First daytime rave in Maidenhead could be ‘springboard’ for future events, says DJ

The organiser of the first Daytime Rave taking place at Norden Farm this weekend hopes it will provide a ‘springboard’ for similar events in the future.

Dayglow: The Norden Farm Daytime Rave will be hosted by Jeff Lloyd and promises an afternoon of dance and nostalgia on Saturday.

Four hours of 90s dance anthems await as the event, ‘where beats drop before bedtime’, aims to bring back ‘the good times, minus the 3am kebab’.

“A problem that's probably repeated in towns and cities all around the country, and one of the big things about Maidenhead is that there's nowhere you can go after hours once pubs are coming to the end of their evening offering,” Jeff, 58, said.

“This, of course, doesn't really tackle that, but what this tackles is if you still want to do that, you now can, but not late at night.

“The thought of going out during the day is a very attractive one.”

The Norden Farm Daytime Rave is not aimed at any specific age range, but Jeff imagines ‘90s dance bangers’ will be appreciated by those who ‘would’ve probably been 20 at some point in the 90s’.

The St Mark’s resident is known for hosting the shows Must See Movies and The Vinyl Frontier, which is celebrating its 150th show later this year after 14 years at Norden Farm.

“I get a lot of people of different age ranges,” said Jeff.

“People sometimes think it’ll be middle-aged balding white men, but it’s a real wide mixture of people.”

Jeff has also been DJ-ing since his university days, and while visiting Brighton last year, he noticed ‘half a dozen daytime raves going on over the weekend’.

He then floated the idea with Norden Farm’s chief executive, Jane Corry, as there were no similar offerings in the town.

“Everyone was right up for it straight away,” said Jeff.

“A very positive thing is that people were like ‘This is something I could see myself at’, so I think it works because people are up for doing something a little bit different.

“This event relies on people who were teenagers and young adults in the 90s coming to the party. They're probably people who've got kids now and don't go out as much.”

This weekend’s tracklist includes Livin' Joy – Dreamer, You're Not Alone – Olive, Insomnia – Faithless, Here Comes the Hotstepper - Ini Kamoze, Better off Alone - Alice Deejay, 2 Times - Ann Lee, Let Me Be Your Fantasy - Baby D, Freed from Desire – Gala, and Everybody's Free – Rozalla.

Jeff hopes the event will provide something more diverse than Maidenhead’s existing offering by changing the culture somewhat.

“People who still want to go out feel there's no provision unless they go into a bigger city. They need to go to London, which is expensive and time-consuming,” he added.

“I'm sure if it's very, very successful, we'll see copycat events and who knows what that springboards. If this catches fire, we could see [this event] happening a lot in Maidenhead.

“It's easy to get your kids looked after during the day. We can still have family time, but we’ve been for a night out, it just happens to be in the middle of the day.

“It’s a similar vibe to when you go to the cinema in the afternoon, and you get that strange sensation.”