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My photos from this event are here.
Did you read my BITLive1 Birmingham report? How about the BITLive2 one? Well, that's tricky because I neglected to write a report of BITLive2, but here's my memoirs of BITLive3, the greatest yet!
Paul Chapman, Alex Aris and I were staying up in London together for the event. Paul had already arrived when I got up to London (at which point I also encountered Boz by sheer chance), and so I waited for Alex while Paul got settled in. During this, a tall man came up to me, spotted my "Frak!" T-shirt and asked if I was going to BITLive. I said I was, and he explained his name was Mark, and he had something to do with the Wizball video. He asked me who I was, and I told him, and he started doing the "I'm not worthy" thing - always nice to start with an ego boost! Anyway, he went off, presumably to the club, and I stayed waiting for Alex, who turned up shortly.
Back in the room, Paul played me a couple of tracks from Richard Joseph's sexdrugsandrockandroll (sp?) CD, for which he'd made his own inlay and was intending to get Richard to sign it. Pretty good CD actually. Alex spent some time trying to explain this Alcatel modem which looked like a cross between a squashed frog and a manta ray, with two LEDs for eyes, an aerial, and possibly legs too. Alex was very insistent that it did 8 megabits, although Paul and I were rather of the opinion that this creature was the product of a deranged imagination.
For the event, Paul wore his home-made "When I grow up I want to be like Johannes Bjerre... Berry... Rob Hubbard" T-shirt. I'd brought my home-made "Frak!" T-shirt, even though I already knew Nick "Orlando" Pelling wasn't coming. A shame really, but it got a lot of attention anyway. Alex had an ordinary white top on, and was worried people might try signing it.
At around 7.15pm we got a cab to Dean Street, and once there were immediately accosted by Jan Lund Thomsen, who recognised me from Birmingham. He was trying to find someone who had got lost in Oxford Street. (I don't know if he ever did find him, in fact.) Jan walked with us up to the queue for the club, particularly excited since The Shark had arrived, and we all waited together to be let in. Alex and I took the opportunity to moan slightly at him for the R:K:O download limit, but he was fine about that, and after all it's his site! Anyway, people were let in in small groups at a time. Some people actually tried jumping the queue and were escorted out by the bouncers! Eventually we got in, and the first thing we noticed was where the bands were going to play - a slightly odd decision, because when the audience gathered it blocked the exit, but I dare say there was a reason. Since relatively few people could actually see the band close up, a camera had been set up which relayed pictures of the performances to the TVs around the club. Nice touch that.
A lot of people thought Kenz hadn't turned up, and I hadn't seen him either, until I noticed he was running the Bouff stall. Bouff herself was in Australia of course, but there were plenty of pics and T-shirts dotted around the place to make up for it. Other non-attendees included Rob Hubbard (whose sister was sadly ill) and Pete Connelly.
This event saw some significant facial hair changes amongst regulars. Jeff Minter was half-shaven, whilst Llando had grown some whiskers. The two of them really look as if they're turning into each other. BITLive4 will probably see Jeff and Llando become identical, a point which I mentioned to Llando. LaLa had shaved his moustache, and bore a striking resemblance to Uri Geller. Meanwhile, Mat "Glasses Guy" Allen had grown a bit of beard, and I almost didn't recognise him!
I spent some time talking to Richard Joseph about the CD Paul had got. Richard was very impressed with Paul's inlay, and signed it for him. He explained about the game (for which the music had been written) being cancelled, and we talked about the games industry and football for a bit.
Press Play on Tape played a great live set, of which I was only able to hear a bit. I did see the "Monty on the Run" performance with the violinist, and Ben Daglish's whistling. Also they did a great "Flimbo's Quest." Talking of Ben, he's a very lively guy is Ben. I was surprised he recognised me from Birmingham when I saw him earlier! I also spoke to the violinist (Pascal Roggen) briefly afterwards. Originally he was supposed to do "Master of Magic" as well, based on my MIDI file, but PPOT hadn't had time to rehearse that, which was a pity. I would have liked to hear that! (Hey, if you read this, Pascal, is there any chance you could MP3 up a recording of you playing it and get it to me?)
Someone else who recognised me from Birmingham was Dave Whittaker. Again, we talked a bit about games, but he was particularly keen to apologise for anything he may or may not have done while drunk at BITLive1! I pointed out that the only thing he'd done to me was buy me drinks, which seemed to relieve him a bit.
Yet another reacquaintance was Marcel Donné. LaLa described Reyn Ouwehand as looking like Marcel Donné only hairier, which doesn't quite work in my opinion! Anyway, it was great talking to Marcel again. We talked about Amsterdam, which I visited a couple of years ago - apparently he often has to show people around the city, and gets bored showing them the same things over and over.
At the bar, I spotted Neil Carr, who was wearing a name label saying, "Ask me about Swedish reviewers," which I did. I'll leave it to Neil and others to go over that story some other time, but he was very enthusiastic about the event, which of course doubled as the launch of Remix64's very own CD. LMan and Sunflower were also around - I said hi to them, but didn't get to speak to them properly this time.
A bit later I chatted with PPOT's drummer for a while. He explained they were thinking of expanding more into Amiga music, and I suggested a few of my favourite Amiga tunes they might try, to which he seemed very receptive. We also talked about some other other venues they had played.
Frank Abbott (Chris's Dancing Brother) was running the BIT stall again. I bought a couple of items from there - also I got one of those great NTK Elite T-shirts! Frank seemed rather perturbed by my T-shirt, constantly complaining I'd missed the N out of his name. I must point out the shocking fact that, as far as I could tell, Frank entirely failed to dance at all at BITLive3. Perhaps he could have joined PPOT on stage! (Shades of Bez!)
