Report from BIT 4 in Brighton ....

[StudioX64]

Lee> You didn't happen to come visit the Remix workshop stand at all during the day. As I didn't see you, or at least couldn't identify you however some chap did come over at one point but couldn't speak to me as a chap was already giving me the 3rd degree over umbrellers

PK [StudioX64]

['Emphyrian']

Punisher_Genetix!

Yeah dude that was me. Great to see you on here! Ive only just regestered and hoped a few of the awesome people I had the pleasure of meeting would find their way here, or already be here.

['Emphyrian']

arrgh! just remebered I diddnt get my free poster off kenz!

[Lee's PeeknPoke]

Lee> You didn't happen to come visit the Remix workshop stand at all during the day. As I didn't see you, or at least couldn't identify you however some chap did come over at one point but couldn't speak to me as a chap was already giving me the 3rd degree over umbrellers

PK [StudioX64]

yes, i did and i did see you Paul, but everyone wanted a chat so I didnt get time to come over. I was downstairs in the bar bit in the day with Fred Grey and Octave "jeff" sounds sat on the far table when I spotted you playing with your GP32 Sorry

oh well maybe next time

Lee

[o2]

I just want to say thank you to you Chris for making this event such a pleasant part of my life.

And to all that performed.... YOU ROCKED

o2

[Mayhem]

I saw a couple of GP32s around the place actually... guess the influence from Korea is spreading

It was great to finally meet Simon N as I'm a big fan of the Comets games, and at least he also got to see Mega A running on my gear upstairs in the gaming area

Jeff is currently in the middle of a big code writing session and sadly couldn't spare the time to attend. Which is a pity because he always loves to go along to those sorts of events and hang out.

Everything seemed to go down very well despite only 8 machines and the SX64 running, most stuff got played a lot especially as said IK+ in 3 player mode. Heard a LOT of good talk about that, especially as most people didn't even know it had been hacked to add the support

Hopefully next time there will be full running of gear and maybe some proper competitions

[fgasking]

Just wanted to say that I had a fantastic time, even if I couldn't make the awesome sounding concert... though luckily I saw at least a bit of the rehersals, so that was great

Great to meet everyone, including Simon Nicol, whom we spoke to about his games and his unreleased Mad Planets game.

I'll do my own report and photos too soon....

Big thanks to Chris for a fantastic event, and I hope another one happens one day soon ... The Galway CD is also fantastic, and meeting everyone was what i've always dreamt of for the last 15 years

Thanks guys....

[StudioX64]

It was nice to finally meet you Frank, and you too Vinni

PK [StudioX64]

[tas]

only just got back after what was about an 8 hour car journey. And i'm totally knackered and so is my liver or lack of one now.

Was a wild weekend, i had a great time, great to finally meet some of the guys i have spoken to for many years now who i hadn't previously met at a bitlive event and ofcourse to the guys i have met before.

oh, but who was the guy who did the superman stunt across the dancefloor when Rob Hubbard finished his first tune? Laughed so much it hurt

[Ziphoid]

*hmmm* ...can I go back in time again? I wanna be back in Brighton again and re-live this weekend... ...can we do it again next saturday? I've just arrived home after a 1½ hour car ride as the last part of the trip together with Andreas (Morpheus) and we were just high on the fumes from the event... ...we actually had a passenger (a viola player we met at Stansted) and forced her to listen to the brilliant 'Project: Galway' and she was amazed... How cool is that?

Anyhoo, I simply must say thank you to all of you that made my weekend so great!

Chris: You rock bigtime! The organization of this was awesome! Let's just hope that you actually had the time to enjoy yourself as well...

Martin Galway: Thanx for the long chats and the tour of your discbox! You're one hell of an organized guy... ...besides being one of my personal Gods, that is...

Barry Leitch: Hope your trip to Scotland and back to the U.S. went well... ...it was great to finally see you!

Madfiddler Mark: You rule, dude! Are you sure you haven't traded your soul to the devil or so?

Rob Hubbard: Even though you won't read it: Thank you! Just thank you! ...no more need to be said!

