Party report from Society Summer Party

From the 7th to the 9th of June the small Finnish group Society arranged the first Finnish party of this year 1991. To many people's surprise, their arrangements seemed to be fine and good and the prices of the democompetition were really good. First rumours said that there won't come too many people, then they changed and it was told that a lot will come. And just before the party many Elite groups cancelled their coming... Anyway over 250 people came. Even before the party, some lack of experience was noted...

The map guiding to the party, by some strange reason, was unreadable around the partyplace. One couldn't read the streets, or even know where north is. What was even better, nowhere in the invitation was said the name of the school or even the street's name or number. Seemingly, everyone found the place but it wasn't the easiest job.

At the party... We arrived quite early, just 1 or 2 hours after the party began. Already there was some folk, not much though. We chose to share a room with Amaze, as I remembered them as very good fellows from my last party. And then... Small kids, who had never heard about the older Amaze guys I asked if they're already here or if they are coming! Later I and many other old guys discussed about Amaze today, and found the sad truth: today's Amaze is a completely different group than the old GOOD Amaze. We wondered what has happened to the OLD, GOOD guys but with no solution. Those new 12-15 years old kids have taken old good Amaze completely over, and eaten the old guys. During the afternoon we changed the room, as the previous room was completely filled with small groups/kids. The new room with Complex, Accession and Frantic was much better... During the afternoon lots of people came to the party. Finally the old record of party-visitors was broken - old record 220+ people was in by previous Byterapers-party, and now 250+. Sounds REALLY GOOD! The only real big pity was that most of them were kids aged 12-15 years, and most of the best chaps didn't come at all. Just small groups around.

The ELITE groups at the party were: Wizzcat, Frantic, Rebels, Byterapers Inc., Vertigo, Accession, Bloodsuckers and Complex. And the most noted members of some of those groups in party were: Zerotrack/Wizzcat, Turtle/Frantic, Grendel/Byterapers, Commonist Cowboy & Hoffi/BS, Monster/Accession, Mic Dair & Jugi Pervert/Complex. REST of groups present were: Equinox, Alpha Flight (hmm, can't really count on FINNISH Elite), Titanbytes, Black Robes, Chrome, Coma SF, Vectra, Intuition, D-Mob, Shockwave, Dimension 4, Prologic, Disknet, Special Brothers, Gods, Beyond Force (64-Elite), Skeletors, Prime SF, Cave, Nikki Corruptions, Extend, Fantasy Force, Pro, Amaze (FAKE!), Skid Row (again, cannot really count as FINNISH elite-group), Astrogate Inc. (what's the point on taking name from old Byterapers-demo for a group? Just asking...), Heavy Duty, Offworld, Parallax, Dual Crew, Profex, Agony, Loctite, Shock, Black Light Inc, Sonic, Energy, Vances, Anarchy, Elysion, Exotic Men and Gemini. Most of those groups were so silent, and mostly could be only noted from their posters on walls.

Mostly there was a typical party-going... People making beautiful vectors with CUBES and PYRAMIDS and other traditional objects. More people watching in trance how X-COPY copies lots of stuff. Typical, AAARGH! Some change to lameness was when Bloodsuckers started a fight at schoolyard, and broke a 10000FIM video-camera... They were almost kicked out of the party. For some reasons ushers didn't like us when we climbed to roof, and watched the sun going down... Hmm... BIG FUN was watching the arrangers starting a anti-alcohol campaign. Someone was catched with some booze, and the arrangers started examining everyone. HAHAAA!!! It was fun, when they found booze from some guys and forced them to empty bottles to sink... HAHAA! Sorry, Exotic Men! HAHAAA! Real fun... Booze talking, funny was also during both Friday/Saturday nights, when the arrangers didn't let in some boozed guys! Right, Society! For example Proton/Byterapers had to wait 1 1/2 hours before getting in! Best of all was when some guys moved Proton's motorcycle from its place, and Proton thought it had been stolen! Proton ran out, found his bike and drove it back to its place. THEN USHER CALLED COPS! Also we built a classroom on the roof, opened a window and carried chairs and tables outside. Later we took them inside, to avoid trouble with ushers (one didn't have much humour).

