View source for Addybook 12 Aars Party '92

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    report from the aars party 1992     
    -------------------------------     
                                        
   text and music by pri/tia/oxyron.    
                                        
the party took place in aars, denmark,  
a small town near alborg, from sunday 27
to tuesday 29 in  december 1992. the lo-
cation was the same as last year, namely
the'messecenter' with three large halls.
the organizers  were:  camelot on c64,  
crystal, silents and  anarchy  on amiga,
and danish elite on pc. in this report i
will mostly  restrict to c64 matters, as
there will be loads  of party reports on
the other systems as well.              
in comparison to  last year, when only  
one  hall was  used for partying and one
for sleeping, now  all  three halls were
used; the first  one  for amiga, the se-
cond one for  c64  and  pc (although you
could find quite a  bit of amigas there,
too), and the third one for sleeping.   
in the  first  hall  there was  a  big  
screen with really  superb  sound equip-
ment, furthermore three tv channels (one
info and two movie channels)  as well as
one radio channel, which broadcasted al-
most during the whole  party, except for
one period of time when there was a pro-
blem with the transmitter.              
like last year there were a small shop  
and a cafeteria  (this  time with  lower
prices) where you could buy the food you
needed, furthermore a stand from a local
computer store  where disks and the like
could be  purchased. another  stand sold
magazines and videos among which were of
course pornos, which some people immedi-
ately bought and  showed  on their tv's,
and all the lamers who  came by gathered
round them with popping eyes !          
there also was a lazer disc room which  
was supposed to  show  movies 24 hours a
day. however, after  some  time  it  was
closed, because too many people who went
there  used  it  for  sleeping, but some
hours later it was opened again.        
anyway, i really don't understand  why  
people were not allowed to sleep in hall
one  and two. especially  the second day
the organizers  often  did  calls saying
that people should  wake  up, once  even
threatening to  throw them out. but i do
not  understand  why it is a  bad  thing
when you e.g. are sleeping on your chair
in front of your  computer - perhaps you
just fell asleep by accident. many peop-
le also sleep  under  the tables because
they do not want  to  leave their equip-
ment alone. here, this was of course not
possible. but  despite  this fact 'only'
one amiga was registered as stolen.     
now some more details about the run of  
the party...                            
at 8.00 o'clock  on  sunday  which was  
set to be the opening time, there alrea-
dy were hundreds  of people queued up in
the first hall. we (graham, kirk, slide,
tts and me) had  to  wait for almost two
hours (!!) until we could check in. eve-
ryone received a  paper containing infos
and the party program, as well as a disk
on which the votes should be given, how-
ever, this  voting  system  later turned
out to  be  not  that  perfect after all
(more about that later).                
  people started to build up their equip
ment and to walk around in the halls. as
the day went  on, more  and  more people
arrived, and the atmosphere became  real
great. the only event  of  the first day
was a'show of ancient demos' in the eve-
ning. regrettably i could attend neither
this show nor  the  techno concert which
began at midnight (and justified the re-
latively high  entrance  fee of 120 dkr)
because i had to work on my tune for the
musiccompetition  whose deadline was set
already to 9.00 o'clock on tuesday.     
after i had made  it  to deliver my tune
in time, i did not go to sleep but star-
ted to do another one. this was of cour-
se only possible  because we had brought
our  own  coffeemachine  with  us - what
would we bee  without  coffee ?! (in dem
der loeffel steht!)  tts  was  finishing
his tv-vectorcube-part  while graham and
slide (who obviously  had drunk too less
coffee) were asleep.                    
regrettably  many  people  were  still  
sleeping when the  musics were presented
at  11.30 . curiously  enough, the 'real
big heroes' like drax, jeroen tel, scor-
tia, danko, moon etc. did not contribute
with a tune, partly  they  were not even
present at  the  party. but nevertheless
there were some nice  tunes by guys like
steel/scs/origo , devilock/x-rated   and
the syndrom/tia/padua, also  some normal
and some less good ones (bah...).       
the sound came across really cool. only 
the tune by  ratpoison/noice  did  not  
seem to be  working. so  the  organizers
told him to get a working version within
two minutes.after already thirty seconds
(hae?) they said they would skip it, but
then played it  though, but  only  for a
few seconds. then they stopped it,i won-
der why ?                               
in the afternoon  some of us went into  
town to go shopping a  little. i got my-
self  the  cult-food: polser , polsebrod
and remoulade ! yeah, schlonz...        
finally, after  having  been awake for  
about 60 hours, i went to sleep into the
back hall in the evening. i woke up just
in time  for  the  graphics presentation
where 22 pictures were shown among which
were some  really  excellent  pieces  of
work. by the way, it were only 14 people
who had participated in  the musiccompo.
  finally, at 5.00 hours on tuesday mor-
ning, came  the  biggest  event for c64:
the  demo presentation ! and here again,
not many 'big' groups took part although
they were  present, e.g. light, flash...
                                        
the participating groups  were (if i re-
member rightly):                        
smash designs, warriors of the wasteland
trance, oxyron, noice, fairlight, stari-
on and visual reality.                  
                                        