...and this list could go on and on for quite some time, but I really have to get to bed, 'cause reality awaits me in the morning again...

I'll just squeeze in a nice un-ordered hello-list at the end... ...so thank you again guys'n'girls;

The ones above, Mahoney+Melina, Yodelking+Caroline, Benn, Kwed, Marcel, LaLa, Morpheus, Slaygon, o2, Makke, Max, Kenz, Boz, Rob, PPOT, Reyn, Larsec, David, Fred, Richard, Markus and all the others I've probably forgotten in my tiredness here...

Best regards,
John Carehag - Ziphoid/Razor 1911/Musicline

[Darrenxyz]

I rarely post on these things but since everyone else has said... yeah it was a great night! My photos are up on my site, for anyone who's interested.

Thanks to Richard Joseph, Fred Gray, Benn and all others for taking the time to talk to me!

Who was the guy at those keyboards where he was trying to play along with me when I was playing Mazemania and I kept changing the tune? Sorry about that!

--Darren Izzard

[Franksey$D012]

Guys,

This might be an essay, so you might want to skip this message
I wrote most of this text on sunday as I was trying to shake off the sleep deprevation feeling (still not there yet!), I've checked this forum and theres now over 4 pages of comments in there now!

Because of my friend Paul's commitments we had decided in advance to drive to Bit Live and attend the whole event and drive back afterwards, we knew it would be a long day, but what the hell...

My day on saturday started at 5:45am and I left Nottingham with my friend Paul at 6:45am, we drove straight down to Brighton with only a brief excursion to Rochester to collect an item I'd won off Ebay (a commodore item!). We arrived at Bit-Live at 11:15am.

What a great day! We met Punisher that was/is a member of Genesis Project and had an absorbing time catching up and discussing the 64 scene, us 3 hung out together for the entire event, too cool!.. During the day time event I met Fred Grey who was such a great guy, I discussed with him how much I liked the music he wrote for "Mutants" and how I'd
used it in a demo I wrote in 1987, he was very approachable and happy to chat.

I had some fun playing on some of the games on offer, including Uridium, IK+, Mega Apocolypse and Dropzone, but realised I needed some more practise and couldn't cut it against the high scores that had been set. I'd like to thank Mayhem for setting those games up and yes I DID notice and was puzzled that on IK+ we were playing 3 HUMAN players simultaneously - a nice hardware/software hack! I also noticed you were amazing on Mega Apocalypse! Respect! PS why are you selling your SX-64, they are so nice!

Another great part of the day was spent chatting with the guys from Commodore Scene. Had a lengthy chat with Shaun Bebbington about the Super CPU, SX-64 and I really appreciated the time he gave me, showing me certain games and how they reacted to hardware acceleration.
Alan Bairstow was also brilliant in explaining about the benefits of 64K VDC memory in a C128 and demonstrated GEOS, and the IDE64 device. Another thing was that I had a sneaking suspicion that Alan and I had been in contact before through Ebay a long time ago. Sure enough I had sold him a dead 1571 drive which he had modified and put an IDE CD-ROM and HDD in to, to connect to his IDE64 - Small world!

I was also happy to meet the guy from from zzap64.co.uk (Mort?!) and finally got my copy of ZZAP64 issue 107. I want to get in touch about issue 108 mate!

I'm pretty sure I also saw the guy at the event that runs the http://WWW.C64HQ.COM site that had encouraged me to attend in the first place, I didn't speak to you but cheers mate!

During the day event I finally got to meet Martin Galway! I purchased the Galway CD, briely met Martin (who was surrounded by fans) and he signed the CD inlay for me!

Also during the day event I saw Simon Nicol across the room, but didn't manage to speak to him at all during the whole event (damn!)

My friend Paul (who never knows any financial limits!) purchased a fully populated Hardsid with the 4 SIDs onboard. I look foward to playing with this!

On to the night event and I was overwhelmed with the people I met. I met Richard Joseph and was for some reason lost for words and just told him I appreciated his work and took a picture.
I met Gary Liddon and unbelievably he took a picture of me and my friends (I've now found its online at Http://homepage.mac.com/garyliddon/PhotoAlbum8.html - picture IMG_0430.jpg, I'm the
one on the left, grinning with the camera in hand!), I was suprised to see how big Gary is and again a bit lost as to what to say to him (can think of lots of questions now of course).

