Reactions to the Copenhagen Retro Concert 2005

[soren_ladegaard]

edit: Damn, hadn't seen this forum specifically for the concert. Couldn't understand why nobody replied to my topic about who was going Turns out people have been setting up plans here instead. Well, hopefully I'll be more active in the months to come (both SID and other C64 stuff) and I'll meet someone at the CRC 2006. There's going to be a 2006 event right? ...right?

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I never went to the BIT events but I made sure to order a ticket to CRC - and yes, I got one

At the beginning the sound quality was a bit poor. It was hard to hear Visa Röster - and they might have had problems hearing themselves too as sometimes they were a bit off key. But hey - great concept doing SID tunes vocally. It was also a bit hard to hear them because the crowd kept talking during the concert. Did you come for the music or the chat?

The C64 Mafia did a great job. Makke is real good a rapping - although I heard him off stage saying "Guess the crowd really hated that!". Yes Makke, I stood right behind you

Probably the hightlight of the show: PPOT and Jon Hare playing music using game-controllers. It was SO cool! You must have had tons of fun rehearsing.

Then Axes Denied went on. WOW! They were really good. Great versions of classic Nintendo, Amiga, PC and C64 stuff.

Then came SID80's. Mark Knight is very funny and good at playing the violin. Unfortunately I didn't recognise many of the tunes they were playing - maybe Mark took the violin solos a bit too far? By the way - what was Marcel Donné playing when he did the synth solo? It sounded really, REALLY well. Well, it wasn't really a solo as Jon Hare kept playing his guitar. It really didn't do Marcels solo justice that Mr. Hare tried to play his quitar using a beer bottle It was obvious that Andreas had noticed Mr. Hare's not-so-appropriate-performance but he didn't have the guts to tap him on the should and ask him to stop

Finally - PPOT. Great performance. You can tell that they have fun on stage. They performed well and had added some nice touches with singing and stuff Thanks guys for a great event! Dunkel: Too bad The Commodore Billboard DVD didn't work. Don't hesitate to contact me if you need another copy.

...and ofcourse Mr. Abbott was there too selling his CDs and DVDs together with Kenz. I bought the BIT Live DVD set. Would have bought Kenz' Pure 6581 cdrom aswell but he didn't bring it to the show

All in all I had a great time. Let's hope for a CRC 2006!

Best regards

Søren Ladegaard - Denmark
http://www.commodorebillboard.de

[Matrix]

And what of Mr R of the H, did you miss him

[Subzero]

Did anyone record this? I missed it ALL

[Makke]

The C64 Mafia did a great job. Makke is real good a rapping - although I heard him off stage saying "Guess the crowd really hated that!". Yes Makke, I stood right behind you

Hehehe, I just think a lot of people were surprised when DHS and I entered the stage. I mean, there were Visa Röster doing a wonderful gig full of harmony, and then these two monkeys enters the stage and one of them starts shouting curse words between every other line of lyrics.

Was hard to tell what people thought of it. I was just worried that the levels on the mixer was set for a more quiet Visa Röster-thing, and then I come on and shout. It might've been a bit sonically overwhelming. But those I spoke to said it was pretty good and funny, which was the intent. So I'm happy with it.

[Jan Lund Thomsen]

The C64 Mafia did a great job. Makke is real good a rapping - although I heard him off stage saying "Guess the crowd really hated that!". Yes Makke, I stood right behind you

I was right next to him when he said that. Oh well, lots of people seemed to miss out on the giant clue that was my RKO t-shirt.

[Chris Abbott]

PPOT pulled off an extremely big feat with great organisation and style, and the performers gave their all, so well done all! It was nice to see everybody again!

Chris

[Makke]

I’ll just write a few words about the event and the acts. First of all, great meeting everyone again! Always a pleasure, and also I managed to make a few new acquaintances.

Visa Röster. As Pex said himself about the set they did: “More show, less music”. Musically the St. Luke’s gig was better, but that set would probably not have worked as well with a pub crowd (WHO WERE CONSTANTLY TALKING!!!). So I think it was a good move to add a bit more of show and humour to the set. The live on-stage scroll-text was a great idea!
Enjoyed the performance a lot, though for most of it I was just waiting to go on myself. Haven’t had time to listen to the new CD yet.

Axes Denied. Wow! Awesome gig, and a fun set list that really got the crowd going. Very heavy metal, which is much to my liking. A fun touch to it was when the guys started blowing soap bubbles to Bubble Bobble. I thought no one was going to be able to top them, because they really did a great job. The mixing was a bit off at times though, giving the keyboards too much space and the guitar almost disappearing.

Rob + Mark. Unfortunately didn’t hear much of it, because my feet were so knackered I decided to go back to where Kenz and Chris were selling CDs and have sit and chat with them.

