Party Review for Quartz Summer Conference 92
found in | Type | Author | Year |
Diskmagazine interviews | LSD 2-cool - 2Tone - AJW - ... | a10/92 |
Q U A R T Z P A R T Y R E P O R T By Pazza of LSD Every group arranges a party, some get cancelled, some are a failure and some are disaster prone. Luckily the Quartz party suffered from none of these, for those who don't know it took place at Bridgewater in Somerset, on 8th and 9th of August 1992. Guys started to arrive at my house on the Friday before our long journey, this time though there wasn't as many as usual, this is because not many LSD guys fancied a five and a half hour road journey. Watchman and his friend John where the first to arrive, followed by Bernard Sumner and Mub. Shagratt and Maximan popped in for a couple of hours to meet everyone, but didn't fancy the road-trip on the day. It was a reasonably quiet evening, we looked at our two releases, Grapevine issue 11 and Total Kaos. After eating the obligatory pizza and watching some TV and new demos, we crashed out one by one. Next morning the alarm rang at an hour that I normally go to bed at, not get up. I woke up first and kicked those asleep on my floor to wake them up. Fish arrived about 5.30am. Bernard Sumner, Watchman, John, Mub and myself jumped into the cars and we left at 6.00am. The journey was rather uneventful, there was some bad smog at Bristol followed by a tailback and we noticed some villages with what seemed funny names to us before we hit Bridgewater (although the locals there probably think our villages have funny names here!). We finally arrived at the party-place at 11.30am, five and a half hours later, phew! We where greeted by Majic Mushroom on the door which is enough to scare off even a hardened party goer (only joking Trevor!) and paid for our tickets, entering the building I met a few of my other friends in Quartz including Jaz and Mutant Mango. The main party-room had no-one I really knew in it so I went upstairs to the bar for a couple of hours where I met Deadbeat and D-Man, and some other cool guys. I returned downstairs about 2.00pm and we set up our Amiga and talked to a few friends who had arrived at last. A local guy called Charles was telling me about a local scrumpy place he knew that sold Cider really cheap, so we raised some cash and off Mub and myself went with him. It was a 10 minute drive there through scenic countryside. The scrumpy was £3.50 for a gallon, or only £3.00 if you bring your own container. We bought 6 gallons and went back to the party place. When we arrived back most guys couldn't believe the price and some others set off to buy more! It was pretty good stuff too! What followed next was the music and graphics competition, there where about 25 tunes entered, and as I didn't have the stamina to sit for two hours of music, I retired to the bar with Clairvoyant of the Dual Crew and Mr T ex-Nemesis, we stayed there for about 3 hours and returned downstairs. The night was drawing close, we released Grapevine 11, which went down well, and I sat and chatted with many Quartz members, and met some guys from Destiny. Data and Atlantis arrived, we discussed entering the realtime demo coding competition, no-one got excited about it, so we eventually dropped the idea in place of drinking a lot! It was late evening and Hydlite of Quartz was blind-drunk, well he was only 14! I went back to Jaz's house with Fish for a sleep. While we where gone Mub went to a nightclub or two with some Quartz lads. After Mub arrived back and fell asleep, someone wrote "I'm a Bisexual" on his cheek in biro and photographed him! hehehe! Next morning we arrived back at the party place, and everyone looked like zombies because of lack of sleep, I felt OK though after my sleep in a bed! Watchman and John where asleep on a table at the back of the room, someone had tied his shoelace to the table leg while he slept! Time for a pint, damn, the bar was shut till noon! Next was the Demo competition which I decided to vote in (seeing as the bar was shut, and there was nothing much to read in the "Sunday Sport", not that I normally read it you understand!). The voting system was the fairest I have seen at a UK party, no "elitism" here! Everyone got a voting form, everyone watched the demos, everyone voted. Quartz won some competitions, but NONE where (or could be) fixed, and I was there when the votes where counted. The results are at the end of this report. Then we judged the realtime coding competition, there where only 2 entries, but the winning demo was excellent for the time allowed, and I am sure no matter how many other entries