Machinae Supremacy were also very good - very loud too! It was hard to hear people speaking when they were playing! During "Great Gianna Sisters," I remember Shark was trying to talk to me. He got someone to take a photo of him and me together, and asked me quite a lot about my remixes. We also talked about how he went about starting the HVSC, although he insisted most of the credit should go to the other people who have worked on it since then. I said to him, though, if there hadn't been a main archive like the HVSC, there probably wouldn't have been a remix scene quite as we know it, and he agreed, saying that having a central source for SIDs brought the fans together as a group.
Stoo Scattergood was there again - great to see him again, although I think I annoyed him by calling him Kenz too often. I even crossed out his name on his sticky label and wrote "Kenz" in instead. Later in the evening, Stoo and I encountered this guy next to the Bouff stall with (I assume) his girlfriend. Because Stoo (like everyone) was getting a bit sweaty, the guy encouraged Stoo to wipe his forehead on the girl's T-shirt, so she'd slap him (not Stoo), which he seemed to like! Stoo did this several times. We all agreed this was very odd.
While getting drinks, either Stoo or Paul spotted that the bar staff had a fan, while the rest of us were boiling! This let to the inevitable speculation that the temperature in the club was being kept high so more people would buy drinks. That was just speculation, but it certainly was hot. Most conversations started with the words, "It's bloody hot in here." The only person who didn't seem bothered by it was LaLa, who said he was used to it in Chicago. I suggested it might be because he's so much taller than most of us, and he had more air available up there!
I spotted a man with a label saying "Bjorn Lynne," who didn't look anything like Bjorn Lynne. I have now been informed by Bjorn Lynne that this man had no connection with him, and the things the man said about Bjorn and his situation were entirely untrue. The information this page carried about Bjorn was therefore completely incorrect, and I would like to apologise to Bjorn for any embarrassment or inconvenience caused. (He would also like to find out exactly who this man was.)
Last time, although I took a couple of photos in which Mort appears, I didn't actually speak to him. This time I did - he's taller than I remembered - and he gave me his phone number. I immediately noticed from the dialling code he was from the same town as me, and once we compared addresses we realised we live only a couple of streets away from each other! We had no idea!
Wandering around by the BIT stall, I heard a nearby Welsh voice say, "Have you met Darren Izzard?" For a second I thought, if he's talking to me this is getting damn surreal. But in fact he (Darren Hallett) was talking to a friend of his, a Scotsman whose name I can't remember. (Sorry!) I chatted to them for a while. We were standing under an air vent in the ceiling, which meant we had a slightly cool place to stand. A couple of PPOT members soon noticed this too, and cunningly usurped our vent.
When Reyn Ouwehand arrived, a great deal of activity centred around him! Many people took his photo! I managed to ask him what was going to be on his next album, and he replied it would be how he'd originally planned, with 100% Johannes Bjerregaard. I like this idea, as I do like Bjerregaard music!
Shortly after, I was about to comment to someone that Michael Delaney hadn't turned up, when I suddenly noticed him standing near Reyn. I went up to him, and we said hello. I almost didn't notice his wife was also present! She was rather bemused by the whole thing, as she's not really into the C64 scene. Anyway, Michael got me a drink and we talked for a bit about work, and then the video guy (Mark Hennessey-Barrett) came by again. I'd noticed the Wizball video playing on the TVs, and I said to him, "I expect your job's done now isn't it?" He went "Ah..." and got out a palmtop and started playing a Quicktime file. He handed me the palmtop and said he'd be back in a few minutes. Michael and I thus had a private viewing of the Wizball video. Seeing it properly, it's a very impressive piece of work! Michael said it was the sort of quality you see on TV, and indeed it was. I asked the video guy how much Chris had paid for it, and he said it cost nothing! Very nice - maybe he can do me a free movie too sometime! He also kept insisting, "It's ART! It's ART!" The ball's face is remarkably expressive, but the graveyard sequence is the most memorable section, with the headstones of the C64, Art, Creativity, etc. melting away in a rain of classic C64 characters.
After Machinae Supremacy's set, Warren Pilkington began trying to set up the highscore competitions. He rapidly gave up, because the place was just too crowded. I asked him, however, if he could make a fake highscore table with Paul, Alex and my names at the top! He refused, but did enjoy my Mystic Meg-style suggestion of writing, "If the highscore competition had taken place, I'm confident that Darren, Paul and Alex would have won!" Somehow I doubt you'll see that actually appearing on Warren's site however!
Paul, Alex and I regrouped at about 12.30am and decided to go, as it was very hot, still relatively crowded, and we were getting tired. So we said our goodbyes and left the club. I phoned for a cab but they wouldn't come to that area! We wondered what to do for a minute, then Richard Joseph exited the club too, and we approached him and asked if he had any extra info. He replied, "all I know is, this area is hell," and admitted he wasn't entirely sure how he was going to get to where he was staying either. Since we were all going in roughly the same direction, we all went to Oxford Street together and got the night bus from there (much as I did for BITLive2). Richard had further to go than us, so hopefully he managed the rest of his journey without incident. The moral of that story is, don't rely on the availability of minicabs in London.
Still, we had a great time at BITLive3. The only criticism from me is, the venue was too small. It was a mite too crowded (I believe some people were kept outside for ages), and a fair bit too hot. But that's a minor criticism because once again we had the chance to meet up with friends and C64/scene heroes, with the added attraction of the live music! Hopefully the increase in attendance is a sign of things to come, and the BITLive events will just continue to grow from here!
