Usually in a derelict warehouse, a club, a beach, a field, an aircraft hangar or a sports arena - anywhere you could fit a massive sound system and a lot of people. In the rave heydays of the late '80s, the larger events attracted tens of thousands of people. The venue would often remain secret up until hours before the party was to begin as a way of keeping the police away. Organisers would even sometimes have backup sites in mind in case the cops sniffed them out - which they did more and more often.

The term rave first came into use in Britain in the late 50's referring to the wild bohemian parties of the time. It was then briefly revived by the mods, but didn't come back into fashion until the illegal London warehouse party scene in the mid eighties. However it is likely that the term 'rave' came from Jamaican usage rather than a revival of any previous usage in Britain.

Rave crowds were and still are mostly (but not exclusively) young from all sections of society .

There are many theories why the UK went nuts for raving in the late 80s and beyond. It happened during a period of major consumerism and individualism. Margaret Thatcher was telling everybody to look after number one (famously saying there was "no such thing as society"). There was bound to be a reaction to this and it helped that a bunch of English DJs had just got back from Ibiza where they had experienced ecstasy and rave culture first hand. They brought it to the young people of Britain and within a year rave culture had flourished. Instead of money and power, rave called for empathy, intimacy, spirituality and the joy of losing yourself in the crowd.

Some other random thoughts: Doug Rushkoff, author of Ciberia, observed that the majority of house music runs at the speed of 120 bpm (the rate of the foetal heartbeat), while Simon Reynolds has noted that raves mimic the atmosphere of a nursery with its use of kids' TV themes, sampled baby vocals, dummies, baggy unisex clothes, and the camouflaging of drugs as sweets. Think about that next time you go dancing.

A 'rave' is defined as a gathering of 100 plus people, at which amplified music is played which is likely to cause serious distress to the local community, in the open air and at night. These sections give the police the power to order people to leave the land if they're believed to be:

Ignoring this direction, or returning to the land within the next week, are both offences, liable to 3 months' imprisonment and/or a £2,500 fine. Section 65 lets any uniformed constable who believes a person is on their way to a rave within a 5-mile radius to stop them and direct them away from the area - failure to comply can lead to a maximum fine of £1000.

The Act effectively killed off free parties or events not licensed through local government. Aciiid is dead, long life Aciiid.

While the Magic Roundabout years have been and gone, the nation's passion for dance music hasn't. In fact dance music is everywhere: TV advertisements, radio jingles, film soundtracks as well as in the clubs and bars all across the country. And it's not just new dance music. The current fashion for nostalgia has seen a sea of early dance anthem compilations being released, with names like 'Back to the Old Skool' and 'Old Skool Euphoria'. Thirty-somethings can now reminisce about the golden age of rave over dinner parties.

Ecstasy's popularity has not died either - approximately half a million people regularly use the drug in the UK alone. Illegal parties haven't stopped, but they aren't on the scale of the early raves. In fact in rural areas where the club scene is more mums and toddlers than super-club, gatherings in woods, quarries and cliff tops happen all the time, while in London illegal squat parties can be found at the ring of a number - if Ketamine and dark drum'n'bass is your bag.

The big festivals have begun to cater for today's rave generation. Homelands and Creamfields attract maximum capacity crowds while Glastonbury increased the capacity of its dance tent last year to reflect demand.