The big pity was, that most of the old scene-guys didn't come. In whole party were only SIX (6!) guys who'd been in scene already at 1988!!! YOUNGSTERS EVERYWHERE! Bigger pity was almost everyone in the party was so silent. No fun! Silent, copying, coding, sitting. Doing no FUN! Well. Then WE had to make some fun. Following persons were probably the most active at making some ACTION to party: Monster/Accession, Grendel, Randor, Judge/Byterapers, Zerotrack/Wizzcat. Yeah! With Monster we attacked many times THE BIG SCREEN where kids were watching new PHENOMENA demos, and started to show REAL OLD, GOOD DEMOS! Ahh. MUROMIES RULES! Hoffi-demos, Byterapers Chorus II etc. etc. etc. COOL!

After Frantic came, I just COULDN'T resist making jokes about Frantic. Still when I think Frantic, I have to laugh. First it was small joking with them, then I started making posters and sticking them everywhere in the party. "Frantic - sorry for delays" "Frantic - we rule" (toiletpaper) "Frantic wants lots of new members, take contact to the boss Turtle" "Frantic has joined Zombies" "Turtle of Frantic is now Turtle of Skeletors" "Frantic sold their coder Harri K's sources to Amaze for price of 1 1/2 banana" "Frantic laadusta ei valia" "Silence - Frantic sleeps" "Frantic Finland is now dead, Frantic GERMANY is now only Frantic" and so on and so on. Soon they started to attack back. "Byterapers had to PAY to PRO to get rid of their sources" where I responded "What sources? We haven't done any sources for last year". "Sorry for delays" was answered "Byterapers - sorry for Grendel". The two toilets were marked "Byterapers HQ Node 1" and "Byterapers FHQ Node 2" (grr, they must have known I absolutely HATE all this HQ shit. WHY HQ? Why not PQ? Or something else? Or nothing?). "Red Sector Joined also Skeletons". Pity, I don't remember everything. I enjoyed it a lot! Then joking about Turtle, dat lil fella.

More joking about Frantic! We found a half-eaten pizza, it looked REAL ugly. Then we found it: THAT'S FRANTIC! After it, everytime we saw something half-eaten or ugly or pizza, IT WAS FRANTIC! All food-waste was FRANTIC! Then we found PUMPED FRANTIC (ilmapatja). Funnies was that almost all in party then though I have something against Frantic, when I was friendly joking with them. Yes, also we moved Frantic FINLAND'S (how come they didn't like me, when I always talked about FRANTIC FINLAND and GERMANY) HQ to a trash-bucket. We also had taped to floor signs and pointers telling where (B) and Frantic are. Well. Later Frantic could be found from several places. Thanks guys! Without you party would've been much dullier.

The gamecompetitions were good, although there were some problems with getting players to play. Accession had made a demo Graveyard Party Blues six months ago, but almost none had seen it. We tried to change texts, and release it there as new demo. But Monster had left the sources at home! Hmpfh. We tried and tried to change texts, and everytime it crashed. Finally we tried to enter the democompetition with exactly the same demo as it was released times ago. Perkele, it was disqualified!

Another funny thing with Heatbeat/Rebels (Repeltajat...). For you, who don't know him. Heatbeat is 14 years old, and also looks so. Little kid with round face. But good, nice boy anyway! You'd never guess who he is, if you don't know him before. So, Heatbeat was wandering around the party, and came to Amaze's room. He spent some time there, looking at Amaze. Finally Amaze's fed up with some little "lamer-type" looking at them, and VERY ARROGANTLY asked "who are you?" (arrogantly!). "I'm Heatbeat of Rebels." And now started terrible bootlicking "you're so great, you make so good music, you are best" etc. etc. etc. HA! They falled in love with him immediately (But Heatbeat is reserved, sorry! (not for me)).

