Few words (or a bit more) about the demogroups I was part of during my Amiga years.
I was forming the finnish / local group I first belong and as with some other things (like childhood band experiments) it was again my idea which ended up being the group's name. The group was called Starline and it was formed in sometimes during 1989 I think. I even remember that in the end the final battle between name for the group was phenomena vs. starline. Both of them were pretty good, but in the end my idea won because of it's straighforwardness mainly - and perhaps because there was connection with space / scifi stuff (which interested me since elementary school years already). But yeah, the group was formed by me who became at first musician, later simply swapper as my mod music was "too extreme" for demo usage (which I was as narrowmindedness, it would had been completely different vibe within all the usual Amiga demos with the usual - good though - Amiga style music) and my Amiga friend who ended up being the team leader. Even that I think he wasn't labelled as team leader in the demos, but something about writing as he wrote the greetings list and "what's going on in the group" texts into the demos that were created around 1989-1991.
If you guessed my nickname in this group was 'Aeuk' you guessed wrong. :) Nope. Though it was something taken directly from my music taste ... as it was Ventor. Yeah, if you know your metal, you know where I took it from. Of course from Kreator's drummer. My friend's nick was Shade. At very first our "group" was just us two, but it soon started growing. The way how we got first coder (who knew his codes too), graphic artist (good enough) etc joining our group surprised us, that's something I remember from those times. And suddenly friend Shade had to actually lead the group, too. He did pretty good job, and soon we had Starline's first demo at our hands. I remember how I was at Shade's place around late 1989 probably and we both were looking at "our" first demo, stunned, and occasionally taking look at each others' eyes - and as we talked, we had the same feeling: How did we even achieve this, this demo is actually quite good, can you believe it? It gave us both a boost of confidence in a way, that we CAN achieve things we begin to dream about. It felt good, sure. And of course, you know, as we had our demo out, our "reputation" started to grow automatically.
We had contact details there, usual post address and stuff - as I was swapper, I started getting letters from people wanting to ... swap, of course. Swapping meant (in case if you don't know / didn't guess) "exchanging Amiga games and software" = there were lists of games and software, you wrote what you wanted, the other end sent you 3,5" disks via snail mail, and requested some games and software from you, and you copied some 3,5" disks and snail mailed the package to other side. Sometimes if hunting for something special, it was written into group's demo. You can bet my amount of 3,5" disks started to grow rapidly - and suddenly I wasn't asking parents to buy me C-tapes for taping music anymore but ... I was asking them to buy 3,5" floppy disks. Piles of disks. At first buying them in package of 10 disks, at some point even buying bulk of 100 disks (mainly for swapping usage). Actually I remember buying bulk of 100 disks quite often - it was cheaper and we did it as group, each paid for his share of disks. In the end of my rather short but intensive Amiga days I had at least 300-400 disks overall (rough estimate based on how many big 3,5" boxes I had filled with disks) and I can only guess the amount of disks I snail mailed here and there. I think we did several demos and the group did some demos after I left it in 1991 - but for some reason or another (which I don't know), my connection with Shade guy gradually ceased to exist around 1992-1993 and by the time I went to army (and came out from there) I had no connection with him anymore. Though I've chatted with the guy in last few years on some occasions and we've funnily both ended up living in the capital area of Finland. Even more funnily as he was team leader in that Starline group - he's high level leader in his adult career life, too. I was kind of "multitalented expert" in the group - and that's what I've been in my adult career life too. Kind of funny to think about that.