there could have been, SJE would still have still won. At last the bar opened, after a couple of pints we took part in the group tug of war, which LSD won, the Silents would have beaten us, but their team where disqualified as they only had one Silents member in their team. Then followed the disk throwing competition and other weirdness, which went down well! After getting copies of the party releases it was mid afternoon so I decided to interview some guys along with Bernard Sumner. After interviewing Paradroid of Anarchy and starting an interview with Ranx of Quartz, Mub announced his arm had swollen up after the tug of war, it looked quite bad so we decided to head for home and visit a hospital on the way. We said goodbye to our friends, old and new, and off we went. After an hour stay at Gloucester hospital, Mub was told his arm was just strained and despite it was hurting him badly, was not really damaged, so we set off again for home. We arrived home in better time than the journey down. We where tired after the travelling and looked at my mail. There was a letter from an 11 year old lamer offering me cracked software, we had a good giggle at that one! To sum it up, a very good party, the best I had been to, but there where so many people missing, due to it being so far down South, other parties should adopt the voting system Quartz used, which is the fairest! Also they should consider that the Quartz prizes where all in CASH which can be shared out between coders and musicians etc. NOT in hardware which can't be. Quite a few people let Quartz down with tables, projection screen and other things, but they managed to work everything out, well done Jaz and Quartz. There is talk of another Quartz party at a similar time in 1993, will I be there? I'm not sure, its too far to go, they need a more northern venue, but that's only my opinion, it was a fun weekend, and I rarely got bothered by losers! The results--------------------------> S U M M E R C O N F E R E N C E 9 2 R E S U L T S M U S I C R E S U L T S 1st - Snare/Quartz - Analysis - £50.00/trophy 2nd - Bernard Sumner/LSD - Cry Baby - £25.00 3rd - Fobia/Silents - Captivated - £10.00 G R A P H I C R E S U L T S 1st - Elwood/Delicious Designs - Deadbeat - £50.00/trophy 2nd - Fish/LSD - Hands - £25.00 3RD - Scorch/Independent - Gore - £10.00 D E M O R E S U L T S 1st - Paradroid/Anarchy - Deja Vu - £150.00/trophy 2nd - Ranx/Quartz - Dynamic Illusions - £70.00 3rd - Majic Mushroom/QTZ - Journey into Divine Madness - £30.00 R E A L - T I M E D E M O R E S U L T S 1st - SJE/Independent - Four-screen Multi-demo - £10.00 Runner up - ??/Cybernetix - Cycling screen picture - No prize D I S K T H R O W I N G 1st - Oxo/??? - A long way - No prize 2nd - Watchman/LSD - Not quite as far - No prize 3rd - ??? - Almost as far - No prize T U G O F W A R 1st - LSD - £10.00 2nd - Quartz - No prize 3rd - Destiny - No prize Prize draw on the voting forms went to Spud of Destiny. Lamest production went to Gollum's Parents! end. QUARTZ SUMMER CONFERENCE 92 REPORT By Majic Mushroom of Quartz I set off for the party with Suicide of Doom on Thursday 6th of August around 7.00pm. We filled up the car with petrol and set off down the motorway towards Paradroid/Anarchy's house. We arrived there about 8:30 and he showed me his demo and I showed him mine (oo-er missus!) After about an hour we set off once more to pick up USM of Delicious Design and Mfd/Silents at USM's house in the middle of nowhere special in Derbyshire. After some lame driving because of useless and contradicting road signs we eventually arrived in a small village and knocked on a door to find USM's house. Some old woman came to the door and told us which was his house. We found it about 11:30 and knocked on the door to be greeted by a worried "I didn't think you were coming" USM! After a nice coffee and some slaggings of the lame Synchronised swimming in the Olympics we set off again and found a 24 hour garage. We filled up again and stuffed our faces with crisps and coke and eventually we got onto a nice dual carriageway with no other cars! After some time we got onto the M42 and then the M5. We stopped at a Motorway service station to fill up again and had a nice long break from driving. This is where we decided to ring Jaz's house and when he answered we promptly shouted "SOOOOON!", to imply we would be there in about an hour! How wrong we were! (By the way, this was about 2:30 am!) We looked at the Autoroute which said to come off the motorway at junction 23. Well, we passed Junction 22 and saw the sign "Bridgwater 8 miles". Just as we where all thinking