Mekka & Symposium 1998
Party Report
Submitted by CyberBrain (CyberBrain) on February 20 2002
Written by Deekay/Crest
from DRIVEN#27
Report by Deekay/CREST
for DRIVEN #27
Hello, Sailors!
Feel welcome to my very first party-report and my first article in Driven.
Today's subject is the Mekka-Symposium 98, held from 10th till 13th of April
as always in Fallingbostel near Hamburg.
After a great confusion on how to travel there we wound up driving there
with the exact same car as last year, only that this time it was my blue
Mazda, not Mr.Alpha's and was running on regular unleaded gas instead of
diesel which made the trip more expensive as it sucked quite a few liters
(swallow, bitch! 8). I picked up Flare/Ex-NoName-soon-to-be-Padua from the
Trainstation and drove to Schweinfurt (Pigaway?) to pick up
Cupid/Hitmen/Padua then off we went for a jolly trip to
Germany's scene-capitol-for-one-weekend-a-year, Fallingbostel. We came there
before the party opened, cause i had to bring a video i made for Chaotic,
who, as probably everybody knows, is a member of Smash Design,
the c64-party-organizers. The video contained 3.5 hours of classic c64-demos,
that were to be shown on the party during non-action hours. Does that sound
like a dream or what? 8)
Okay, after the hall started to fill up i quickly noticed that there were
ALOT of c64s that brought their ownders with them. I myself had brought my
c64 and my PC, but soon it became clear that mine was the ONLY PC in the
whole row, which was kinda cool as the rest was only c64s. Generally the
whole section in the front right of the bigscreen was 90% c64s, something I
never ever saw before except for on x96. More and more c64-sceners-arrived,
mostly german ones, but also some non-germans were spotted, e.g. Heavyhead
and Sebaloz. In general the party was very c64-friendly, as there were many
Amiga-sceners aswell, who face the same destiny as the c64, slowly becoming
exctinct. c64 was cult on the party, some of the fun-compos were only based
on c64-related things. So it was a grand place to be for a c64-scener,
getting the respect we deserve, c64-friendly people everywhere, lotsa
sceners...
The PC-part was, as expected, mostly reduced to Leechers and Quakers, so it
was mostly a scene-party. You felt much more respected as for example on TP,
where c64s are merely beared but not really wanted (If some people would not
fight for us! Respect to Heavyhead!) Something that made last year's party
such a cult-like happening, the occasional screaming of "Ficken!" (Fucking!)
and "Steeler hat dicke Eier!" (Steeler (the conferencier) has big balls),
initiated by The Accept Party Posse, didn't seem to catch on at first this
year, but as the party proceeded, things got more relaxed, people got more
drunken and primitive! 8)
Being primitive rules from time to time, you know!
As Graham had approached me some weeks before the party with a new part of
his, and said that he wants to release something there, i quickly brought
him and Crossbow together, cause crossbow had also sent me a new part, so i
thought "Why not do a coop-demo?". I had done some gfx for it before, but
some had still to be done. As I and Cupid had always been talking about a
coop-gfx (with a 2-mouses amicapaint! No, not really! 8) we quickly decided
to do a coop-Oxyron-logo, both of us doing separate letters alternating.
When i was doing the X, The Forbidden Cult arrived, someone whose work we
both respect, so we took him in for the Y and the N! This was about the
coolest thing for me at the party, working so closely together and seeing
how the style improved and changed during the work-process. One of the
funniest things was the Apple-commercial "Winsongs 95" that was shown on the
big screen without any warning, an ad where a cd-sampler with "music for your
configurations and reboots" was advertised, including songs like "Killing my
software with windows" which, sung to the melody of "Killing me softly" had
everybody die laughing! The fun-compos were the very best i've ever seen,
first was the "Sid tune guessing" competition, that already had c64-sceners
freak out last year. The special thing this time was that it was
Non-electronic! It was the voice-only combo "MaybeBop" that actually *sung*
old tunes of c64-games!!!!!! You can imagine how astonished and freaked-out
the audience was! It was even harder to guess this year, as mostly
lesser-known tunes were chosen. From the guessers on the stage only ONE
recognized ONE tune, Commando to be exact, which had the audience (who,
ofcoz, recognized it pretty soon!) go crazy! I really gotta congratulate the
organizers for this extremely funny and original idea! All of us loved it!
Another worthy fun-compo was the "1,2 or 3"-game, something all germans know
from their childhood. Several people jumping, dancing or having spastic fits
onstage have to chose one of 3 given answers (Vertically displayed on the big
screen) to a question by standing infront of the answer they think is
correct. Then, the correct one lights up and the people standing infront of
that get a point, the one with the most points wins!... This compo included
questions like "How many pins does the SID-chip have?" or "Which of these
pictures displays the c64-DX?" so we all cheered!
Towards the end the c64-compos came up. The quality and amount of the
releases didn't differ alot from TP, which is quite astonishing, first
because last year releses were really few and second because there were about
1/3 of the amount of people that come to TP or Assembly, also most of the
Dutch, English and Scandinavian c64-scene was missing (who usually all show
up at TP).
A highlight of the c64-demo-compo was AEG, whose last demo
(before the army?),"Our Darkness" was shown on the big screen, asked his
fiance to marry him IN THE END UPSCROLLER! She immediately rushed onstage to
say "Yes!" (So we all screamed "Ficken!" 8) We didn't quite know what to
think of this, my opinion is that it's so freaked out that it's somehow cool
again. Another highlight must be Padua's Yellow Submarine, which, along with
the lyric-sheets that got handed out, had us all singing loudly Karaoke!
Another great idea that was!
Summing up, it was the biggest, most "intimate" scene party i've ever been
to, intimate meaning that you could feel really at home and among fellow
sceners, it was alot of fun, most of us got drunk/stoned pretty much, many,
mostly quality releases and very very much "c64"! I can only advise all you
non-german sceners to come next year, as you'd miss out on something if you
wouldn't! Afterall, the whole party was speaking English only for a few
non-germans! So, come in large numbers next year to change this!
One bad thing at the end must also be mentioned (for me!), as someone lost my
car-key (It travelled quite alot cuz all the beer was in there! 8) so Cupid
and Flare had to travel back by train as they had to be home in time.
I spent 2 nights in the local youth-hostel and checked out Fallingbostel
dying of boredom... Thanks must go to the organizers who, though some were
really stressed (no wonder, after such a party!) helped us out by giving a
ride and letting us stay at their rooms at the youth hostel.
But even that didn't change my great memory of this party at all! Hi at this
point to all i met there, especially Leonardo and his girl, Anonym, FCT,
Sebaloz, AEG, Groepaz, Cupid, Tyron, Se7en, Cyclone and Rayden, Klaus und
Dittmar and my usual party posse: Neotec, Flare, Dano, Heavyhead, Danzig,
Jack Alien, Chaotic and Weasel! A special regard to Ned, a really funny dude,
for supplying me with CDs when my Network got fucked up by Winbloze!
I LOVE YOU ALL!
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