Actually one classmate of mine moved from Rovaniemi into Kuopio around 1989/90 or so, we shared extreme metal taste as well as Amiga hobby - and for following years (up until I sold away my Amiga) I swapped a lot with this guy too. Via snail mail, but not just that, ... this is funny memoir; his dad used to come to Rovaniemi at times, work trips and always when this happened, we made arrangements that I went to "fetch a package" from his dad at the office where he visited at Rovaniemi. Sometimes it felt like the office people were thinking that "what packages is this guy fetching from here, this sounds suspicious?" ... and it added to humor that we used to wrap the packages with thick layers of cardboard box and tape, draw some skulls and add "handle with care", "dangerous" etc texts into the packages. Heading to his dad's office place, "do you have a package for me?" ... "yeah, here you go, son sends greetings that it's good stuff inside!" ... his dad of course knew our jokes but the other people's looks at times in that office were sight to see. :)
Well, still something else about swapping - as snail mail letters started pouring and later 3,5" disks (and putting invisible tape into packages containing disks, over the postage stamps - receiver erased post markings and used same package for sending new contents ahead - for free) I came up with few extra connections so to speak. One such case was a guy from capital area of Finland, notably older dude than me, but he had ridiculously long list of software printed on paper (it was tens of pages long and the letter was bulging out because of it!). Shade guy was like "old software! old games! booo! you swap with him if you want, I don't want old shit!" and so I connected with this dude. Little did I know how special connection it was ... this happened in the early days of Starline and it meant more than few things for me, because we had good connection with this guy.
He ended up joining Starline too (yeah!) as simply swapper I think, but more importantly and this tells how trustworthy he was - I sent my Amiga 500 for him in early 1990 (big and expensive package) and he installed extra memory for me, for free. Yeah! Considering that I was teenager with no cash really, it was quite special case. He did it mainly as thanks for swapping so much with him and because we connected so good. And he really did what he promised, suddenly I had "super Amiga" ... then as I got second disk drive for my Amiga, the swapping game really rose to new level. :) But our connection went even further; not only did we swap Amiga software, but I ended up swapping also massive amounts of horror films with him.
When I say massive amounts of horror films, I mean that literally. And especially things which weren't available in Finland (or were forbidden) back in those days. I ended up doing finnish language presentation show at high school about horror/splatter films and I even showed the class short clips of films like Reanimator, Bad Taste, Texas Chainsaw Massacre etc ... ha! Class were watching my "show" in silence and some of them paled noticeably when I showed the selected short clips ... and I thought it was crossing the teacher's borders of what is accepted and what not, but actually I got a good grade for that presentation (and boy was I nervous about it too, holy cow I was ... having to not just speak in front of class but handle VHS equipment, my own edited tape, along with the presentation) ... I don't know if I had necessarily done this kind of presentation if I didn't have connection with this one guy who served me endlessly horror films as I requested.
And the story with this one guy does not end even there, our shared interest for "splatter and gore horror films" but as I went into PC (in Autumn 1991) you can guess who was the one guiding me patiently through the early weeks and months, via landline phone ... yeah, this same guy. As I got into PC world, we continued swapping software - all my other "Amiga contacts" died out, but this one connection remained. And it was a sweet connection too. There were certain thing in our swapping which I hold dear after all these years - our mutual love for Sierra adventure games. Back in the Amiga years I naturally had the latest Sierra's quest games through swapping, but this guy had them all, the very first Sierra adventures and I got all of them from him - and I pretty much played through all the Sierra adventures back then, from late 1980s into mid 1990s or so. You know; Space Quest, King's Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Police Quest, Codename Iceman, Quest For Glory, Gold Rush ... and if you know these Sierra classics, you know that some of these series had like close to ten games under the name. The amount of these adventures was massive and it took time and patience to play them through. Don't forget that there was no internet and you couldn't just head into Youtube and search for "game title playthrough" and that's it. Finishing a Sierra game felt like winning some trophy, it meant hard brainwork at times. :)
Words don't tell enough what kind of connection this one dude was to me, I actually met him few times (while he was on work trips to North Finland in 1990-1991) and he was as great dude live as he was before I hadn't met him. There is one perfect example what describes my connection with this guy, I mean all the "swapping" etc we did together within some 5 years period or so. Can you imagine that even that our active connection stopped quite exactly 30 years ago, I still remember this guy's postal address like my own name, from early 1990s. It's ridiculous but it is true! And I've even went pass his postal address / house from tens of years ago (he no longer lives there) just thinking that this is the place this guy lived during those golden software swapping years ... it's crazy. It's not love, dont get me wrong (I'm 100% straight guy) but funnily I could quote Kraftwerk describing what our shared connection was with 2 words: Computer love.