Yeah Mate and Smart - BOOOM! At first we thought it was a blow out but as we were travelling about 80 mph and were still alive we guessed again. I looked at the temperature gauge, it was rapidly shooting up! I pulled over onto the hard shoulder and put on the hazard warning lights and lifted the bonnet! Jeeez! It was like a sauna! We spotted the problem straight away, the top hose of the radiator had split and blown! So, me, USM and Mfd walked to the S.O.S phone and spoke to the bloke who took my details and informed National Breakdown of my whereabouts while USM decided it was fun to run to the central reservation of the motorway and back to the side! Hmm strange humour I guess! After 2 hours National Breakdown showed up and towed us to Jaz's house, just 8 miles away! Arrrgh! Just as we pulled up we were greeted by ganja smoking Chopper and Jaz (at 6 in the morning!) and also Mutant Mango! Well, the bloke said I would have my car back by about 4 in the afternoon. The lying bastard! I got it back at 10:30 after 3 phone calls! The so-called-mechanic had driven my car without putting any water or oil back into it! And he says he's a fucking mechanic! Stone me! Before I got my car back, Jaz had returned from the party place with the others totally pissed off due to some problems they had had. Firstly, we were told we could have the tables but not the chairs, the P.A system which we were promised didn't show up, and to top it all, the kitchens were condemned by the Department of Health, so we could not have any food being served! Great eh? And this all happened the night before. Bloody wonderful. At first we all thought about mass suicide because we knew the party would be an absolute failure due to these problems but we were rescued at the "Eleventh Hour", so to speak by a cool guy called Lawson who supplied us with all we needed at the last minute. We would like to stress our undying gratitude to his guy for helping the party to be a success and for his mother showing up on Sunday to cook bacon, hot-dogs etc... So, I finally got my car back, and Jaz returned from the party place once again, this time a very happy and eased man! I put the finishing touches to my demo and went to bed around 1:45 am. Next morning we were woken up by Mutant Mango coming into the room. We got up and I had a very nutritious breakfast! Heinz Beef Soup and a cup of tea! Yum Yum! I crunched my demo, had a wash etc and walked down to the party place with Paradroid, Suicide and Snare after going to the shop to steal some stuff! Well, Snare did anyway! We got to the party place, it was fairly quiet, but we expected this to be the case for only 10:30. I sat around for a while talking to Laydock about coding and then decided I would do my duty and go on the door for a wee while. So, there I was, taking peoples cash and punching tickets for the next four hours! Not much happened that day, the hall began to fill up at a rather rapid pace which pleased us! While the Graphics competition was on, someone called Kryme had supposedly had his action replay stolen and wanted Jaz to give him the money for a new one out of the competition prize-money! What a fucking cheek! Anyway, some guys had a whip round and came up with 36 quid for him which was pretty good spirit I think. Then later on, the same guy approached Jaz and said, "Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you that someone's nicked my external drive as well!" (Cheeky bastard!). Well, Jaz didn't forget to tell this little kid where to stick his head I can tell you! Some people will try anything for cash! Eventually night came, a lot of guys sat in the separate area smoking pot, drinking and generally having a laugh at Hydlides expense as he was totally pissed. Several people wanted to go and find a rave somewhere, but eventually 10 of us including me, Chopper, Mub, Mista Are, and some guys from DCS ended up going into Bridgwater to see if there was a good nightclub that played Hardcore! No such luck! After wandering around aimlessly all the other guys except me and Chopper went into this club called Harley Dee's! Me and Chopper decided that Erasure was not hardcore and did not go in! As we were walking down the road towards a taxi rank a bloke in front of us said something like, "If you don't stop following me i'm gonna kick ya face in!", well we carried on walking behind this guy and he then said, "Are you fucking deaf or what?", well as soon as we heard him say this we crossed over cos he sounded like a mad psycho killer from hell! I think we deserve to be in the Hardness Chart though for resisting the temptation to