Last time we told of the success of our biggest event yet, Fantazia Summertime. It was a high point but there was bigger to come from Fantazia. It was mid 1992 and approaching the high point of the scene when it was briefly a mainstream activity to go to rave style parties. No longer underground the events started to receive national press coverage. Gone were the articles from the likes of the Sun on the Evils of Ecstasy, replaced with articles giving readers chances to win tickets to the events. The biggest rave of them all really caught the medias eye. We had ambition beyond our roots as part of that we applied for the biggest license ever and after a battle with the local council Fantazia over came all the objections and got it.

Fantazia One Step Beyond was licensed for a ground breaking 25,000 ravers at the Donnington Park race track in the Midland, home of the Monsters of Rock festival. Now it was going to be home to the Monster of all Raves. It was little more than 5 weeks after the massive success of Summertime, and there is nothing like a sell-out event with people clamouring to get in to ensure that the next event would be a success. We were not going to take anything for granted. For the event we print over 1 million flyers in various sizes and ensured they were given out in record shops and other raves through out the country. It worked and the event was a complete sell out.

For the night itself we had to have something different to make it stand out from the past events and this time we were very creative. Designing the giant stage as a huge castle with a draw bridge raised up. Half way through the night a giant smoke breathing dragon was inflated in the middle of awed ravers and the draw bridge was dropped down and filled with dancers to meet it. Needless to say this was an eye opener for anyone on ecstasy!

At One Step Beyond we even filmed the event from a helicopter the first and only time that we know of that this was done, which gives us a unique collection of footage showing the true scale of the parties. The queue to get into the event was almost a mile long and 10 deep. It is awesome to see 20 years on what a true massive movement the rave scene did become. The night went very well and there were only 19 arrests all night. Massively better than any football match or street party.

Fantazia was at its peak at this point and with national press coverage of the event we were in demand all around the country. We held tour style events at the legendary Hacienda in Manchester, at Quest in Wolverhampton and we hosted the up and coming Prodigy at an event at the Barrowlands in Glasgow, our first gig north of the border. We were impressed by Scottish ravers, they seemed fanatical partiers and really up for it. We would not forget this and as you will see we would be back later to give them more Fantazia style partying.

The problem with all the success was that we started to receive unwelcome attention, some legal and some certainly not. Many of the illegal rave organisations that had put on acid house style parties had come under the influence of gangster types who saw easy pickings for scams, some would sell ticket and then not even attempting to run a party making huge profits but ripping the raver off, or they would host a party and sell drug to the ravers at a huge profit, but it ensured more police attention. Some would also rob the customers where they could. Once the illegal raves began to fade (partly due to this insidious involvement, more of which you can read in Wayne Anthony's Story Class of 88 that detailed the rise and fall of the rave organisation Genesis), these gangs looked to the weaker less well run of the legal party promoters as a profitable next opportunity. One avenue they would use would be to offer money to help a struggling promoter and once in the door they were there for good and it would be down hill for the ravers and that companies chances to get a license.
Other promoters were threatened until they either decided to no longer be promoters or gave up the control to them. Of course as the biggest promoter of them all it was obvious the gangster would come knocking on Fantazia's door.

The police were not interested in helping and left us to help protect ourselves. Fortunately with success enabled us to have the resources to hire our own security protection, but getting the best people from the likes of Top Guard did not come cheap. After many potentially dangerous situations and threats, we refused to be intimidated nor to give an inch of our independence. Deciding we were not worth the effort they moved off to bother other people. It was a relief to be able to get back to what we were good at doing. The following year we were to come to the attention of the Taxman and that was a much harder and more expensive fight to win.

At Fantazia the Showcase in November at the Bath and West Showground (a long time before Slammin Vinyl/Hardcore Heaven ever thought of doing it) we launched our next idea which was a rave/dance record label. Our first album, The First Taste was a single album filled with tracks which we had had created from the likes of Top Buzz, Ellis Dee, PSI and Orca , it was very original and in our opinion it is still a fine album and sounds equally great to this day. Sales were impressive and it really catapulted Fantazia on to the music industry map and gave us a spring board which we fully exploited in 1993.

By the end of 1992 we had held 6 massive raves of 10,000 ravers+, more than any other company had ever tried before and non have achieved it since. I said last issue one thing you need to be a successful promoter is a bit of luck. We had been blessed with okay weather at our previous New Year and Outdoor gigs that year but at that last of our big 6 events in 1992 our luck finally ran out. For New Year 1992/3 the weather was wet and cold and our planned event in the grounds of the amazing Littlecotte House was not the luxury event that we had hoped for. It does not take much for people to become disappointed and the greater success you have the more likely people are to become dissatisfied if you do not fulfil the ever increasing expectations. There were problems at the event with the parking as the ground turned to mud. The huge collection of tents to house the 16,000 people, the largest in Europe, were colder than they should have been at the start of the night as the fire officer, unused to the tent design, refused to sign off the heaters that were due to warm them.

