's murder sets in train a sequence of events that culminates with the destruction of half of New York and a fragile world peace. In the process, the Watchmen have to confront their own contradictions and fears, their own pasts and, in some cases, their own deaths.  This dystopian story features the Smiley as a key symbol; it reappears throughout the book. It works like the homicidal clown, that staple of American horror movies: a great counter-intuitive twist that pits the vapidity of everyday affirmation against an overwhelming sense of doom.  The Smiley has travelled far from its early 1960s origins, changing like a constantly mutating virus: from early-70s fad to late-80s acid house culture, from millennial txt option to serial killer signature and ubiquitous emoticon. That's quite a journey for a simple logo that began in kids' TV and corporate morale-building.

The classic Smiley arrived in the early 1970s. Within a perfect circle, there is the simplest, most childlike depiction of a happy face: two vertical, oval eyes and a large, upturned semi-circular mouth. The choice of yellow as a background colour was inspired: it's the colour of spring, the sun, a radiant, unclouded happiness.  While the origin of the design is contested, it seems that it first appeared during the early 1960s. In 1963 there was an American children's TV programme called The Funny Company, which featured a crude smiley face as a kids' club logo: it was shown on their caps, in the end titles and the final message, "Keep Smiling".

At the same time, Harvey Ball – a commercial artist in Worcester, Massachusetts – designed a simple Smiley for a local company, State Mutual Life Assurance. Noting the depressing ambience of the town (which is real, believe me, I've stayed there), State Mutual started "a friendship campaign" so that their employees would feel good when they interacted with the public and each other.  Ball was paid $45 for 10 minutes work. However, neither he nor the company copyrighted the design, which has left its precise origins open: a Seattle designer called David Stern has also claimed authorship. But the Smiley is based on such an archetypal child's doodle that it could have come out of the ether.  What is not disputed is the extent to which the Smiley took off. In September 1970 two brothers based in Philadelphia, Bernard and Murray Spain, came up with the classic Smiley design to sell novelties. Adding the words "have a nice day", the Spains shifted at least 50m Smiley badges in 1972.  And that wasn't all. There was an eruption of Smiley ephemera: coffee mugs, tea trays, stationery, earrings, keyrings, bumper stickers, bracelets etc. The fad hit the post-1960s mood: a traumatised American public turning to visual soma in order to forget the war in Vietnam and presidential meltdown.

The Smiley was the perfect feelgood symbol of a moment when 1960s ideas of freedom, hedonism and experimentation hit the American masses. The fad was so mainstream that it bypassed the iconography of post-hippy rock, which, still remaining in thrall to counter-cultural ideas, ignored such mass pablum.  It did hit the comics, though. In May 1972, Mad magazine published a Smiley cover – with the distinctive facial features of Alfred E Neuman contained in one of those yellow circles. A failed DC attempt from 1973/4 called Prez: First Teen President featured the first sinister use of the symbol in the figure of Boss Smiley, a Smiley-faced leader of an ultra-rightwing militia.  This was prescient. The Smiley presented such a fixed facade of childlike contentment that it was ripe for subversion. Evil was rendered even more sinister by this blank, expressionless face, a trigger horror image like a girl's doll with a broken eye, a prom queen (remember Carrie?) or 1950s style suburbia.

This continued in the late 1970s. If there was one thing that punk railed against, it was false consciousness. The Smiley was an icon worth mutilating, and the cover for the UK 12-inch of the Talking Heads' Psycho Killer picked up on the Taxi Driver vibe that would later inform Watchmen with an image of a distorted Smiley on the putative killer's T-shirt.  In 1979, Bob Last and Bruce Slesinger put together a collage of Californian Governor Jerry Brown and a Nuremberg-style rally to illustrate the UK Fast Records release of the Dead Kennedys' California Über Alles. Behind the podium were large red, white and black banners: in place of swastikas were large Smileys.  Written during 1985 and published in 1986, Watchmen used the Smiley as a visual metaphor for a narrative that examines guilt, failure, megalomania and compromise with a corrupt power structure. All is not well beneath the idealised superhero surface, as the novel spirals into an existential crisis of betrayal, mass extinction, the transience of human existence.  The Smiley is worn by the most corrupt and violent superhero, The Comedian. It even travels to Mars, when Jon and Laurie end up in the midst of a rock formation shaped like a Smiley. (Life followed art, as in early February 2008 it was reported that an orbiting satellite had spotted a big Smiley drawn on the face of the red planet).