kick his head in when he threatened us! It takes a lot of strength to hold back from a fight! (he he!) Well, we got to a taxi rank and finally got ourselves a taxi back to the party. We thought it would be a good laugh if we told everyone that the reason we had come back without the others was because they had got into a fight and had been arrested! The rumour spread pretty quickly and we had a chortle over it! Well, later on the others returned and several people asked Mub if he had been arrested! Of course he didn't know what the salami they were talking about so just said "Eh, oh yeah, it was a great laff!" Thanks for taking it as a joke Chris, we knew we could count on you! The time got to about 3:30 am and I was a bit tired so I got myself a blanket and placed it on the floor ready for a nice kip. I was awoken about half an hour later by someone (I think it was Mfd) writing GAY on my face. I felt what they were doing straight away and wiped it off, stayed wary for a few minutes and went back to sleep. I had a couple hours of sleep, got up and wandered round talking to some people. The party began to get lively again as people woke up and got back onto their machines. Mub woke up with the words "BI-SEXUAL" written on his face and curry sauce plastered in his hair! Great way to wake up I think! (No it wasn't me by the way!, USM wrote on your face!) USM/Delicious Design also tied Watchman's leg to a table via the hole in the back of the seat and through someone else's legs! The demo competition was announced as being at 10, and people gathered round the screens to see the entries. The demos were shown, and people voted. Soon after the winners were announced as been the following: "DEJA-VU" - Paradroid of Anarchy. "Dynamic Illusions" - Ranx of Quartz. "A Journey Into Divine Madness" - Majic Mushroom of Quartz Closely followed by: "Vectorama" - Chaos of EOC 1999 "Party Demo" - Rombust of Cybernetix After this, some people packed up and left while others lamed around talking. In the early afternoon, the five-a- side football tournament started. This consisted of just 2 teams: The Wankers (Only joking guys!) - MFD/Silents, Suicide/Doom, Master of Puppets/Plasma (Sorry I fouled you so often, you did get me back though!), and two little kids who I haven't a clue who they were! Quartz - Snare, Mutant Mango, Orca, and me. Yes, we had a player missing which is why we lost (Honest Guv'nor!) The Wankers won by five goals to four, but we let them win cos we all wanted a drink! After this spectacular display of football, practically all of what was left of the people in the hall followed Jaz out onto a field for the disk-throwing competition. This was fun to watch, as some people weighed down their disks with pennies and two pee's! (Mind you this WAS allowed!) The competition was won by a tiny kid called OXO. The last competition was about to begin... TUG-O-WAR, who I don't know who won it cos I didn't watch it, but I know Mub fucked his arm up bad style. (Hope its ok now matey? Looked nasty to me!) The party wound down in the early evening, and the last of the people left except for those stopping at Jaz's and us who were due (and I say due) to leave around 9:00 pm. The hall was cleaned up and looked cleaner than when we found it and was finally locked. I checked my car... ARRRRGH! There was this hole in the neck of the radiator! I phoned National Breakdown again and they came, and fitted a new radiator and started the engine... Water everywhere! SHIIIIIIIT! "Sorry mate, your head gaskets gone, that'll cost ya 80 quid!" Fuck! Ripping Bastard! I decided that he would have to fix it and he said he would have to do it in the morning, and my car would be returned to Jaz's at about 1:00 pm. Reasonable, thought I. So we went back to Jaz's for the night, watched tv etc while three Destiny members slept in a barn! (its no joke, they liked it too! You did Tantalus, you told me mate! ha ha!) Well, my car was picked up at 10:15 am and was fixed (or was I fixed?). It was returned at 9:00 pm after 3 more phone calls to the garage. Come on, its reasonable, it was only 8 hours late... (Wankers) So a whole day later than planned and ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY TWO POUNDS later we were ready to go... We packed all our stuff in the car and set off for home, dropping people off on the way, with me arriving home at 4:30 am ready for work at 8:30! "Fuck this", thought I, and told my boss what had happened and had the day off! Yeah, fine style. That's all I'm typing, I realise that i've missed a lot of the things about the party but I cannot be bothered to