The music was amazing but compared to the big summer open air events earlier that year some people were disappointed and we faced a barrage of complaints in the rave press. People were saying we were only interested in the money etc. The thing was that the event had cost far far more that the summer events, all those tents, road ways etc added up and the event had made no money, it was a dejecting moment after a year of highs and not the end to an exhausting year we had wanted.

At Fantazia we were continually trying to do bigger licenses for our events, not solely for vanity you might be surprised to hear! The councils had finally worked out a strategy on how to prevent the big rave parties from happening. They had tried initially just to say no but when they failed with that they decided to up the red tape involved in getting a license. First they put up the application fee from a couple of hundred £'s to 000's which was a massive increase in the financial risk of failure and meant you could no longer just file lots of speculative applications for different sites. Then the health and safety people got to work increasing demands for more security, fencing, lighting, etc etc etc. Finally the Police decided that they would start to charge for not only the cost of policing on the site but also policing the entire area even though they would not cooperate with us and did not replace our own security. Considering the fact the events had little trouble there was no justification.

It was around this time that further problems hit the company distracting us from doing what we loved. With the launch of the record company we had hired a PR company to get the name Fantazia about by a wider audience. This did work and got us lots of publicity, but some of it was not help full. Some of the interviews were with the broadsheet papers like the Telegraph and they focused not on what we should have insisted that they should have but on the financial success. Our Ego's flattered at the time, it had all gone to our young heads and clever journalists twisted words to make it seem that we were making millions. It was never true of course but the press will print their headlines and there is not a lot you can do. Not only did the stories give the wrong impression of what Fantazia was about, worse it got the attention of the Taxman who seeing boasts of millions made but not shown on our tax returns, they came knocking. We were young and inexperienced at the time on paper work. Our early London investor had installed his own accountant to run the finance side of things. An investigation began where all our computers and paperwork were confiscated making running of the business very difficult. It was soon discovered that our accountant was not actually a qualified accountant and had not kept things in order. What followed was a massive battle which was a constant drain on time and resource for the next year or more, after lots of legal fees, and a lot of stress we had to pay a huge fine, (which was not justified) just to make the whole case go away and allow us to concentrate on running the business. You live and learn and we would never again make the mistake of trusting the day to day financial accounting to an outsider.

In April of 1993 we held Fantazia's 2nd birthday celebration at The Sanctuary in Milton Keynes. It was the venue that had almost become the home to all the other promoters in the scene. A venue that held a permanent all night license, it was a safe bet. Our birthday was a good party, we held a fashion show at one point on the main stage, which I think the ravers thought was a little strange and certainly not something I would try again as in hindsight it was cringe able and disjointed from the rest of the night. Some times you have to try these things. Doing a venue that was done week in week out by Dreamscape and Helterskelter did not feel right to us and was certainly not how we saw Fantazia's future.

We had a license application in for a 30,000 strong summer 1993 event at Cricket St Thomas. We had put in a lot of resources and time into this and having got almost all the way there we failed at the last hurdle for the first time and were unable to get permission, it was a massive disappointment to us and made us really re examine Fantazia's future. When you have lots of staff and overheads you need to keep putting on the events or the wages are not going to get paid.

The success that the First Taste had brought looked very attractive at this point so we started to release more albums, the next were the Twice as Nice and Twice as Nice Remix albums and they were a great success. The music of the rave scene was well on its ways to fracturing, jungle/DNB was on the rise, and we could see House Music was going to become the new main stream, hardcore was going to be forever a niche back water. The Ministry of Sound was starting to make its mark in the press as its PR machine started to roll. We targeted all the genres to start with, releasing first the Jungle Collection, using LTJ Bukem, Grooverider and Rap to mix a 3 CD compilation of the biggest DNB tunes and also the House Collection vol 1 with Graeme Park, Luv Dup and Mike C (Cosford). They both were a great success but the House Collection got the bigger sales and the rest was history. Many Gold selling volumes were to follow all featuring the biggest names DJs in dance music, including Paul Oakenfold, Jeremy Healy, Taul Paul and Carl Cox.

We had not done with doing big raves, but the scene in England was definitely struggling. The big raves were on the wane as councils pushed dance music into clubs by granting them all night licenses instead of the big outdoor events, the likes of Cream, Gatecrasher and Godskitchen would join the Ministry of Sound and the era of the super club would be born.

