Mekka & Symposium Party Report from Relax #20.
===================================================

The party was held in a long Easter weekend from March 28th to 31st in the
HEIDMARKHALLE of Fallingbostel/Germany.  The official opening ceremony took
place on March 28th at 08.00 p.m.  with a pretty BIG on-screen-show
comparable with a demo as we know it these days.  At that time already 500
sceners attended the party which was a big surprise as last years event
just finally made it up to his number.  Counting the sceners which were
related to the C64 in past and present it were all in all around 150
people, perhaps even more.  Groups such as Alpha Flight 1970, Hitmen,
Oxyron,Chromance, Masters Design Group, Triad, Excess and many more were
present to prove that there is still some life left in the scene.  The best
thing was that all those groups were MORE EASY TO FIND than for example at
THE PARTY, a party officially announcing its 1997 EVENT here.

The C64 was focused here more than on any (!) other event held these days,
the competitions had its extra events for the C64 such as C64 4k intro, C64
demo, C64 graphics and C64 music competition.  At THE PARTY the music,
graphics and 4k competitions were for all systems only.  Already this made
the Mekka & Symposium to be a prefect event, but the organisers have had
further unique ideas.  The other competitions were just BRILLIANT, like
e.g.  SHOE-THROWING (KB/The Obsessed Maniacs did NOT get his one back) or
the SUPER-SOAKER.  Another just perfect idea worth to be reported from this
party was the show-master STEELER, an entertainer really worth being
watched.

There was absolutely NO chance to define the Symposium and Mekka party to
be a boring event or lacking entertainment, the organisers even presented
an INTERNET-CAFE having opened its doors almost during the entire event,
surely it does NOT need to be pointed out here that the access was offered
for free, aswell as a BIG party-network for everyone which was WORKING (at
THE PARTY it broke down every often and could NOT be used most of the
time).  A big THANK YOU for an almost perfect party must goto CHAOTIC/SMASH
DESIGNS/HITMEN/NET*PHREAKERS, being the C64 party host and really managing
all C64 related events and stuff such as the competitions or the public C64
attenders list.

In order to prevent this party lacking action in anyway on the screen or on
stage there have been some liveacts all the time.  KB/TOM was playing
e-piano and Oliver Klee/MDG blowing his trumpet have been the first live
performance, followed by NoiseDrift, Ronnie/TekLords at the turntables and
with Accept doing it even twice you never felt any boredom.  Furthermore
there was a Saturday night birthday celebration for two different sceners
getting gifts from the organisers.

For people being interesting in sleeping those could have been very lucky
compared to other party places.  There have been facilities to sleep in
WARM and SILENT sleeping halls or for the hardliners under the tables to
protect their equipment.  Until now this looked like a commercial
presentation for the Mekka & Symposium, surely there have been NEGATIVE
aspects which can't be hidden here, too.  The absolute NEGATIVE highlight
was a drunken member of LIGHTFORCE who was out on trial got arrested for
ATTACKING the organisers TWICE, once with a big knife and the second time
with a big glas fragment.Before that took place he was tagging all the
walls inside and outside of the hall.  As usual, a bad tradition indeed,
lots of equipment got stolen, such as PCs, CD-WRITERs or AMIGAs.
Furthermore some equipment got blown up due to FALSE connected power
cables.  Finally the C64 competitions have been very disappointing with
only FOUR demos contributing, containing two from the organisers which were
ranked - due to the lack of competitors - on the first two places.

So much about the negative aspects, there are still some more positive to
come.  For the first time in the history of this party the prices were
featuring price-money in a total of 11.000 DEM next to all those
hardware-prices such as 32bit CreativeLabs Soundbasters.  No matter a group
or its members have been successful or not, there have been the change to
get something in an event called LION-FEEDING.  It is a quite fitting name
for what happened here.  The organisers were throwing tons of hardware and
software (CDs) into the crown, and it's no big deal to guess what
happened...  It really caused a serious mess in front of the stage.

A big surprise for the organisers and attenders of the Mekka & Symposium
was the appereance of Slide/Oxyron already at late Saturday night, being
introduced as an organiser of the Siliconvention.  Being asked about
comments concering the Siliconvention only negative facts got reported, it
turned out to become quite clear that Siliconvention was a disaster.
Nevertheless Slide did already planned INFRONT of both parties to show up
at both places, his organiserjob was NOTHING else but setting up the rules
for the Amiga competitions (what he did in cooperation with RRR).  What
about other systems next to the C64?  Well, of-course masses of PC and
Amiga scene related persons did show up, but compared with THE PARTY they
did NOT dominate the whole event.  In the previous years the Amiga users
have felt like the kings of all systems while this time the reputation of
C64 related people infact has risen a bit.  People were really interested
in what is going in and about the releases nowadays.  Believe it or not,
even the majestic Amiga users have been paying RESPECT to the C64 scene.

Finally, ment as a reminder for those guys still being shocked about the
negative facts, people should keep in mind that the consumption of BEER,
WEED and CI-GARETTES inside the party hall was allowed!  Nobody can really
expect a quite peaceful party when people are allowed to drink alcohol,
with that single exception this party did fortunately prove the opposite.

[ ... Competition Results removed ... ]

Taken out of the official list of present C64 sceners the following sceners
have shown up:  ALBION (Unlock), ACCEPT PARTY POSSE (Keith, Mr.  Friese,
Necrophilist, Phoenix, Sounx, Tobi), ALPHA FLIGHT 1970 (Danzig, Ned,
Rayden), ACTIVE (Scare), ARSENIC (Axis, Yazoo) ex-AVANTGARDE (Weasel),
CHALICE (Lybis, Mike D.), CHROMANCE (Heavyhead), COSMIC STYLE (Earthquake),
CREST (Deekay, Syndrom), DREAMS (Doc Barcadi, Ninja, Uncle Tom, Woodstock,
Zaphod), EXCESS (Creb, H-Bloxx), F4CG (Mr.  Alpha, Neotec), FLASH INC.
(Warp 8), HITMEN (Burn, Peacemaker, Seven, Skud, Stan, Tyron), LAXITY
(Calamity, Dan Dee, Didi, KBS), MASTERS DESIGN GROUP (Oliver Klee, Sky),
METALVOTZE (Bitbreaker, Drago McKayb,Itchy, Mephisto), MOTIV 8 (Eddie),
NEOPLASIA (Stoff, Toxic), NO NAME (Rorschach), ONSLAUGHT (Carlos, TMM),
OXYRON (Fanta, Graham, Slide, TTS), PANIC (Brizz), PARALYZE (Dodger, TGI),
PSYCHIC (Bugjam), REFLEX (Happymaker, Zorc), REFLEX 64 (Guru, JimJack,
PVCF, PVT, Quiss), SAMAR (Maverick), SIESTA (Adder, HLSP), SMASH DESIGNS
(Ace, AEG, Chaotic, Dasheele, Idefix, Soney, Tardox), T-C (Scoup),
THEOBSESSED MANIACS (Godot, KB, Luke, Prince, Roadie), THERAPY (Techno),
TRIAD (Acidchild), TRSI (OB), TS (Duke), TUM (Fantastic Zool), WARRIORS
OFWASTELAND (DST, Iceman, The Alien), WILLOW (Doc of Desire, Floyd, Mr.
Quark, Sputnick, Torj Antilles) and finally groups a dude called Hoogo.

So much about the Mekka & Symposium 1997, be sure to show up at next year's
event, too, an event already having been announced by a short textfile.
Due to the fact that there is still one year to go and no detailed
information has been given we decided not to publish it yet.