Addybook 12 Aars Party '92
From C64 Diskmag Wiki
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 !!