SID’80s. I missed the performance they did in Manchester, but I think it’s safe to say they did their best gig so far! It was absolutely brilliant! In my opinion the best performance of the evening. To sum the performance up in one word: Groovy!
Pant creamage moment when Marcel did Sweet on the CS80. As I told Marcel after the show, if I could have sex with a sound it would be that one.

PPOT. The stage was a little bit too small for them. They need the St. Luke sized stage, especially since André’s body seems to naturally release speed into his blood stream. It was a great performance though, and the final tunes where they were joined by Rob and Mark were absolutely brilliant!

Uffe (the master of ceremonies). Did a great job! I simply loved the introduction speech.

Right, going to hand out a few plus and minuses:

+ A long and smooth running show! Great organisation! A lot of entertainment for the money.

- The long, constantly running show made it a bit hard to mingle and meet people. But as Trauma said when I had a quick chat with him, they simply had too much good stuff to cut anything out of the performance schedule. And he was definitely right about that. I wouldn’t have wanted any of the acts to go.


+ Jeroen Tel’s DJing skills were excellent! Too bad most people had already left when he was on. (And too bad I never got to exchange a few words with him.)

- The crowd talking during the Visa Röster performance. Might have been because the volume was a bit low far back in the room/by the bar though.

+ The funny compos between acts. The “Binary Counting Compo” was a real nerd-treat! (Wish I’d known earlier and you’d gotten a couple of It’s Binary, Baby copies for prizes )

- A lot of people leaving before the show ended. It seemed many just saw it as another night out drinking, and less of a big social event.

+ The Cannon Fodder-thing! What a laugh!

- Mr. I Can Piss A Mile Away From The Urinal whose piss ended up everywhere.

+ Hearing a complete stranger go “Makke gooooood!”

+ The look on Slaygon’s face when SLAY Radio passed the 300 listeners mark.

Right, there’s a lot more to say but this was all I could be bothered to write.

It was a great weekend, and a much needed break from reality for me. And kudos to Jan and Mette for not minding having drunk Swede sleeping on their couch again.

[Matrix]

Yeah I wondered about that - sounded on the stream like there was a mic in the bar area...

[madfiddler]

Then came SID80's. Mark Knight is very funny and good at playing the violin. Unfortunately I didn't recognise many of the tunes they were playing - maybe Mark took the violin solos a bit too far? By the way - what was Marcel Donné playing when he did the synth solo? It sounded really, REALLY well. Well, it wasn't really a solo as Jon Hare kept playing his guitar. It really didn't do Marcels solo justice that Mr. Hare tried to play his quitar using a beer bottle It was obvious that Andreas had noticed Mr. Hare's not-so-appropriate-performance but he didn't have the guts to tap him on the should and ask him to stop

I think you're at bit harsh here my friend. You obviously don't understand what SID80s is about. SID80s isn't a 'note for note band', even PPOT are moving away from that now imho. It's more like part C64 representation and part improvisation. The only way a band who can't rehearse together can be. If you didn't recognise the songs we played, well, I'm at a loss... We don't do the most famous tracks, as they're already being done by other bands so why should we do the same.. However.....

International Karate? Paperboy? Spellbound? You've not heard of these tunes? We're not that bad that they're unrecognisable are we? lol.

Jon's playing in Sweet was deliberate. Again, it wasn't a case that we had to play the tune note by note, we went up there and jammed it really. Andreas can't tap anyone on the shoulder.. He's sitting behind a drum kit. That's my job, and it's only done if something goes really horribly wrong.

I'll also make a note about Visa Voster. They're a vocal 'band'. You can't drive a PA to the same level that you can with instruments which are plugged in, and it didn't help for them the number of people who decided to chat throughout their set (and others - why buy tickets to a music event if you just want to talk? - It doesn't make sense, and it's damned bad manners - It's not like we're getting paid to do these gigs you know).

Anyway, glad you enjoyed it, and here's to something next year

[Matrix]

"maybe Mark took the violin solos a bit too far?"
- Bull is that, steaming pile o' hotspur... the solo's and improv make it exciting and fresh. If it was the same old tune again and again and again at every retro gig, peeps would get pretty tired of hearing it over n over again. madfiddler's solo's and imp[rov are wonderful to have attacking your cranial lobe Same with Andreas's drum solo - I havent heard anything that kickin since the one in Waynes World.

If you compare the sets from Visa Roster and SID 80's to recordings from Brighton 03 and London 04 you would see a vast difference.

As Mark said, it's not about note for note, it's about the spirit of it drivin' you to just go up there and jam your heart out to music you know you love, and you know the people around you love.

