Thrash's Flyer wall from the early 90s

Hi,

Just been reading your site & saw the request to send in photo's of old flyered bedrooms..... well, here's mine circa Xmas '93.

I lived in Bournemouth at the time in case you were wondering.... I'm the one with the curtains hairstyle in the photo.

Cheers

Thrash

We love these pictures.  Not just a wall but a whole bedroom.  Rave flyers were loved then and are still loved today.  So many of us had walls of them and we would love to see your rave flyer wall/bedroom pictures.  Who needed wallpaper!

Flyer Walls & Article on flyers

 Found these two recently about flyer collecting and a picture of someones flyer wall.  Class

Rave Flyers Trumps Game your suggestions

Its been a while since I create Top Trumps styles games for Fantazia events, drugs and rave DJs from the past and present and sitting here I was thinking of doing some new ones tonight to fill my night.  One I could do would be on Rave Flyers... whats 5 category's would be used?  My suggestions would be... Rarity, Age, Style, Collectability and Value.  Any better suggestions?  

We can now do canvas prints of any of the flyers for sale

If you want a canvas print of a rave flyer that does not have an asterisk then we can now do that for you as long as they are for sale in our shop whether or not there is a preview of the flyer available to see.  Masses more opportunity for present buying this Xmas

Linked rave companies and venues

Working on the rave flyer library is time consuming stuff,  catalogue, scanning, coding etc etc, however there is many interesting things that come to light.  One of which is how many different rave companies were actually run by the same people.  Knowing many of the people as we did we were aware of some of the links however even we had forgotten who were behind some of the events (they were the competitions after all)!   We will attempt at some point to simplify some of those connections by making it clear when they are linked.  

Why did they have different brands?  Some like ESP (who's main brand ended up being Dreamscape) tried a number of different brands out at the same time before discarding, Big Bad Head, Supernova and others names to concentrate on the one that had the most resonance with ravers.  Other companies/promoters had to ditch successful/well known brands to ditch negative image or to escape creditors.  This was the case with Chris Griffin who was behind Perception, Mythology, Vision and Devotion.  I will comment some more on this at a later stage.

It also becomes clears how many of the rave events were carried out and many of the same venues.  The Sanctuary was popular and staid named the same, however many of the rave venues used over the 90's went through various names changes over the years.  We all know The Eclipse became The Edge but it changed its name again when it became the home to Coventry University and carried on holding more events.  Other venues also changed their names over the years as well.

If you can help fill in some of the links between companies and venues there do make a post as we like to hear more....

Our offer of rave flyers for sale just got bigger and much cheaper aswell

We have just add over 400 new classic rave flyers for sale to the rave flyer library.  This includes many early ones from 1991 and 1992.   Including rare Eclipse ones amongst others.   And what's more the price of the flyers have been reduced in price in many instances with the average price for a mint condition ones now only £4.99 including postage.

We have many more rave flyers to add and these will be added soon.

If you are selling your flyer or tape collection... we are buying

If you need some cash or want to free up the space under the bed and have a large rave flyer or tapepack/compilation cd collection then consider getting in touch with Fantazia.  We regularly add to our vast collection if the price is right.  Email sales@fantazia.org.uk

Print your favourite rave flyer onto a canvas

Rave flyers have long been considered an artform and they really are a classic image from the age of raves.  Well now Fantazia are able to really turn your favourite rave flyer into a piece of artwork by having them printed on to canvas or as a poster.

Buy your favourite flyer on canvas now

Prices start from £17.99 including delivery via courier.

I have had a great one done of the Fantazia Story so Far book cover and it looks amazing.   This image is available if you to would like a copy as are the Fantazia logos.  Just ask and we will see what we can do for you!

Rave Books have you read any of these?

Befitting of a scene that had as much of an impact and was as loved as the rave one was many books have been written about what has become the Second Summer of Love. We have added a page to the Fantazia site which details many of these books and you can read that below:

Read Rave Book listing now

I have yet to located copies of all the books yet as a number of them are out of print.  I can however personally recommend:  Altered States, King of Clubs and Energy Flash as great reads.

The Rave Flyer Wall....classic

I had one. Did you? Flyer walls were widespread and a much loved thing with hundreds of thousands all over the country from aspiring pre teenages, teenagers and older.

Each week you would go to you local record shop and collect the new flyers. Some times they were rashioned to stop you taking loads and after reading them for the latest new attraction, 100k rigs etc and new DJ name which would evoke images of drug taking and happy people (Ellis Dee - Vibe etc) you would carefully add the flyer to your flyer wall. This flyer wall would grow like some colourful mould taking over first one wall then another and if you were really dedicated eventually the ceiling.

The one showing is of Wesley Cole Alcorn's. If you have a flyer wall picture do email it to us: fantaziamusic@gmail.com as we would love to use it.

Is this the most Glowing flyer ever?