continue! Sorry, but I reckon there will be a few more reports to read too! Its a good job the party was cool otherwise I would have probably killed myself with all the troubles of the car! I think I was fucked more times that weekend than an Essex girl in a week! By the way, D-Man, you still owe me nine quid. By the time Mub knew the story, you had fucked off home. How about me like getting this back this year eh? See my address in the adverts. Despite some "Car Trouble" (wasn't that a film?) I thoroughly enjoyed the whole weekend! Greets going to: Jaz, Mutant Mango, Snare, Paradroid, Mfd, USM, Mub (skin up!), Pazza, Fish, Delbert, Mista Are, Futura, End of Century 1999, Blackbeard and Mr Moulinex, Tantalus and the others that I have no time to mention. Thank you for coming to the party and we hope to see you at the Q.S.C '93. end. QUARTZ SUMMER CONFERENCE 1992 THE ORGANIZERS PROBLEMS By Jaz of Quartz Firstly I would like to apologise to all of those of you who went to the Quartz Summer Conference and expected the big video screen that was sort of promised. Well there was definitely going to be a 5ft square screen until one of the electron guns blew. There were engineers there to fix it, but unfortunately they were unable to get hold of the part that they didn't have. We hope we some how made up for it with the stack of T.V.'s. Although this was only one of the problems that we had. When I originally struck a deal with the Venue's operators, they said that they would sort out enough tables and chairs, a P.A. system, the catering, installing a larger power supply, the clearing out of the main hall (which was full of sports equipment) and making sure the Venue was not booked the night before, so we could set up. First up here's the problem we had with the Catering. The day before the Conference the Health and Safety Officers visited the Venue's kitchens and after a brief check, they were condemned and closed down. Great a two day Conference and nowhere for the caterers to cook! Panic time! We rang around the local snack wagons, none were available. Shit! Thankfully on the first day of the Conference Orca of Quartz agreed to do an hourly run to McDonalds, to pick up peoples orders. On the second day a guy called Lawson managed to sort out an area that as OK to cook food in. Problem No.1 sorted. Problem No.2. The main hall hadn't been cleared out. The evening before the Conference it was still full of sports gear, lengths of timber, iron bars etc. OK so we were going to have to clear it out ourselves. But there was nowhere we could dump it all, we ended up having to put some of it into the room we were going to use as the Safe and Locker room, the rest of it was dumped outside, around the back of the main hall, it took 12 of us over an hour to clear it out. (Thanks to all that helped!). Problem No.2 sorted. Problem No.3. Not enough tables, in fact nowhere near enough. The Venue operators said that it was the best they could do and to try hiring some from somewhere else. The first place we tried was the local village hall. One short phone call and I discovered that the people who ran the village hall, didn't very like the people who ran the Sports and Social Club (Our Venue) Something to do with poor management and a £100,000 debt in unpaid V.A.T! At first they said that there was no way that their tables were going in the Social Club, but after a few words of how much I was pissed off with the Social Club operators, they agreed to letting me hire some tables, but only the trestle tables, and no matter how much I tried there was no way he was going to let us have any more. We then had the slight problem of how we were going to get the tables to the Venue. Orca again leaps to the rescue by letting us shove them in his car. But when we got back to the Venue we found a whole load of Archers had set up in there! The Venue operators had booked out the main hall to them that night! Thankfully they would be leaving at 9 o`clock, so it was just a matter of waiting around until they left. Problem No.3 sorted. Problem No.4. No P.A. system. I couldn't believe that they could let us down with that as they have a P.A. system, but I was told that we couldn't have it as it was only wired up for the bar room and the speakers were all screwed to the walls. By chance when we went down to the village hall to collect the tables, we saw a couple of guys putting a load of P.A. gear into the back of van, a quick word with them and they agreed to letting us hire it from them for 40 quid, and that they would take it down to the Venue for us in an hour or so. One hour later back at