I'm in Goa, India on the Beach. Next to the Beach is St. Anthony's restaurant. St. Anthony's then, like now, was nothing special. Just a small thatched hut on the beach with a few chairs and tropical drinks. And fish curry.
Later on that night, I hear music coming from the hut next door. Lots of music. And there were Germans in the hut. Lots of Germans. I knew they were Germans because other than myself, the only other Caucasians in Goa at the time that I remembered were Germans.
The music coming from the hut was peculiar type of music. To my unsophisticated ears, it sounded like techno--whatever that would have meant to me at the time. But a less rigid techno. I knew Kraftwerk for instance. But this was much more upbeat. Like Kraftwerk on acid. And the Germans were dancing to it like animated freewheeling yet still unavoidably rigid hippie robots. It was a site to see.
I had no idea at the time, but I was witnessing the birth of Goa Trance, which later developed into the nomenclature of psychedelic trance or psytrance, which splintered into numerous subgenres by the early 2000s. These included progressive psychedelic, darkpsy (dark psychedelic trance), full-on, psybreaks and suomisaudundi (Finnish trance), psychedelic ambient ("psybient" dub), and psychfibbonacci (Lithuanian trance) and a fusional aesthetic referred to as "ethnodelic", all the signs sounds and scenes of a diverse culture, albeit psycultural movement.
And Goa Trance was the wellspring of this musical movement, and its role as "marginal" cultural central was unmistakable. And I was there. I was witnessing the birth of something new, something powerful. And what did I do?
I walked out of the hut. I was so unbelievably lame at the time. I had a visceral fear of entering bars, nightclubs, or basically anyplace by myself. So I missed it. Crap-a-deum. Who knows what would have happened had I overcome my fears and joined the hippie robots?
P.S. I hear that St. Anthony's is now a karaoke bar:-(
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