Little Computer Party People
Party report in a form of interview with TwoFlower of Triad
 

Twoflower: Wait – we do it like this – ask me questions and I'll answer you!

CreamD: Okay. Good idea!

CreamD: What was the first feeling you got when you entered the partyplace?

Twoflower: The first feeling I got was – „Oh my, is this the partyplace?“ While tired after a hard day and from carrying around the load of C=64 equipment I finally entered through the party gates, and to my surprise I saw quite a shabby student-pub. Not many people strolled around in the corridor, and all I could see was two computers standing in a corner. I felt crossed – until I noticed I wasn't there yet – passing through the next doorway gave me a completely different opinion. There was a room, filled to the brim with pumping NES, SID and Atari 2600 sounds as well as a DJ playing sid-mixes. A hot room filled with computers and enthusiasts; it felt like coming home after a too long vacation! Some seconds later – my groupmates came rushing and welcomed me warmly to the partyplace. Hollowman was already drunk to the brim of passing out, and Zyron/OxP was at least six miles high gazing at me from his wooden chair. Then I just didn't feel like I had been coming home – I knew I was there.

CreamD: So this was the first feeling. How about people? How many people came and from which countries?

Twoflower: I was really surprised to see the amount of different people beeing there – and one of the first I did run into was Slator, coming there from Germany to release the new issue of Vandalism amongst others. The main part of the population in the hall was of course well known faces from the Swedish C=64, amongst some of the real Swedish legends attending. The party wasn't awfully big – it wasn't more than 80–90 visitors, and about 60 of them dedicated C-64 sceners. But the mood and the warm feeling which I think is the trademark of parties of this size was just perfect. A relaxed attitude and the lack of PC-lamers (not forgetting that there were NO PC's in the hall!) made me feel real good.

CreamD: How about quality of the big screen? How was the BS used during the spare time?

Twoflower: The quality of both bigscreens was high, both showing nice and sharp pictures. There were two since Active/Booze Design brought one of their own. The bigscreens were used, and at least one of them showed old classic C=64 releases – mostly from earlier Swedish parties like Alvesta'87 and the Triad/HZ Copyparty. Best of all was that there was an active DJ playing 8-bit related stuff all the time at a decent volume. All in all, the technical arrangements were really nicely accomplished.

CreamD: I have heard that legends from Horizon Zagor/Mastermind/Boogaloo were there? Who was the cool(est) person(s) you met? Did you meet any new faces?

Twoflower: As I use to say – a party without Zyron/F4CG/0×P is no party, but besides that I met a lot of interesting and old fellows, amongst which the Horizon fellows of course were the nicest to meet. :-) We are talking about some dedicated old sceners in the same class as the Radwar posse here – people in their mid-thirties still attending these events.

CreamD: Still they are far enough from age of Coolhand or Derbyshire Ram ;-)

Twoflower: Or even Jerry. :-). Besides meeting these cool fellows, it was a pleasure to meet all the new sceners which I so far hadn't bumped into yet – those are too many to mention.

CreamD: Okay how about… guys from GP? Motley, Jucke and others. Did they come? How is GP today?

Twoflower: Unfortunately – thanks to drivers changing their plans, neither Motley, Jucke nor Newscopy did show up. A shame, really, since they're an unvaluable addition to the Swedish scene. G*P today are virtually nonexistent, save for them visiting parties – but i'm not the one to judge that I reckon. Another little downfall was that Mitch & Dane never showed up – they were meant to be releasing Bondage III as well as a new picture/pictureformat from Dane…

CreamD: Pity. ;-( Okay, the readers are probably waiting for more info about compos itself, hehe. So – what happened before the competitions? Was there a thrill, nirvana, nerves, anything of the typical pre-deadline times?

Twoflower: The party, during the hours before the compo, was really hectic. Everybody was fuzzing around, experimenting with different types of crunchers, packers and linkers, running around with SuperCPU's, ramlinks, X-mems and Action Replays. It really felt like in the old days sort of.

CreamD: SCPU?

Twoflower: I really enjoyed seeing people actually putting some effort on their releases IN the partyplace. That is the way to do it, if you ask me. I think something is lacking when you arrive at the partyplace and have everything 100% polished and finished. Besides this – the compo deadline was pushed forward 4 (four!) times because of crunching and bugfixing. :-)

CreamD: Great!! That means party texts in demos, I think everyone loves to read them ;-)

Twoflower: The SuperCPU at the partyplace was owned by MagerValp and was a welcome addition to the rest of the machinepark. Packing goes really fast with such an add-on to the 1 MHz processor.