fairlight's contribution was no real de-
mo but only a board intro, so they  just
took this  opportunity  to advertise for
their board. well, no comment on that...
  after the c64  demo  presentation, the
amiga demos were  shown  which took four
hours (with a break  of  half an hour in
between). the demo by spaceballs was the
real  burner  of the  day. it  contained
vectorized digis  of  a dancing girl and
cool complex  filled  vectors as well as
a superb techno  soundtrack. you  really
had the impression as if you were watch-
ing a music video (perhaps it  was a bit
similar to 'don't you want me' by  felix
(by the way, i definitely  hate this aw-
fully boring song!)).                   
after the amiga  demo show was over at  
midday, the first people started to lea-
ve, and when finally  the results of all
the competitions  were  announced at the
end of the  party at 15.00 hours, only a
few hundered  people  were left. but be-
fore i come to  the  results i'd like to
lose a few words  about  the voting sys-
tem:                                    
everybody had  been  supposed to get a  
3.5 disk, on  which  he  could  give his
votes, on  his  arrival. but many people
didn't get a disk at  all (including my-
self), or  sometimes  disks  didn't work
properly. but, in  order  to avoid chea-
ing, you of  course  weren't  allowed to
get a second disk, so at the end several
people could not  vote at all because of
this. there also had been supposed to be
a 'live counting' of the votes which in 
fact did not happen; some of the organi-
zers just came to the  stage and announ-
ced the results, which  were as follows:
                                        
demo----+ music-----------+ graphic----+
1.oxyron  1.red devil/flt   1.wave/vsn  
2.starion 2.steel/scs/origo 2.ivan/sds  
3.noice   3.zyron/antic     3.ans/spirit
+-------+ +---------------+ +----------+
in my opinion - and in  many other peop-
le's, too - the results of the musiccom-
petition were a big joke, and this is no
personal offence but just matter-of-fact
criticism: red devil  only impressed the
audience by using  some  digis, the rest
of the tune  sounded  not  bad, but just
normal. the 2. place of steel's tune was
really ok, but not  because it was shown
using the jch player  but because it was
qualitatively  good. but  to  plac e the
tune by zyron/antic on 3rd is one of the
strangest decisions i've  ever heard of.
there was absolutely  nothing special a-
bout this tune, quite simple and not ve-
ry original. in my opinion steel, me and
devilock/x-rated  should  have got the 3
first places, and this is also what many
other people said. if  you  compare  all
the tunes and  analyse  them  correctly,
you will surely  agree that these  three
tunes have the best structure, the  best
melodies, have  some  changes and do not
sound always the  same  like many  other
ones. probabky the  audience  lacked the
knowledge of  judging  music... but any-
way, i think i  got  a  bit caught up in
this, sorry for that.                   
so let's continue with the rest of the  
facts... on  the  invitation  the prizes
for the competitions were listed as fol-
lows: demo        music      graphic    
      1.2500 dkr  1.800 dkr  1.800 dkr  
      2.1000 dkr  2.500 dkr  2.500 dkr  
      3.500  dkr  3.200 dkr  3.200 dkr  
however, the prize money for the demo-  
compo was lowered,so that e.g.we in oxy-
ron received only 1500 dkr for the first
place. the  reason  the  organizers gave
was that too less c64 guys had come. but
anyway, i don't  want  to complain, cash
is not so important, fame  is  what it's
all about !                             
i have  no  official informations, but  
judging by the eye i would  say that the
party had over 1500  visitors  with many
hundred amigas  and about 50 to 60 c64's
and pc's each. but yet  there were a few
hundred c64 guys  around, so  the atmos-
phere was quite good.                   
as usual, alcohol was strictly forbidden
in the party  place. the only important 
thing to mention  in that direction is  
that  one  guy  (probably amiga)  was   
carried out by  two  ambulancers. people
said he had taken  too much extasy, well
i don't know  if  that's  true, maybe he
only was extremely drunk.               
apart from this, i didn't see anything  
else special happen, at least nothing so
important as to be mentioned here.      
so i will now  try  and give a list of  
all groups who were  present at the par-
ty. probably there will be some missing,
perhaps my tired  eyes  even have seen a
name which was not there at all, so ple-
ase forgive me if there should be a mis-
take in the list...                     
                                        
c64 groups present at aars'92 (no order)
                                        
varsity, fairlight, blaze, bronx, noice,
trance, smash designs, antic, creatures,
light, success, origo , sunrise, acrise,
visual reality, lower level, warriors of
the wasteland, flash , padua, sprit, red
sector, topaz, talent , maniax, x-rated,
vision, collision ,legend , genesis pro-
gect, t'pau, oxyron + of course camelot.
                                        
all in all you can say that this party  
fulfilled the expectations set in it. it
was  well organized, and  almost  every-
thing - for  nobody's  perfect -  worked
fine. you could meet a whole lot of cool
people there, see  some really excellent
productions and have a lot of fun.      
so hopefully  there  will  be  another  
aars party in 1993 !                    
                          pri/tia/oxyron
ps. a very big hello  hereby  must go to
    kirk/oxyron who fell ill at the par-
    ty and had to  leave before the demo
    competition. however, when  we visi-
    ted him after the  party  he luckily
    was well again. but i bet the messa-
    ge of our victory  in  the democompo
    would have cured him anyway !       
                                        
    keep yourself vertical, tommy !!    
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