The most memorable part of the night apart from the great performances was chatting with Martin Galway at some length with Punisher Paul and I stood next to him watching Rob Hubbards solo set - even now when I think of this I'm blown away! If Martin reads this (he'd be asleep by now I'm sure) I'm the guy that was asking him about the 'phasor' effect in certain songs, also a particular sound effect in one of his earlier 64 productions, and finally when I was 15 and bought HyperSports in
Blackpool and took it home and was so impressed by it! We also joked how we might have to hire Martin to code a tune for the Hardsid with 4 SIDs, but decided even Pauls financial limits might be broken by the hire costs!

Also during the night I got a picture with Ben Dalglish who was such a great guy too, magnetic personality and only too happy to chat and be photographed.

Also got a picture with David Whittaker (again totally approachable) and after his performance I got a picture with Rob Hubbard and shook his hand, I just never thought in the old days that I would ever do this!

I'm not going to offer any comments about the performances because they were all enjoyable and an honour to watch. Ok, well I really liked Press Play on Tape and Robs set!

When you consider all the punters had to do was pay £15.00 for an experience like this we have to be very grateful to Chris Abbott for putting so much effort in to creating this event. We didn't have any sleepless nights, stress, didn't have to give up any time or
invest a large amount of money. We just had to turn up and enjoy it.

Sureal moments of the event -

Meeting Fred Gray and discussing his Mutants tune.
Meeting Gary Liddon and being a bit dumbfounded, despite being 100% sober!
Spending possibly an hour stood next to Martin Galway discussing various things and listening to Rob Hubbard with him!
Standing next to Fred Gray in the toilets! You just never imagine this would happen!
Seeing a guy handing out free copies of "Back In Time Live II" acccidentaly bump in to Martin and knock some beer on him - of all the people to spill bear on, not Martin! Hehe!

We left the event at 1am and had a 3 hour drive back to Nottingham and listened in full on the way home to CD1 and 2 of the Martin Galway collection (this trip started at 1am, where we the first fans to listen to it in its entirety like this?)

I drove 470 miles, was awake from 5:45am till 4am the next day and it was worth every minute!

Chris Abbott thank you very much for pulling this together and only asking £15 for it, I came away from this event one happy guy

[FromWithin]

Gentlemen.

It was with great pains that I gave up a ticket for the Last Night of the Proms for BITLive.

I made the right decision.

A great weekend all round. It's times like that that the give the unusual feeling of wanting to be a bit older. I probably would have done some C64 game music instead of starting with Amiga stuff if I'd been born a bit earlier. Never mind. Maybe one day there'll be an Amiga equivalent where of course, nobody will know who I am there either because nobody bought most of the games I did.

I think next time, name tags would be a great benefit! There must have been a fair few people there who I know by name or e-mail but not by sight.

PPOT are playing Mission A.D. I wander over to Fred Gray for his reaction...
"Is this one of mine or something?"
"Well...yeah, it's Mission A.D."
"Oh right, I thought I recognized it"

Class.

I was very impressed with PPOT, btw. I wasn't really sure what to expect, but it sounded great and was a great show. Just a shame that Mr.Follin couldn't be there for Bionic Commando and the off-stage dancing.

Some photos:
Monty On The Run
Ben Daglish - pure metal
Camera fighting Gary Liddon (this is the opposing picture to the last picture in Gary's album).
Monty in full swing (335KB mpg)
Bionic PPOT

Full marks to everyone involved.

[Matrix]

Badger badger badger badger Mush .... Ugh - oh sry lol - im still Buzzin after a PHENOMENAL WEEKEND !!!!!

26 hours of Driving, 4 tanks of fuel and over 1000 miles covered in just 2 Days - IM WELL KNACKED UP !! lol.... and glad of it.

