Shoom is often regarded as Britain’s first acid house club night. To the country’s tabloid press, the new music that swept the country in 1988 was headache-inducing, enjoyable only to partygoers on Ecstasy. The Daily Mail called it “the biggest threat to the health and welfare of Britain’s youngsters since the crazy drug cult of the ’60s.”

But to the British teenagers and 20-somethings gathering in these raves, that admonishment was a compliment. They christened 1988 the Second Summer of Love, in honor of the one that blossomed in San Francisco in 1967. To them, 1988 was another moment when a particular music, people and drug came together and changed a country’s culture.

“Times were so hard in ’88, you know,” said the D.J. Paul Oakenfold, who ran pioneering acid house nights. “You had Margaret Thatcher closing down the mines and the steel and all that. It was really tough.” But acid house changed that, he said. “Suddenly you could go to a place and express yourself through music. You felt like you were part of something really special.”

As Mr. Georgiou put it: “It was like our punk. It completely changed how people acted. You suddenly had football hooligans filling up clubs all loved up, hugging each other.” You also saw celebrities dancing alongside teenagers from working-class neighborhoods, bankers alongside students, he said, and no one cared.