CreamD: Yes, tell me that. (a happy owner's comment) So how were the compos themselves organised? Tell us some picante stuff.

Twoflower: The compos were organised in a well resolved but somewhat unorthodox way. Since all machines allowed to compete had to be 8-bit machines – there were only one compo for all of the machines. In the music compo, you could enter with a GBC, Spectrum, MSX or even a VIC-20 if you wished (like Zagor did!). That led to quite a peculiar mix of different styles and sounds – all faithful to the 8-bit tradition.

Twoflower: Picant? Heh, I guess you refer to Dwangi/Fairlight stripping while dancing to my compotune, heh…

CreamD: Really? I've heard some gossips from Puterman. Is that true?

Twoflower: It is true. Very true. :-) And twice.

CreamD: Again, how were they organised and ordered?

Twoflower: The competition was all in all well organized, although with some technical problems occuring due to the frequent change of compomachines – but there was nothing that the arrangers could have done about that I figure. The compos went smooth, starting off with music (order; C-64-music, AmigaChip/THX, Gameboy Color, VIC-20), with the graphics compo coming up closely after (with the same order of machines) and last and finally the democompo. New for this year's LCP was that the compo was resolved by voting, and not by a selected jury. A big success for the attending scene – atleast according to me – and a big chunk of slavework in the middle of the night for the tired, unexperienced arrangers!

CreamD: Tell me about counting. Wotnau had to do it at Forever. I was too tired for that. He made a sort of simple table-calc in asm. Datas were entered using cartridge monitor. The system was taken from Polish parties 0–9 points for each entry. How was the voting system at LCP then? What is your opininon on the voting system?

Twoflower: The arrangers used a system with only three entries for each category, with reversed points (eg. first place = 3 points, second = 2, and so on…). The downside of this is that the popular entries gain a lot of point, while the others gain very few. One can discuss if it's a good way of making it, but considering the experience of the arrangers – I think it's a good way of resolving it. And not to forget – it's not good for the fake entries.

CreamD: What about music compo?

Twoflower: The music compo was in my opinion perhaps the best of the compos. There was a decent amount of tunes presented, out of which most was of good quality judging by party standards. The focus of the compo was of course on the C-64 and the GBC (GameBoy Color), but the other entries were nice aswell – not forgetting Zagor's Vic-20 entry, made in his own tracker.

CreamD: Your favourite?

Twoflower: What I enjoyed the most was the „experimental“ feeling of most of the entries. This wasn't just the standard spazmofunk Mitch & Dane tunes, but new and creative works. Goto 80's tune, „PappaP“, named after the legendary Pappa Panda, was awesome – closely followed by Zyrons „Vem fan vet?“ and the raw fuzz-techno from Rolemodel/1.000.000 Boys.

CreamD: Zyron releasing a tune on SID, that's a great news for me. I liked his latest collections. How about responses of the audience?

Twoflower: Zyron's entry is cool, and heavily inspired by Wally Beben and Whittaker, enuff said! The feeling in the main-hall during the compo was great, people dancing to many of the entries. :-) Then, Dwangi/Fairlight entering the scene, making an infamous striptease during my arabian-inspired entry. ;-)

CreamD: Yes, that's what I call a response ;-). Let's move over to graphics!

Twoflower: The result of the compo was somewhat expected, with Goto80 getting the first place, me on the second and Piglet on the third (I think!). Zyron ended up fourth.

CreamD: You ranked second. Congratulations to you. Hey, didn't you secretly hire Dwangi as a stripper? :-)).

Twoflower: After the great music compo, the gfx compo was somewhat duller. With few serious entries on all of the machines the result was somewhat predictable – One IFLI-picture by Hollowman, one SHF-picture by me and one hirespicture from Twosheds in the C-64 part of it. There were some nice low-color entries on the Amiga 500 aswell, but all in all you surely noticed that it lacked some competition. Many people had planned to enter the compo – Joe & Clone/WD and Dane/Crest and Vodka/FLT amongst others, but none of them managed to bring in their finished pictures in time… :-/

CreamD:Demos, demos demos demos?

Twoflower: Shortly after the two first competitions, there was finally time for the democompetition, which did show some surprises. It all started off with a lowres Amiga entry from Hack'n Trade called „Robot“, and then the show rolled on… The C-64 part of the competition did actually present three serious and big demos, „Manhood #2“ from us in Triad, „O-Tech People 2“ from Active and finally „Clowns“ from Civitas. Besides those, there were several smaller entries, and one from Dekadence amongst them. Unfortunatly, some fake demos were also presented here, to both irritation and joy.
The second surprise was the presentation of an impressive Gameboy Color-demo from 1.000.000 Boys including a fantastic conversion of the Commando tune and code in a class you've never seen before in a GBC-release! I have surely forgotten some of the smaller entries now, but to my surprise the compo ended up with the big C-64 entries taking the top three spots, in the above mentioned order.