First up a BIG Thanks to Chris Abbott, I felt a bit sad that nobody got up on stage at the end and did a "Thank you's" round up of the folks involved, most notably Chris..... the guy who all night looked like he needed a Blood Pressure monitor strapped to his arm STRESS. If it wasnt for Chris's tireless efforts in bringing, and holding all these top guys together - BIT Live would never exist and we would be missing out on quite probably the best music show on earth !

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN - I GIVE YOU .... MISTER .. CHRIS .. ABBOTT !!!!!
*cue canned wav file of a football statium crowd cheering *

At one point there with just a week to go I was convinced I wouldnt be able to make it - Chris found a way and there is was. BA-BA-BOOM! Thx Chris VERY VERY MUCH.


PS: DVD Sleve will be with u soon - let me know what info you want on it - the majority of the design is complete

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Now - onto some greets n coments.
-----------------------------------------

Morpheus:
Great to meet you mate, full of lively conversation and a top drummer too ..... very nice performance there - *sets reminder to pick u up NEXT year too from the airport* - Q: WTF kinda studio keeps damaged cymbals and an A/C that spits out water !!!! - Ben ? stop feeding it vodka

Dr.Future:
Stein's aside I loved your M25 quip - ill just enlighten the folks

Matrix & Dr.Future in the car on the M25 ..... traffic is slow ..... MASSIVE white Limo goes by ..... "Zere iz Rob" LOL - not what was said but HOW it came out lol...... - I was chuckling about that one all night .. im seriously going to make it my new sig - Was terrific fun chatting with you - Lets do it again next year

Kenz:
Top work bro - Big thx for the DVD of 64 stuff & Bouff poster - its seriously kickass - hope next time theres more time to chat and maybe a beer

Marcus S:
*Thx for the loadn of the marker, without whom my fully signed DVD would not have been possible (see above kenz comment)*

Frank Abbott:
Great collection of photo's there m8 - remember, Corel Corporaton are always looking for good photographers. http://www.corel.com

Mahoney:
A shame we didnt chat more - Id have liked to but it was all very busy Wanted to tell you how much I admired your work on "Sounds of Gnome" and that it was that music disc which got me into the Scene - Thx bro

The Guys running the MAME Competition:
I didnt get their names (which sux) but for the record YOU GUYS ROCK !! not only did provide a great amount of variety with the roms, but you let me take away a tripple set DVD too.... *Adds reminder to buy drink next year* - Thx guys - the games are Top Bollocks

Fred Gray & Alex:
Nice chat we had there outside the rehersal Fred, more next time, nice to meet your daughter too - hope the video comes out well & thx for signing my DVD

Dave Whittaker:
Late arrival man, but glad u made it all the same, sry to hear about the accident - hope all is going well for a full recovery. Maybe I can coax u to perform for us next time

Martin Galway:
Gonna hold you to that offer of curry next year - keep the adgenda open - nice CD's there on Project Galway - Big thx to all that contibuted in its creation.

Mark Knight:
Two Words - YOU ROCK !! - Paperboy set 2 was WAY better than the 1st; and that Irish jig dance was nothing short of superb

Ben Daglish:
You made the magic happen man - DEFLECTOR just rocked .. and im still hoarse from screaming "DAH-DA-DAY-OH" .. cant believe it's been so long since u last played guitar - you were a natural m8 - KILLER Performance

Rob Hubbard:
Screw what some of these guys say .... I dont care weather u play Fur Elise or Fury of the furries !! - you got a Standing ovation !! nuff said .... tho i did look DOWN on the folks who just couldnt keep their yappers shut long enough to allow others to fully appreciate your performance.... They Suck - You Rock - Period

PPOT:
sining to Wizball - lol CLASS .... I was knocked sensless by your Warhawk, OutRun and Tiger Mission ... Ghosts n Goblins rocked too - keep up the good work - Top CD - Next year ill catch you long enough to get it signed hehehe.....

Denis:
Dunno who is or where from but a great guy to chat with - ill be emailing u soon as I clear my 400+ mails that came in while i was AFK.