Variety is good. sure ya get a couple of bum notes from time to time - easily forgiven all things considered. The members of SID 80's only see each other just before a gig for a few hours practice too - a vast acomplishment they sound so good imho.

As for a next event.... keep eyes on http://www.sidstock.co.uk - it's quite a way off, but it's going to rock so hard it'll knock out your fillings (should you have any...)

[madfiddler]

or "notes of doom" as I call those bum notes

[Rondo]

Now that I've had some time to recover - we made it back to our lodgings in Danhostel around seven o'clock Sunday morning and check-out time was 9 a.m. so I was in no condition to think coherent thoughts until I had had at least ten solid hours of sleep - I'll try to sum up my feelings about CRC. I really should be working, but now that I'm properly alive again I can't wait to take part in the conversation...

When we woke up on the big day I was more than just a little bit hung over from the revels of Friday night (I'm blaming the horrible whiskey we bought at a 7-11, that way I don't have to blame myself). Sound-check was a bit painful for me, but a relaxing sit-down over a cup of coffee and a nice dinner at a Chinese restaurant worked miracles on me.

Sadly, I missed a lot of the Visa Röster show as we were pretty busy preparing for our own gig. It was like "lug some gear downstairs - listen for a while - lug some more gear downstairs - listen for another while - inflate a few balloons..." I completely missed the bit with C64 Mafia - a real pity, sounds like it was a lot of fun. What I did hear I enjoyed, though. Bought the CDs too, listened to a couple of songs on the first one Sunday evening before I went to bed.

As for our own gig, wow. I never before fully realised that there actually is such a strong retro game music scene in Europe. I was under the impression that it was mostly just a few established performers and their fans (kind of like we have our own little fan base in Finland, only scaled up), and I hardly thought it possible for a bunch of Finnish geek rockers to get on stage in a country where they're basically nobodies and be welcomed the way we were, but - well, there you have it. Judging by the crowd reactions and the feedback we've been receiving after the show we had quite an impact. Our drummer was rather hard on himself for a couple of mistakes he claimed to be bad enough to make him want to put a bag over his head, but I think we played reasonably well throughout our set. I'm also glad that our experiment with the soap bubbles and balloons was a success, it was cool of the PPOT guys to help us with those. Also fun to watch some of them dancing a couple of metres to my left as we were playing Leisure Suit Larry.

After our gig I missed some stuff again, we went backstage for some well deserved R&R and popped outside to get a breath of fresh air. Saw most of SID80s, however. I was really looking forward to their set after hearing their sound-check in the afternoon and also a bit of their rehearsal on Friday. Didn't let me down either - damn it, those guys can really play, and I'm not talking about video games. Quoting what I told Marcel when they were done, "Nice groove!"

Press Play On Tape was certainly no disappointment either. A very entertaining show indeed, with nice touches such as the Kraftwerk adaptation. I'd been longing to hear Monkey Island in an actual concert ever since I heard the live track from The Gathering 2003. Monty On The Run was just THE perfect conclusion, Mark's machine-gun fiddling grabbed me by the ponytail and swung me around until I was barely able to stand without leaning on somebody. Thanks for the exercise, I was in need of it!

Mortal sin or not, I'm pretty friggin' proud of having been part of an event like CRC. A couple of guys talked to me specifically to praise my keyboard playing, which is something I don't easily get tired of listening to. The most endearing moment (and also the most confusing one), however, was when a woman who must have been about the same age as my mother wanted to know if she could get our music on CD...

[merman]

Well, just finished listening to the new VR CD and it's awesome, but this is the thread for talking about the concert...


Venue was good.

Standing up for five hours was bad.

The C64 art was good.

The people hogging the bar were bad.

The live music was superb, fantastic, amazing, wonderful, better than ever, interesting, novel, inventive, beautiful, sensational, awesome.

The people talking over the music were bad.

BUT... the good outweighs the bad considerably. Great to see so many familiar faces and meet so many old friends again. Kudos to the performers for raising their game, and to PPOT for putting the show on.


Here's to the next one!

[Matrix]

Bum notes are to expected at live events - anyone who thinks otherwise is deluding thesemlves, these things happen, period (like the first note in the lead guitar during thrust which went westward) Or like the Bass failing during PPOT's opening WARHAWK at London 04.

Also, I wanna know - Do Axes Denied have a CD Me wanna buy.

[soren_ladegaard]

The C64 Mafia did a great job. Makke is real good a rapping - although I heard him off stage saying "Guess the crowd really hated that!". Yes Makke, I stood right behind you

I was right next to him when he said that. Oh well, lots of people seemed to miss out on the giant clue that was my RKO t-shirt.

Well, I noticed the T-shirt but I never got around to greet you and say stuff like "Keep up the good work" and such. Guess I've done it now, then