We have just released the flyer for our next big event Fantazia The Ultimate UV Glow Show. And what a stunner this flyer is. Once again featuring the gorgeous Fantazia girls but this time with what must be the most glowing flyer effect of all time, surely....?

Click the title to view the full flyer

Talking of rave magazines,,,

Talking of rave magazines by 1992 rave had gone from a niche movement, acid house, to the main stream. More than 500,000 people were regularly going to raves throughout the country, people were very passionate about it as well and that dedication spawned quite a large number of magazines like Eternity, Blaze, M8 etc many of which ran for a long time. Eventually as the scene declined this either closed or transformed into House music mags, like M8.

These magazines are a great resource for ensuring that rave music and the scene was/has not been forgotten

Rave Magazine covers

We have started adding scans of our large rave magazine collection to the flyer archive. We know they aren't rave flyers but they were a great part of the scene and worthy collectors item. The likes of Eternity, Dream, To the Core and more carried many articles and event reviews.

Whats the most expensive flyer?

Well we don't know for sure so if you do then we would like to hear your suggestions for the award. However we know of one collector who says a Fantazia at the Hacienda flyer can sell for inexcess of £50.

Now that is a rare flyer as it was for a promotional night aimed at other dance promoters from 1992, another very rare Fantazia flyer is the Prodigy gig at the Barrowlands again in 1992. Others to watch out for are our Aussie gigs ones.

If you are lucky to find any of these you have hit the jackpot. Of course many of the Fantazia ones are highly prized and sell well, but many were made in large numbers so can normally be found for between £5 - £15

F is of course for Fantazia

Part of the initial appeal apart from putting on massive night reliably with awesome music was the imagery that we used. Featuring computer generated graphics on an A4 sheet of quality paper the flyers were very striking, collectable and visually instantly recognisable as Fantazia. Starting from 1991 until we rebranded with the Big Bang event in 1993 we used mainly these images. They are still some of the most collectable rave flyers there are from the period. Click the title link to view more images

After moving more towards the house music end of dance we adopt the use of pictures of scantily clad arresting looking ladies on the front of our flyers / albums. This continues to this day.

Which do you prefer?

Massive range now for sale

We have still got to add some of our flyer collect. Well in fact half of our collection. This is turning out to be a long slow job. But if a job is worth doing, its worth doing comprehensively.

Good news is that we have now put for sale all the rave flyers we have in stock that we have currently listed. We mainly only have 1 copy of each flyer so once they are gone they are gone.

Prices vary depending on how nice, what company, the condition and rarity and age. However its not hard and fast so some are almost certainly to cheap and other fairly expensive, but that just the way it goes.

We are thinking of offering special rave flyer starter packs which a collection of small, large flyers. Useful to get any collection going.

Only S & Q to go

We only have a few more flyers left to add from our collection of scanned rave flyers. After this we will be taking a breather as this has been a mammouth task. We will come back to adding more later in the year or as people send them to us.

We will for a while be concentrating on making the flyer library more useful by linking the flyers with reviews of the actual events where we have them and also to sites where you can buy the mix CDs if you want to.

The Flyer library expands

The Fantazia flyer library has finally started to get a decent amount of flyer on it. We have now finished upload many of the ones we already have scanned and you can now view over a thousand flyer images by clicking the title above.

We hope you enjoy the efforts we have gone to. Its the first time there is a comprehensive amount of backs as well as fronts on the internet.

We have a lot of work still to go and be assured we will be giving this some priority in the coming months until its finished.

Why did flyers get smaller?

I made an earlier post about size o flyers in the early 90's getting bigger and bigger. But what is obvious is that after a certain period the began to get smaller again. Now I am sure their was an element of cost saving on the printing involved but that doesn't fully explain things. The reality was that it was very expensive to transport and hand out large flyers. New methods were evolving to reach clubbers. Companies like Out of Hand were formed who gave out flyer bags containing many rave companies flyers and other stuff all at the same time. This was cheaper and easier for them and also for the promoter. The limitation was the size of the bag, this was normally less than A5 in size.

I like the flyer bags when I get them as they contain so much however they do lack that feel and I do miss the large ones that would look great on your wall, these little ones just dont compare for that.

Do Women get offended by the imagery?

Along with a lot of the fashion, music, leisure industy we use pictures of sexy ladies in skimpy tight clothing to advertise our events and products. This start for Fantazia with the House Collection and House Collection Club Classics albums where each featured a girls posing or dancing on the cover, the series was a massive hit and we have continued using the same imagery for events as well since then. This includes the massive series of sellout events in Scotland as well.

Now clearly the albums sold and the event flyers attracted people (at least the men). But do women find this a turn off?

I think not, half the audience are female and half of them are dressed in a similiar way. Now maybe a squarer section of the society would disaprove, but they are most likely the ones that would not attend in anycase and we don't miss them.

What do you think?