Skyhigh 20 The JCH story - part 2

The JCH story - part 2




Hmmm, where were we??
Oh yes!! I was finally allowed to say something again.
Thanx! - He he!

No serious, let us continue this talk for a while. My
next question is about the group of yours:

What about VIBRANTS.. How did this start out back in
the good old days?


- In the beginning of 1988 I started to know LINK. It
happend like this: I was called by a 'Jyde' which wan-
ted to start up a company. (For the non-Danes, I can
explain that a 'jyde' is a person from the part of Den
mark called Jylland (Jutland in English)). He had big
plans for his company. It should be a real Danish
Software Company... It should be named: Electronic
Generations - Wauh!!!, and you were even invited over
to meet Link and a few other persons like program-
mers and so on. He was a real suit to look on. So we
were seated, and started to tell eachother about
ourselves. All I wanted to, was to talk to Klaus. I had
heard a few of his tunes in Future Composer, and I
really liked some of them. Well we talked and I show-
ed him the routine I was working on at that time. It
was version 5, I remember. So he was the first one,
who starte to use the editor.
Electronic Generations was a wash up, and didn't sur-
vive!!.

Then I went to PCW show in London, for the second
time. There Link said to me: "Jens, we have made 4-5
tunes each which haven't been used. What about put-
ting them together in a collection with a groupname
just like Maniacs of Noise?". I answered that I didn't
really liked the idea about imitating other groups. In
the same time many groups had started to jump the
bandwagon and make their own music labels, and it
simply wasn't me!! To me it was the same to give some
composers a groupname, like saying: "Oh. Maniacs of
Noise, let me lick your ass!" - I didn't like it!!
But he eventually got me convinced, and made me
realize that it was the best thing to have a name for
your music group. So we started to come up with a
name. We tried a lot of combinations, most of them
quite lame!!. The second last one we came up with was
AUDIO ANTS. Then I said why not skip Audio and replace
it with vibrato; and there it was VIBRANTS. Later on we
realized that there actually was a similar word in
music connexions.
I went down with my collections, but no-one cared at
all about me. Such a lame person from country which
only have about 5 million citizens, bah! Only one were
interested, but they wanted me to do music on all
computer systems. At that time I didn't even have a
PC, and they wanted me to do music on C64, PC, Atari
ST, well yeah, they almost wanted me to do music on
a coffee-machine, so I had to turn it down.

But already then I could see where it was going. It is
not enought just to be musician any longer. Now you
must be able to do music on several sytems.

So this was the way Vibrants was started. And in '89
(I guess) I met Drax on the 2000AD party in Esbjerg.
I had heard his music in various demos and I liked 'em
quite much, so he got the editor, and then he joined
Vibrants.

* Then Jens talks a bit about the different Vibrants
members, and concludes it will be too complicated to
mention all the others aswell.
I asked him about the different members, and we
naturally ended up with METAL. And then a surprise
was launched. (Anyway in my case it was a surprise!!)

- Metal wasn't originally a member of Vibrants. He
first became a Vibrants member on the PC. A lot of
people thought he was, because his music could be
run in the Deluxe Driver. But he has actually never
been member on the C64.

* But he is now?

- Yes he became a member on the C64 as we did:
LOLLIPOP on the PC. This was one of the first things
we did on the PC, after projects like HUGO and more.

* I don't know why, but somehow we started to talk
about JO alias Jesper Olsen. Don't ask me why, coz I
simply cannot remember why. But on with the story!

- Jesper Olsen also known as JOE of AMOK sent a disk
with tunes and routines to JOHANNES BJERREG]RD. He
was a great admirer of Johannes, which I can't blame
him at all!! Already back then his music routine was
on the 3-4 char-lines; very impressive piece of work.
He had looked rather much after the routines of
Charles Deenen and Rob Hubbard. He was quite nasty
to do such things.
This reminds me of a little funny story. I was ragged
quite a bit by Panoramic Design for having done 20
music routines, but the thing about is that I believe
that JO has made more than 100 routines. He con-
stantly changed them. He changed them from tune to
tune. But that's nothing special, many English compo-
sers did that. A guy like Rob Hubbard also changed
his routine from tune to tune. So I found it most un-
fair what Panoramic Designs did to me back then.

* what about your favourite composer? Now you have
mentioned Rob Hubbard quite often; is he the one?

- I have always seen Johannes Bjerregaard as the
best composer, and right behind him Laxity. Jesper
Olsen is in my eyes the best to make music routines.

For me and Jesper Olsen it was about being famous.
It wasn't the money really, more like getting mentio-
ned in Zapp and so on. Johannes Bjerregaard was on
the other hand only out for the dough - cool cash!
I remember a small epsiode: Johannes was taken into
Maniacs of Noise; the ultimative thing that could hap-
pend to you at the time. And he just took it as it was
an everyday thing. He then made a tune for a game, I
cannot remember which one, and 'unfortunately' Char-
les Deenen 'accidentally' wrote his name instead of
Johannes. And I asked him: "aren't you pissed off a-
bout this? - I would have been furious if it had hap-
pend to me!" And his answer: "Not really, as long as I
get my money!" - he he. Typically Johannes, as long
as he got his money he didn't really care.

* Well you left the C64 in..

- ..in 1991!

* ..why did you do that?

- Hmm, I could feel it burning underneath me. I didn't
find it all that interesting anymore. I had obtained
what I wanted, and people kept leaving the C64. Now
they were going Amiga, and I started to look at the PC
which was popping up in 1991

* But you still have a C64?

- I have a C128 in the cellar, and besides I have the
X-1541 cable so I can use it together with a C64 emu-
lator. A Slovacian guy has done one hell of a job,
doing an emulator on the PC for the C64. It is even
able to do raster splits, and can even use the irq-
loader in some of the old games, multi loader that is!

* Ok, so you left the C64 scene completely, but what
do you know about the C64 scene of today?

- Very little. Most of the names are unknown to me. I
have an idea that the standard has fallen. This is
should be very carefully to say as I haven't done any
research about it. I know that BYTERAPERS who have
been there since the beginning, has returned to the
C64. They know everything about it know and is almost
impossible to beat.

* Hmmm, not entirely true, but close.

- And I know that inside the musicscene, quadrospeed
and 'more speed' is very popular. This is what the
most composers are using to day.

* Hmmmm, some truth in it, but no cigar!

My last question on the tape was:

So the chances for a comeback from your side is e-
qual zero? - and then the tape ran out.. Yes that
might sound like a bad excuse, but it is actually true.
I cannot recall his entire answer, but I can inform
you that it was a loud and clear NO!!! So don't hope to
much..

Ok that was all for this time. I didn't ask many of my
questions (it was impossible to break in !!), so I would
not be too surprised if there would be a sequal to
this chapter in the next issue of Skyhigh.

I hope you found this just a exciting as I did. It has
been quite a slavejob to translate this, but I think
it is worth it.


Until next time...

BIZ KID
BIZ KID




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