Arrangers had some problems with music-/ graphic-/ demo- competition. The organization with judging demos were following: Society-members decide the best demos, musics and graphics. No voting. First they only ranked 4-5 best things per competition. NOTHING ELSE! Of about 16 sounds only 4 were ranked, about the rest was told nothing! THIS DIDN'T WORK! Overall this was very bad decision. Even more: ALL MUSICDISKS WERE STOLEN, and many graphics-disks too.

The SHOW was anyway good. Society had VERY BIG screen to show demos and two meters high speakers! WHAT VOLUME! WOWW! Never seen/heard anything like this! They had already watched graphics, and did then show the winning graphics in order. Then they started to play competition-musics. People had trouble knowing if A) is this already the competition? B) or are they now showing the tunes in winning order C) or are they just playing tunes? It was C. First came Heatbeat's tune, which also won the competition. Then some really cool HEAVY tunes. Then Moonlight Shadow (if I remember this right). Then another slow tune. Then Speed-Head/Byterapers' Jesus Loves America! WOW! First patterns were USA-national anthem (psychedelic) and Communist Cowboy/BS took attention and gave honor to the song. Merit/BS started use lighter on his ass, and CC turned and started to hit him. Then CC forced Merit on floor, took his chair and started to hit Merit with chair. WHAT A SHOW! WOOOOO! You should've seen it! Just great. Then CC calmed, and sat down. Listened the song to the end and started to shout "that was the best tune of all! I'm shamed to say this, but Byterapers was the best of all we've heard". This was very amazing, as I had big war with CC last year, police was included. Then we made peace, and get again on with each other. But I could never have imagined CC would say something GOOD of (B) ever. HUH! Moment later CC moved a bit to talk something with Monster, and Merit took his chair and gave it to the guy behind him. That guy gave the chair again back, and within a moment CC's chair was at the back of the hall. CC was quite funny when trying to find his chair.

We were naturally sitting at the front of the screen. Then some demos were shown. Most nothing interesting. Prologic's small demo was really good! All Elite admitted it - it was nice made, not special code but nice small demo. Then came Complex's Vectorpreview! WOW! Imagine the aplouds it got! People calpping like crazy when two more X-Wing-fighter came into screen, and even more when the chainsaw came (probably coz Elite's knew about the saw, and waited its appearance.). And shouting: BEST etc. IF COMPLEX WON'T WIN THE COMPETITION, WE'LL WRECK THE WHOLE PLACE! Funny was, as Merit sat next to the computer which was used to show demos. There was shown some stupid, usual demo. Merit attacked the left-mouse-button. Radical loaded the demo again. Merit reseted the machine. Radical loaded it again. Now we looked it through. Plaah. Soon came another stupid demo. Now Radical was careful "no reseting this time" and Merit plugged Amiga off electricity.

Elders talked later about the musiccompetition, and we were not satisfied with it. Today techno-pop is in, and guys who make realistic or other good music are not ranked. For example, when Speed-Head was player at SHOW, it was admitted as the best by many. Even the second HEAVY-tune was better than the winner. But because Techno-pop is in, it won. NOT FAIR!

Competition places went like:

Demo-competiton:
1. Complex (Harddisk+3000Fm)
2. Vectra  (1000Fm+Disks+Hardware)
3. Complex (500Fim+Hardware)
4. Wizzcat
5. Scup

Music-competition:
1. Heatbeat/Rebels (Memory+Disks)
2. Dean/?          (Disks)
3. Delorean/Vertigo
4. Tyrell/Dual Crew

Graphic-competition:
1. Golem/Anarchy   (5"Drive,disks)
2. Open Eyes/Offworld
3. Morrison/Vectra
4. Drifter/Vertigo
5. ?/Accession
 
Complex did legendy! They won the first price in SECOND PARTY IN ROW. And this time with a REAL demo, not with two years old shit. 

The competitions went otherwise with good judgements, but at music-competition tunes shouldn't be judged by techno-pop standards. Also later we have heard, that first and second places WERE FIXED! That Heatbeat was before-hand agreed to be the winner! This can really be true, as there was better music than Heatbeat's one. 

Good party, but competitions STINK! Overall not a bad party. Organizations failed, as they did in my previous party.
-<a href="https://amiga.millway.dk/scener/344">Turtle</a>/Frantic