Speech XLR-8 at : Herinnering of Gino Lightner at the Church of Ruigoord. Cam1 XLR8, cam2 Kaan.

Herinnering of Gino Lightner at the Church of Ruigoord. Speech XLR-8. Camera 1 by XLR-8 and camera 2 by Kaan. Speech by XLR-8 Axel Rator "EDM has become yet another famous export product of the Netherlands created by the dance scene and as a 'product' this yields a lot of money.
But we, our group, come from a different time. The era of House, there were no styles, there was boring pop music and there was House Music. At the beginning of the birth of House in the Netherlands there were perhaps 40, 50 people who were involved in House music as a DJ, producer or as a starting record label at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s. I will mention a few Eddy de Cercq and Gert van Veen both turning 69 this year 2024, Joost van Bellen, DANO, Ilja Reiman and Henk, Raymond Oostendorp, DJ Per Meiers, D.j. Spider Willem and of course last but not least the Koggesteeg Planet E and Subtopia DJ trio of Jeroen Flamman from the later Flamman & Abraxas, DJ Abraxas and Gino Lightner. And ofcourse the die hard fans of that era who visited all the parties. House music was not allowed to be played in regular clubs. It was a daily battle against the established order. Society was different then than it is now, the entire west side of Amsterdam was one desolate desert of empty warehouses. The Bijlmer and also the Zeedijk were a real No-Go area with junkies, punks, whores and aggressive dealers. Parents were clearly not so strict in that era. At the parties children from ten to fifteen years old came to party all night until dawn. Their parents apparently did not care. Rene, Celeste and the 15 year old drug dealer Felix were such young groupies. The quays of yesteryear for large boats to and from the Dutch East Indies were still filled to the brim with enormous bags of cocoa beans, coffee beans and the like. In those warehouses in West and on the quays of Amsterdam such as the Panama Amsterdam with the storage buildings better known as warehouses then all empty, squat parties were organized. The entire group of people mentioned above played records and performed live, at all those kinds of parties. Newspapers were full of pseudo-scientific articles in which the establishment tried to stop the House music revolution. Articles such as ‘Low Tones are bad for the body and mind’ Then of course those drugs and drug use. In the decades before that, it was no different with speed in punk and rock and roll, but that was quickly forgotten by the police, justice and the mayors who fought fraternally against House. A little later there was also the Naar Huis Bus, in which the Christian god-fearers had united. These buses were parked in front of parties to really keep the public away from going to a party. The EO had a youth day where I was there as a technician. There I saw in the wings that the youth were really hit with the Bible over the ears. God does not want you to go to parties. I personally was interviewed for the national radio where I was told that we had to work with pentagrams of burning candles at the parties, because who else but Satan could lure God’s children in such numbers on a Saturday night. As a result of which they had to miss church on Sunday. Gino comes from this time. Subtopia was one of the very few illegal clubs where only House music was played. When (finally) the first really official permitted party was allowed to be held in the Escape in Amsterdam where I performed live with my band as the opening act for N-Joi. This was probably the least attended party ever. Only ten or twenty people showed up, people just couldn't believe that the first official party was a fact. And there in the first row, the only row were the handful of DJs from Amsterdam and surroundings. To say that we were the disciples of House music, it was a close call. With Gino, one of our disciples went. Gino was at the first of the Hellraiser raves, at the first Multigroove raves, at the Pascha in the former Zorba The Buddha at the wallen of Amsterdam, at the Transit in Amsterdam North and has played since then from the late 1980's - beginning of the 1990's until a week ago as DJ. It was a wonderful tour. I am devastated that the tour now has to continue without our Gino." XLR-8 Axel Rator.