The T-Shirt seller guy:
Watch the mail - lots of designs comin your way Thx for giving me the offer to design for you

The Thief who nicked the Poster from the Entrance:
GIT !! - gonna put one up soon, so if anyone wants to print themselves one off to add to the memrobelia of the day - they can - Theres no need to steel - folks arriving for the rock section of the event were left without a visual guider on arrival - you dont need to steel - id have signed it for you if youd asked

I met loads of other folks but there just isnt room - so those are just the main few......



Ppl who i didnt get the chance to meet:
Slaygon (Slay Radio), Ziphoid/Razor1911, Richard Joseph, PPOT (This time round, catchya same time next year lads - TOP PERFORMANCE !!)
The Dork (i mean who sits in the middle of a floor and holds up their hand RIGHT THRU Robs Performance !! (hope that didnt get on the DVD footage - it would be very distracting - New Spot the Ball type competition coming soon lol)...... SPOT THE DORK .... wonder if he knew how many ppl were pointing at him and either laughing or shaking their heads lol.....



-------------------------------------------------
What id like to see at the next BIT Live....
--------------------------------------------------

Open the format a little to include SX64 & the 16+4 - Amiga 500 -> 1200 demo displays and music performances. More scene guys going like Mahoney - for example, Nuke & 4Mat of Anarchy .... Dr.Awesome (No Bjorn this year !!! he only lives 10 miles from me, i could have brought him down with me lol - AND WHERES FLESHBRAIN GONE !!! anyone know ??) .... Mantronix .... Alistair Brimble .... maybe some from Red Sector, Slipstream, LSD, Silents, Crionics and more. Also how about an 8-bit and a 16-bit art competition ? say 4 hours and the best one wins a copy of Vidcom64 and a koala chip encased in glass - Hows about a quiz (which mod, which group, which composer etc)... a DJ competition would be cool - you can get cd scratch decks now so remixers and composers offing their talent on-stage and remixing on the fly would be just BIT-chin - what about a ProTracker *bring ur own soundbanks* Mod Competition - making an amiga mod sound liek a c64 tune (i think 4mat would win that anyway if he came, bit of a wizz with tiny samples that duder). Oh ya - and the whole BITS gang Re-United

*Gasp for Air*

And a more northern/central venue - - - say - - - Blackpool / Scarborough

Personally I thought BIT Live 5 *Brighton 2003* was a FANTASTIC success, and a HUGE ASS improvement over that god-awful hot & sweaty soho club "GOSSIPS" we had last year in London. There was plenty of room for everyone at The Brighton Ctr, the whole event shone with professionalism and the execution & timing were perfect IMHO.. couldnt believe how many ppl turned up for the Rock Event - INCREDIBLE !!! - Especilly after a few let-downs as the days events unfolded.

If this was the last - than thats a travesty - if not .... then ROCK ON !!! - oh, and ill do a better poster for the next one ... I have some great ideas

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Photos
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Ill post em soon..... got 40 megs worth on the digi camera at 1.3Mpixel lol


----------------
The Downside
----------------

I didnt think the event particularly HAD a downside at all..... appart from the HD failing on the digital video recorder - but that just meant we got to hear the excellent PAPERBOY *Blues* remix by Ben, Marcel, Mark & Andreas.

But the really narky thing was the adjoining NCP car park - the ticket machines would only take coin.... not cards and folding cash as it should.. the 24 hour enquiry desk was as barren as a relative ZX81 convention - Im just glad they still had the bar open ath the Brighton Ctr - without that id have not got out till next day and had to spend the night in the car AND cough up yet more dosh for the privelidge... hope everyone who parked on there get home ok.

Ok - thats it for now - next thing ill post are the pictures when i have em sorted, and maybe dropped in res a bit lol........

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Cls
Poke 53281,0
poke 53280,0
CONT

[Pete Abbott]

: Seeing a guy handing out free copies of "Back In Time Live II" acccidentaly bump in to Martin and knock some beer on him - of all the people to spill bear on, not Martin! Hehe! :

OOps, that was Me I'm afraid. I always end up mopping up! As for Frank, thanks for NOT filming the event as asked and only filming your photos.

Pete Abbott... Chris's brother and Kenz C64 Partner, stall seller and great d00d.