About this Amiga demo group Starline I was forming and part of ... actually I managed to find some infobits about it from the deepest pits of interwebs. :) Kind of funny, but yeah, there it is. Some evidence that I'm not just talkin' shit here but it was real. Click <here> so see some details. I am listed there (as Ventor), team leader too (Shade) and even that special connection I had, the guy who helped me with much more than just swapping some oldschool software - he's there too (Ss-data). You can also witness that I did't make music for any of those demos listed, even that I am listed as member in the demos' details. :) Too extreme ... :D
EDIT: Did some more research and awww shit! I even found at least one Starline demo from youtube. <Here> you go. :) Though I think that's from the time when I had already left the group, but anyway. At least you get the idea listening to that usual Amiga tune playing in that demo, why my extreme metal experiments never ended into the demos by Starline. :) If I find some other clips from youtube, I'll edit this part and throw in more links.
Well, enough about Starline, there is something else about demogroups I can tell:
The swapping in Amiga years didn't just mean exchanging games and software, but it also meant as you can guess from above; getting connected. In one case I got connected with german swapper guy (who was into extreme metal too) so well, that ... as he learned that I track extreme metal, he lured me into joining their team. I was supposed to track some extreme metal mods for their demos. It all seemed good, and I actually even started to track something for those guys in Spring 1991, and I was mentioned (as Ventor) in their few smaller demos and promise of "some different Amiga music coming" into their future demos - but what unfortunately happened was bad timing for this whole thing. I was dropping out of Amiga world when I was supposed to work for this thing. How can you work when you no longer have Amiga? When you no longer have no machine at all ... yeah. Of course I expressed how sorry I was about the situation and that there's nothing I can do about it - so that story ended there. This germanese Amiga demo group was called Trace. Unlike Starline, I haven't managed to track down any info about this Trace group. I think they didn't have good enough coders, the demo or two I saw back in 1991 was very small intro like thing with big promises. Perhaps they never got into crafting proper, bigger demos? Did it have something to do with me dropping out after a good start? I don't know. It was a pity in any case.
But yeah, my Amiga years had these two demogroup experiences. Out of these two, Starline of course was "the big thing" because I was forming the group and the name idea came from me, some of the graphics (like logo in the first demo, which I drew on paper - even that I was not mentioned as graphics guy) and because it was simply a great experience all in all. Even that my music was "too extreme". On the other hand, what sucked in Starline (I couldn't get music into demos) could have been different, all the opposite in Trace - unfortunately it was bad timing and Trace disappeared literally without a trace. So, there. :)
Finally something visual in the end - I don't have much at all pictures about me from the Amiga years really, I guess it was the teenager years and me not wanting to be pictured that much ... but I found this one picture (and hey I didn't even swap the face this time! only dull background ha!) which is from around 1990 so from the time when Starline had really taken off. Probably 1990 was my best Amiga year if I think about it. :) I remember this jacket in picture; shame that no one ever captured it from backside, because I had hand painted massive band logos there; Napalm Death, Deicide and Death if my memory serves me right.
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| Me in 1990 or so |
PS: Actually as that picture has some extreme metal elements to it, I have to write still about something Amiga related, but something which also "connects the dots" with Amiga and extreme metal. The way I originally heard Napalm Death and Carcass for the first ever time ... it happened through Amiga demo. Really! I even remember vividly the demo's name, or actually it wasn't a demo, but it was a musicdisk or it was labelled as such. The name of that thing was "death rock". There were not yet terms like "extreme metal" or "grindcore" (well Mick Harris surely had invented it already, but information and stuff like this moved quite a lot more slowly in world back then, no internet, etc) ... It was just "death rock" and it had simple demo with possibility to choose what is playing. There were two sampled clips by Napalm Death (taken from "scum") and two sampled clips by Carcass (taken from "reek of putrefaction") and that's it. But as you can see, that thing sticked my my mind at least. Quite certainly if you asked any of the former Starline members (who weren't into metal at least in those days) they'd never remember a thing like this. But I do, since I've been enjoying my metal for over 40 years already and I see no changes coming to that. Only death will change this someday, naturally.
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