With the era of the super clubs the music and fashion of the dance music scene moved to House and the vibe in the country and press became all about being cool and fashionable, exclusivity was what it was all about, it was a shame as raves had been a great with all classes and races mixing freely, but evolution happens in all scenes or they stagnate and die anyway.

There was one last big Fantazia event in 1993 and this one was one of our best ever. Our eye had turned to Scotland where the rave scene was still in full flow and hardcore reigned. The main promoter was Rezerection who held big events at the Royal Highland Centre in Edinburgh. We wanted to bring raving warehouse style to Glasgow, the bigger of the two main cities in Scotland, and our approach to get around the council and public objectors was to team up with the Terrance Higgins Trust to do an Aids awareness rave at the SECC. With a 12,000 license it was the largest ever single arena indoor rave and was truly huge, Fantazia The Big Bang had an indoor fun fair, 120ft long stage with 3 floors of dancers and indoor waterfalls and two DJ consuls at either end. This was a full blown concert with DJs followed by a live PA all night long including a full highland marching band. Scotland had some amazing talented groups and amongst my favourites on the night were Q-Tex, fronted by a very young DJ Scott Brown and the great Ultrasonic. The biggest hit on the night though was the legend that was Carl Cox, he was soon to stop playing hardcore in the UK but for this night you could see why he was a 3 deck raving legend.

We professional filmed the event and spent over £20,000 on a broadcast quality production with boom crowd cameras and fixed distance cameras and others for close ups. Edited together the released video looked very professional and sales of 20,000 were to follow, an amazing amount for a country the size of Scotland. We dominated the music video charts for ages UK wide.

The Big Bang was a great success and a generation of people talked about what a good night it was and this legend enabled us to return to Scotland in 2006 to do our first big event in years.

For New Year 93/94 we decided to take Fantazia international in an attempt to take the brand global. We held an event in Sydney at a big leisure centre. The event was a critical success but our ambition was in hindsight a step to far. It was a great experience and one of the biggest ever parties in Australia but it was not a financial success, the added costs of flying the world and accommodation really hit into the profits. We soon realised that as Australia is a large country with a small population very spread out across the continent it meant selling out large events was going to be to hard. It was a dead end and we return to the UK. It is clear now that we had missed more valuable opportunities back in the UK which was the worse mistake whilst we were distracted. We left in charge of Fantazia Australia our friend and original partner from 1990 Chris who stayed there for a year before returning to set up the massively successful Godskitchen.

By 1994 it was clear that the companies fortunes lay in the direction of the Fantazia record label and not dance events. We still loved the events but just did not feel we could do both and succeed. The following events we did do were done in conjunction with other promoters. The biggest and most successful was at Bowlers in Manchester. The Big Green shed had been the home of a company called Life and they persuaded us to get Carl Cox, Stu Allan and chart hit Atlantic Ocean in for one night of house music. Showing we had not lost our appeal even with the change of music the event sold out in 7 days with 4000 turning up to have an amazing night. It was by the admission of the promoter of Life the best night they ever had at Bowlers. We also did small events in Scotland, as well as events in Blackpool, Leeds and also under took our one and only visit to Northern Ireland which was notable.

Northern Ireland was under cease fire at the time and the war was looking like it would end, which meant we felt we would love to bring raving Fantazia style to the country and hopefully add some unity to the process in the PLUR style of acid house. We brought with us Dougal, Vibes, MC MC and Dutch Legends Dye Witness. The Circus Circus club in Banbridge was a small venue for us but the crowd were really pleased that an English promoter had made the effort and they shook our hands all night long. Things in the country were certainly different to any where else we had performed. When the club opened we were shocked to see how openly ecstasy was being sold (bare in mind as a guest promoter we did not control the security as we would at our normal big events), just inside the main entrance when the doors opened 4 guys appeared with money bags full of pills and sold them to the ravers. I have never seen anything like it before or since in the UK. We were told by the security and the promoter this was normal for NI and I guess with the troubles the police either had to much else to do or were being paid off in some way. The security on the night asked if they could have Fantazia jackets to wear for future parties as they thought they were cool. We said we would see. Needless to say we did not supply them with any and whilst the party was a great success with the ravers we never did go back as drug dealing was not something we wanted to be associated with.

In our final part next time find out about how we came to have 1 million cans of Lynx with our logo on and set the record for the largest ever indoor house music event. Also Fantazia takes on Ibiza and Ayia Napa and holds one of the only parties on the millennium eve that sells out and makes a profit. Learn why Fantazia stopped releasing albums and went quiet before reappearing to once again rise to become a major force in the UK dance scene. See you at next years Fantazia events!

by Charlie Fantazia
This article first appeared in Ravin Eye Magazine in 2011