CreamD: Mhm, but where to get and how to check that demo If I don't have a GBC?

Twoflower: The GBC demo isn't released yet, and will not be until it's 100% bugfixed and correctly linked. It is possible to check GBC-releases in the No$-emulator since it's very good – watch my and Iopop's demo if you haven't.

CreamD: People will get the the demos and check them for themselves, but what do you personally think was the highligt of C=64 demos? Did you remember anything special from the demo compo?

Twoflower: The highlight of the democompo, as well as the gfx compo must be Hollowman's one-man fight against all masculine idolatry and glorification, clearly visible in both his gfx-entry and Manhood #2. I was positively shocked to see some clearly homoerotic tendencies in the demo, with Hollowman holding Djinn amongst others. :-) In short – this wasn't what I had expected, and new views in demomaking is always positive, imho.

CreamD: Uff, I saw the demo. If Oscar Wilde were a c64 scener he would probably have done something like this ;-). More of your opinions?

Twoflower: Even though „O-Tech People II“ was a good release, it was clearly noticable that many of the parts were old, ranging from 1998 to 2001 and perhaps not perfectly linked. I think it was a good thing to release it anyway, since their new demo – „Hellface“ – will be released within weeks. So, to sum it up – this was a democompo which I for sure didn't expect.

CreamD: Yes. They sweeped in front of their own doors. (Bwah, this for sure is not an idiomatic sentence.)

Twoflower: Exactly! This are just the small, but nice, waves before the storm. „Hellface“ will be a realy good demo, from what I have seen from Trident.

CreamD: Great to hear that after Floppy 2001 in February, Forever in March and Symposium-Mekka in April another well attended and rather successful C=64 event was organised. 

CreamD: Were there other compos? Other party activities? Gaming competitions? More funny situations?

Twoflower: There was no time for gaming compos – most people did actually work on their productions or projects during the time before the compos. I forgot to mention the hilarious amount of teenage girls at the partyplace and a drunk Hollowman trying to pick them up. One girl succeeded to kiss five sceners (of course including Hollowman) in less than 45 minutes. .-)

CreamD: Heheh this will be in the interview, too!! If you don't censor it when it gets back to you for final check. ;-)

CreamD: More spiccy/funny stuff?

Twoflower: Heh, no problem… :-) Speaking of girls, there were actually some dedicated scene-women there as well, which was really cool to see, as well as Tranziie/Hitmen's neighbour. :-) Four or five of them to say the least.

CreamD: How do you feel about the party, what is your overall opinion?

Twoflower: Overall it was a great party. Save for some small backlashes, like missing friends which said they would show up, it was hilariously funny to be there meeting everyone. Actually, it's kind of easy to forget how much such an event means for the social bonds of the scene, but when you're there, it really gets a good hold on you. Scene parties, no matter how small, are important for the scene, its structure, its competition and its friendship and should always be pushed for – but it's also important to remember what these meetings are about – and what they're not about.

CreamD: I don't understand. What do you mean by that what they are and aren't about?

Twoflower: Meetings are about the scene, the living, creative scene of which we consist. It's not about retro feelings, of nostalgia or something like that, but about creating the bonds and feelings for the scene I described above and pushing the efforts on what you can do with 8-bit computers further – not back to the 80'ies. The scene, and the parties, must first and foremost be focused on the scene, for the scene and by the scene – enough said! :-)

CreamD: Aha, so you don't like that oldskool stuff released sometimes in order to look cool? Do I get it right?

Twoflower: Let me put it this way – if it's made by an oldschool group or person, like e.g. Radwar, Horizon or other old persons which quitted before the scene developed to what it is today, I feel that it's ok. But you shouldn't make it look oldstyled just for the sake of it, that's just fake and not adding much to the scene in general. Pure nostalgia is never progressive. Pure nostalgia is beeing culturally conservative in all means.

CreamD: Yeps. Thanx a lot for a great interview and report. It was nice to chat with you.

CREDITS:
Reporter: Twoflower/Triad
Correctures: Wotnau/Dmagic
Edited by: CreaMD/Dmagic
Photos Tip: Autoboy/Hack'n'Trade
More photos (photos source): http://www.spoiledbrat.net/
Official Party page: http://www.lcp.c64.org/

IRC Session Start: Sun Jul 22 23:25:17 2001 – Close: Mon Jul 23 02:38:29 2001