the Venue, one of the guys turned up and said that he was sorry but we couldn't have it. Thankfully Ranx had brought an Amp with him, and I have an Amp as well, so we linked them up with two sets of speakers, which was enough to drown out everyone else's noise. But there was so much feed back from the microphone, that we had to go into another part of the hall to make announcements! Problem No.4 sorted. Thankfully that was the last of our major problems. Except for when some one got into the indoor bowling green and covered the floor with stickers! Despite all these problems there will be another Conference next year! Many thanks to the following people without their help it all wouldn't have been possible; Lawson - Many Thanks for all the help you gave. Orca/Quartz - Thanks for all your help You must have driven miles!! Ranx/Quartz - Many Thanks for all your help! Especially for talking me down! Majic Mushroom/Quartz - Yeah Mate! Many Thanks for doing the door, and getting everyone's cash! Smart! Mutant Mango/Quartz - Thanks for doing the shop and helping with the clear out! Chopper/Quartz - Yeah Mate! Thanks for doing the door, and clearing out. Snare/Quartz - Many Thanks for doing the shop and helping clear out. Xanadu, Paradius, Laydock/Quartz - Many Thanks for helping clear out! Hydlide/Quartz - Thanks for clearing out and getting totally rat-arsed! Many thanks to these other guys who helped clear out:- Paradroid/Anarchy, MFD/Silents, USM/Delicious Design, Suicide/Doom end. QUARTZ SUMMER CONFERENCE 1992 EXPLANATION OF THE RESULTS By Jaz of Quartz After reading the Quartz Summer Conference Report by Bob/SDT in Stolen Data issue 9 and his comments on why Elwood of Delicious Design was allowed to win the Graphics competition even though he was not there and also that there were no other members of Delicious Design were there either and why Quartz won both the second and third prize in the Demo competition and that the only reason that Snare won the Music competition was because all his mates voted for him. I felt I should respond to this and explain. It seems that you didn't realise that the manager of Delicious Design (USM) was actually there (and by the end of Conference there were two more members there). So it seemed fair that Eldwood's entry should be allowed. We never stated in the competition rules that the entries creator had to be there for an entry to be excepted. Remember Krest won the graphics competition at the last Digital Party, and he wasn't there, and no one complained then. Why were Quartz allowed to win both the second and third prize in the Demo competition? If you had read the rules in both the party inftros, it said that there was a maximum of one win per CODER, not GROUP. So just because Ranx of Quartz won second prize, this does not mean that no other coder in Quartz can win a prize. Again remember at the Anarchy party, Anarchy won both first and third prizes with different coders for both of the productions. So what's the difference? As for your comment that the only reason that Snare won the Music competition was because all his mates voted for him, how do you know this? Did you see all the voting forms? I think not. Music competitions are always the most difficult to judge, as it is hard to put aside the bias of personal taste and opinion. So if large number of people preferred Snares tune, and you didn't then that's just the way things go. This is not a personal attack on you, I just wanted to clear the matter up, incase anyone else felt the same way. [This always happens doesn't it? Someone accuses the organisers of a party of somehow rigging the results, or letting the undeserving enter and win. I would like to make it clear that; - Not only where Delicious Design members there, but Bernard Sumner of LSD interviewed two of them! - I was there at the counting of the demo competition results and there was some "voting for my friend" going on, BUT THIS WAS FOR THE DEMOS THAT CAME 4TH AND 5TH BEING VOTED AS BEST! I won't comment on who was doing this, but it amounted to such a small amount of votes, it couldn't effect the outcome of the competition. - I also looked at other competition voting forms and again 99% of votes cast where for the deserving entries. - There is nothing anyone can do about the 1% "voting for their friends", but the votes are wasted anyhow, so who cares! - In my opinion Snare`s music was one of the best there. - Bob`s report also states Mub of LSD was arrested, he wasn`t! - I have turned down one Grapevine article about Bob already, questioning his coding abilities, perhaps I shouldn't have! Pazza!] end.