Then came the explosion. In February 1988, Bomb The Bass released the first pop reference to Watchmen, using the blood-stained logo on the cover of their hit Beat Dis. Tim Simenon has used the Smiley repeatedly: in the videos for the summer '88 hit Don't Make Me Wait (and for last year's Butterfingers). In the previous month, Danny Rampling had used the Smiley in a flyer for his club Shoom. He'd got the idea from seeing the designer Barnzley at the Wag Club in a shirt covered "in a lot of smiley faces". Embedded into the second "o" in Shoom, the symbol took a few weeks to catch on, but when it did, it swept the country as the logo of acid fashion.  As acid house became acieed that year, the Smiley flip-flopped from dream symbol to harbinger of wickedness. Just as the early days of acid were beatific, so the media's initial response to this new youth cult was positive. This changed in the autumn as "smiley culture" was associated with headlines like "Evil Of Ecstasy" and "Shoot These Drug Barons", and the fad quickly subsided.

This negative association continued into the early 1990s. Mutations of the symbol were used by Nirvana (crossed-out eyes, drooling mouth) on their famous "Corporate Rock Whores" T-shirt, as well as in the 1991 Fangoria comic Evil Ernie (angry eyes, mouth with bared teeth).  During the last decade, the Smiley has become an acknowledged part of pop culture history. In the US, it's become a shorthand for the high 1970s, referenced in that great touchstone of modern history, Forrest Gump, where Tom Hanks's mud-spattered T-shirt provides the origin for the design.  Quite apart from the Watchmen associations, the Smiley is coming back in the UK as part of acid retro fashion, just in time for the 20-year revival. Coincidental to this, it has also been used as a sinister signature – left at murder sites by a US group called The Smiley Face Gang who, it is alleged, have been responsible for around 40 killings. The symbol still oscillates between Heaven and Hell.

As you might expect, the Smiley has also been surrounded by copyright controversies ever since the early 1970s when a Frenchman, Franklin Loufrani registered the trademark as Smiley World in some European countries. Wal-Mart tried to copyright the Smiley in 2006, but lost the case to Smiley World.  It has also swept the digital world via emoticons, suggesting various moods from confused to secret-telling, sarcastic to psychotic. (Naturally, the emoticon trademark has already been claimed, by the Russian company Superfone).  It may seem weird that such a bland symbol should be used to convey emotion, in such a way that creates as much distance as real empathy. But then there is something powerfully archetypal about an image of a happy face that resembles the sun. Infantilisation or greater communication, joy or horror: the Smiley can encompass everything. It pretends to be our servant, but it will rule us all....Written by Jon Savage 2009

Genesis'88 - Original Flyers

Our events were called Genesis, a name that just seemed to come to us, i knew it was right as soon as i wrote it down. Not because of anything remotely connected to religion although when you look at the logo it clearly has religious connotations.  That's how much affect outside influences can have on our judgments regardless of whether we're fully aware of it or not. So we found our name then constructed the logo and for the fun of it we threw in some columns. Nothing to do with religion or freemasonry...

 FightingWords

 Reassuring Words

 Inspirational Words

  Wise Words

Secret Raindance - Acid House Warehouse Party 12th August

This should be a good night, Raindance have booked some proper talented DJs including me (no mixing talent whatsoever but was there at the start so know a tune or two). It cant be denied that everyone listed on the playlist was there from the off joined in the middle, regardless they know their thang...

SECRET RAINDANCE WEBSITE

Wayne Anthony's LSD Magazine

Open publication - Free publishing - More lsd magazine

Open publication - Free publishing - More lsd magazine

Wayne Anthony Interview Montage - Acid House on Kindle

  

EXCLUSIVELY ON KINDLE (AMAZON)

The Special Edition 2011

The Special Edition has been completely rewritten and now includes brand new stories from Wayne Anthony’s epic journey into the world of Acid House and the organisers that staged some of the biggest illegal warehouse parties in the history Great Britain. The party promoter was the first amongst his contemporaries  to tell his true story to the world. Genesis is one of the founding companies that created and neutered a platform for large-scale all night dance parties. This brought Wayne and his Genesis partners to the attention of gun totting mercenaries, well known gangsters, bank robbers, and members of parliament, riot squads though worse of all The Media. This true story tells the epic tale of England’s biggest sub-cultural movement that began on the Island’s of Ibiza and Tenerife in 1987. The influence of promoters such as Wayne Anthony can be felt in almost every dance music venue in the world today. Ten years on this Special Edition goes even further into the history of the worlds biggest Acid House promoters.

Over 100 Added Pages

Class of 88 - Amazon Kindle Link - http://amzn.to/c88kindhome

Wayne Anthony DJ Set @ Raindance 12th August 2011

I've never actually wished or desired to be a DJ at any point in my life though i have played on some big sets. Admittedly they were my events and completely accidentally i ended up playing at Genesis and i also played the main-room at Pacha (Ibiza'95) on two occasions. I cant mix to save my life but i do remember the soundtrack that drove the generation. Flash-Forward to 2011 and as a favor to my pal Richard of Raindance, I've agreed to play in the Pioneers Room at the next secret Raindance warehouse party...again I've not learned to mix so dont expect it...Raindance have also signed up some of the biggest names of the Acid House era...

