The Beginning


In the beginning there was A Rave Called Sharon. This was the first rave that I went to. That event and several odd occurences would lead myself and my best friend Tim McKnew to gather a group of friends and family together and start planning parties for the summer of '94. With several strange and interesting experiences behind us we decided on the night of July 21 to throw a party the next night (a week ahead of our first official event as the Cloud Factory).

Using a friends sound system and borrowing decks we got K-Go, Tim McKnew and Deaks to be our first djs. On an abandoned piece of military property in Monterey we gathered about fifty people for our first event. I went to high school with Tim and Keigo and Ernie (Deaks) went to our rival high school but somehow found us and had just picked up a tendency toward hard acid music in England the same year. The night was beautiful. From a short post on sfraves we attracted people from San Luis Obispo (about 3-4 hours away). We received our first donation! It was only one dollar but it was a beautiful gesture.

Little did we know that we would ever be throwing raves in Monterey. It was nice that our first party was a free one, a trend that we try to keep up to this day.

So on the next day the 'Zippies' [from England] were involved in an event in Santa Cruz. Due to a stange sequence of events, including a stabbing and a robbery [not of ourselves], we gathered a group of people and headed back to Monterey to the same site. The party started at 4am but nonetheless went off just as well as the night before. With the turntables set up on the back of my mother's car, things looked a little funny but this was truly a 'renegade'! Deaks and K-Go spun for a little bit and someone else who worked their way onto the decks. This was the first rave of ours that Captain Crunch [the legendary hacker/raver] attended, I suppose it was a symbol of our success at the time. We had suceeded in throwing two free parties that were beautiful. Special thanks to the Food Not Bombs people who followed us from Santa Cruz and left fresh Orange Juice for us in the morning!


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Last Updated: December 12, 1995 -- Scott Nelson