Niitty closed down their Vire club in Domino, Jyväskylä at the same time as the Flash club in s0da, Helsinki.


Flyer by Olli.

I played the same set as I did on the previous day in Helsinki.

Niitty had to end the Flash club at s0da because the bar was being closed.

I made some Commodore 64 versions of Christmas songs for this special occasion.

Once again it was a fairly popular event.

Musiikki & Media is an annual music trade fair event in Tampere.

I got to play at a night club that was geared towards electronic music, alongside Slusnik Luna and DJ Orkidea. I made a couple of Commodore 64 versions of their songs at the event while I was waiting for my turn to play. I'm not sure if anyone recognized them though. :-)

Quite surprisingly, I was not immediately approached by dozens of super promoters who would take my music out to the whole world.

I started my spree of gigs outside Finland at PHAT 2, which was a combined computer and techno party at an abandoned factory in the middle of Riga, Latvia.

The pictures by the incredible democoder Shiva of Kolor really speak more than a thousand words (and these and these). Most of Riga was in much nicer shape than that factory though. :-) It was really cool, the party went on all night and I got a (spontaneous?) video show from VJ Zden / Satori.

I just wish we'd been upstairs where all the dancing people were, instead of down with the computer scene folks... :-)

OMVF is an annual event that goes on in Oulu. Nowadays it's known world-wide mainly because of the Air Guitar World Championships.

I played the Commodore 64 at a club that was somehow related to the event, with bands like Selfish Shellfish, Radiopuhelimet and Squaremeat.

I did some air guitaring myself during that gig. Now I know not to do that again.

So, The Assembly finally decided to teach the young gamers what Commodore 64 music is about.

I played my set, and then a couple of encores. I don't know if the crowd really wanted it but the main organizer of the event was clapping and shouting so hard that they all went along... :-)

"Cracker's Revenge" mostly came out of the new songs I wrote for this gig, because I knew Rob Hubbard, The C=64 Game Musician, would be there, and he was, and heard my gig too. He didn't comment on the quality of my music, but what was funny was that he asked me all the same questions as ordinary people do: "Was that just one SID", "what program do you use", "were those drums sampled"...

lli Sotamaa of Club Telex fame is also a games researcher and conference organizer, so I got the chance to play at the afterhours club of the CGDC conference.

People didn't dance much, but a few of the foreign games researchers came up to me later for a chat and said they liked it. One of them happened to be DJ Glow, who gave me a vinyl from his record label and got me a gig in Austria the next year!

What's a nice way to spend the Easter? One possible thing to do is to drive down to Helsinki in the middle of the night and play a Commodore 64 set at a rave party that starts at 05:00 on a Sunday morning.

I think there may have been a couple of people there who liked it, but mostly the crowd was hoping for something a lot faster and kixutranceyer. :-)

"Bombs Away" was fresh vinyl at the time -- I gave one to DJ Misjah as I surrendered my place in the spotlight.

Rikos Records started arranging their own club in Ilokivi a few months earlier. This was one of the most popular ones of these clubs ever, probably because Op:l Bastards and DJ Annie were also playing there. Anyway, I played the Commodore 64 which was placed in this industrial trolley thing. Raato took this great picture that was on my mp3.com page, when it existed. The Op:l Bastards had a pretty tough live set as well.

Niitty also had a series of clubs at Kerma in Helsinki.

So I got to play there too this once. It went pretty good too, the whole bar in general wasn't really into it, but there was a pretty good bunch of "fans" on the dancefloor too.

Some Finnish celebrities were there -- people I would normally only see on TV. Kerma was considered one of the "trendier" bars in Helsinki at the time.

This time the Alternative Party had moved to Kulttuuriareena Gloria, which has a really big theatre-style stage. I played a pretty well-received set with the C=64 and Roland CMU-800R.

After me there was CNCD with Aleksi Eeben's VIC-20's and Gameboys and everything.