SSSHHHHHH! SECRET LOCATION

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Class of 88 - Book Reviews

Class of 88 - Readers Reviews

'Finally, a real account of what actually happened during the rave sensation of the late eighties and early nineties. The book was written by Wayne Anthony, a well respected party organiser who went by the name 'Genesis'. This book has been slated for glamorising drug use. I disagree and feel it just tells the public what really happened.' Daniel B - Birmingham 


'Well finally somebody has written a REAL life account of the true acid house experience. I'd like to thank Wayne Anthony for his effort put in doing these parties. I wish I could remember it but as the press keep saying " XTC affects the short term memory ". ' A reader from Hull 


'This book turned back time for me as I went to all the genesis raves, and believe me this was exactly how it was. I thought the book was well written, and is the only real to life book which I have read where I actually felt like I was there. ' A reader from London


'Just to say that your book (Class of 88) was totally wicked and brought back some great memories. I could talk about them for hours on end' Steven Chassaigne


'Got to thank the promoters like yourself for changing my life forever was the best years of my life and the memories never go away' Leigh Kilby


'I read Class of '88 a few years ago whilst lying on a beach in Ibiza (Excellent).  I've misplaced the book and am trying to get hold of it again but it seems to be out of print.' Kat P


'I just want to say your book is one of the best books I have ever read in the whole world. I really praise and look up to all you original acid house ravers. You really are amazing special people and I buzz everytime I read your book' Justin B


'I read your book a year ago after a friend in the soundsystem loaned me it.  As the main organiser of our parties i read it avidly to see what i could learn and also to hear you guys used to do it. I must admit i was mightily impressed by the teamwork that went on then.  It certainly dwarfs the efforts of many of todays underground systems.' Pankster


'I read class 88 a while ago and passed it on to other revellers all have seamed to have enjoyed it. But your ending do you really feel that you would not do things the same way?' Stephen b


'AFTER READING YOUR WICKED BOOK IM INTERESTED IN ANYTHING YOU HAVE TO SAY OR WRITE.THANKS VERY MUCH' si duggins


'Your book is wikkid, and still one of my favourites. It's been passed around all my mates - including one friend who hasn't read a book since his school days and he loved it! respect due' Bugs!


'i feel people like you that basically shaped the scene worldwide deserve all the props you get' pukka


'I love it! I started reading it on Friday night and ended up staying up all night to finish it ... it's wicked, you're a v. good storyteller. It's fantastic, it really is. 11 out of 10 and a gold star for you, young man! Emma Keyne (Clubbed.com - Editor)


'I read that book mate, quality book' DJ DeCreator


'Just like to say that i read your book, and thought it made a great read. I myself was only 10 in 1989, but my brother was at all the early genesis parties. I thought it was really frank and truthful, and i myself would have loved to have done and achieved what you have. You can proudly call yourself one of the pioneers of dance culture' Lex


'Big up your status. You guys along with Sunrise, NRG, and Biology are like my all time heroes' Fused Pirates


'I would like to subscribe as I had a copy of the book as soon as it come out but lent it to someone and never got it back (gutted) my own fault' Paul S


'i purchased your book class of 88''(the acid house experience)about a two or so years ago, might even have been longer, it was the only book i ever read in one evening, couldnít put it down' Smuff's Dick


'Its people like you who don't get the respect and publicity that DJ's might get' Travis beckett


'An exact recollection of the good 'ole days! I was only 16 yrs old at the time and the excitement was totally unreal at the time. The book really does relay that excitement that everyone felt at the time of the parties. I had butterflies constantly whilst reading this and finished the book with a big smile. Wonderful!'


'This book turned back time for me as I went to all the genesis raves, and believe me this was exactly how it was. I thought the book was well written, and is the only real to life book which I have read where I actually felt like I was there.' A reader from London


The BOLLOCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, Well finally somebody has written a REAL life account of the true acid house experience. I'd like to thank Wayne Anthony for his effort put in doing these parties. I wish I could remember it but as the press keep saying " XTC affects the short term memory ".' A reader from Hull


'Wicked. Read your book, loved it! Wasn't there as I was 13 at the time, didn't start till 91' so everyone was saying 'it was better in 88', now I say it was better in 91-92 etc Still, swings and roundabouts' Nick Coleman


'I read your book about 3 years ago really enjoyed it, keep meaning to buy the one you did about Ibiza. Keep up the good work' Kirsty

'Read the book last year mate, quality read got it in an HMV 2 for £10 with Bez's book. Both very enlightening!' Hilty

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