Majic Mushrooms Old Skool Interviews! ------------------------------------- This time, I'm very honoured indeed to be able to interview one of my scene heroes. He occupied one half of the craziest duo's of all time, he made great intros & music, he needs no introduction at all....... His name is.... MAHONEY! Mahoney, it truly is a great feeling to be interviewing one of my heroes. Thanks for taking part... Well, on with the questions I guess! What groups were you a part of during your time in the scene? Well, before I really entered the scene, I was together with two friends of mine in a group called CCC - Commodore Cracking Crew. (How cool can you get without soft-ice?) These were funny days, where everything was new and exciting, where a whole world of raster interrupts and $d017 laid unprovoked and uninhabited. Then I was in the Defiers, but I think things really started rocking when one dreaded morning in 1986 Kaktus entered my basement in 1986, in some strange combination with me getting my first disc drive We quickly noticed that we were on the same level of sanity, and what a wonderful world we lived in, where 3.5kHz, 2-bit samples were lovely music in my ears! We made two whole-disc demos on the 64, for a group named Triumph. Kaktus and I bought our Amiga 500s, and it was with great pride that we 14 hour after we'd unpacked the machines presented our first Amiga demo, a bouncing scroller with splashing sound as it touched the water. The term splash screen was invented, a word that nowadays is misused in today's overbloated PC software. I mean, where is the sound of splashing water? Where is the humour? Anyway, we were members of Triad - a lovely relationship that lasted about six hours, and then we decided to join Northstar. But somehow, we never stopped calling ourselves Mahoney & Kaktus, which I think is the name people remeber. What posessed you to get involved in the demo scene in the first place? Have you ever tried to solve a 1000-pieces puzzle? Yes? Did you enjoy it? ... Isn't solving a puzzle like going to the movies where you know that the film you'll see has a happy ending? Tom Cruise is the hero, and gets the girl in the end? How boring... Welcome to another universe, I say. The world of demos. A world where you never know how it all ends, an unexploited universe where your own knowledge and fantasy can take you to exotic places where no one has gone before you. A world where your magic will give people laughter, happiness and feelings. A world where the task is to defy the rules, and somehow squeeze the guts out of limited resources (and sadly enough, limited economics). Possession or not, it was really fun times! If I am correct, you were involved in the C64 demo scene. What made you make the transition to the Amiga? Because we (Kaktus and I) came to the point where we thought "Well... now we know how to do it. And we have done it. And we could do it again, and again and again". People can do magic with a bicycle, but it's the guy in the limo that gets the girl. That's why we bought Amiga 500, and once again you got the feeling of an unexplored universe, which it indeed was. How long were you a scener in total? I should say from 1986 (although I wrote my first word processor in 1983, at the age of nine) to someday in 1993 where I sold my Amiga 500 and bought a water bed, which also gave a some exciting moments. In "His Master's Noise", you stated that it was the last thing we would ever see from you. You sounded pretty pissed with the scene back then, was it as bad as it sounded, and did you ever consider returning? Well, "returning" is the wrong word. We have made demos after that, on Atari ST and even on the PC. But the thrill was gone. Where is the joy of hand-crafted assembly programming when every novice can write a short program that multiplies 300 millions of floating point numbers per second? (but then... who would want 300 millions numbers? I'm happy with a healthy body and a monthly salary!). Anyway, if I'll ever be the director of a movie about the scene, the PC will be the murderer. It turned "the" hardware into hardware, which ment that you couldn't rely on anything. Don't trust anyone: not the clock frequency, not the fpu, not the graphics card... don't trust anyone! And since you did not know what hardware you were actually running on, why run at all? Have you ever seen the Window 95/NT screensaver where a scrolltext passes the screen. You buy your 200MHz Pentium II MMX turbo-XL 2000-liquid-mega 3dxf-2 256MB 32x overdrive with xylitol... your wallet cries for mercy... and you can't get a smooth scroller. Go to bed. Weep! What do you do now in real life? I am designing ASICs for a norwegian company called Nordic VLSI. (take a look at "http://www.nvlsi.no" if you want to know more...) So I guess I got so excited about conquering hardware that I ended up with building it myself! I am also a proud member of Vokalas, Norway's best a cappella group. (I'm not kidding; we won a nationwide contest in October 1998, which gives us the title "Norway's best a cappella group 1998-1999") Take a look at our homepage at "http://listen.to/vokalas", and enjoy! Do you think the scene has affected or influenced what you do now? Yes indeed! My interest in music has never faded, and so I am the sound engineer of Vokalas (as well as a pretty good tenor...), and I have produced a number of live-CDs as well. My interest in sounds and music started with computers, and has now evolved into the real life, a little less "blipp-blopp", but still loads of creativity and humour! And it was real fun at the time when I got one or two fan-mail in the post every day, being the 14-year-old boy I was. I think that gave me a feeling of "Ok, now I know that I can do anything. So let me go out and do it". And at the moment "it" is a cappella music and ASICs, and I'm proud of it! Do you still keep an eye on the scene, or do you totally ignore it? Does it exist? I mean has anything important happened since the Amiga 500 was thrown in the dustbin? (Did that sound arrogant? I'm sorry, but I think the demo-scene is helplessly caught in the 3D-maniac of today's PC. - Why do it good when you can do it in 3D?). Well, I know there is still an Amiga-scene, and for sure a C64-scene as well (I'm deeply impressed with 64-demos of the 90's), but it is mostly nostalgia for me. But there is another scene which I deeply respect, and that is the emulation scene. I just love it. Now I know what it is like to be reborn! And then I don't mean people trading arcade roms and stuff, but I mean the brains behind it all. The programmers. My heroes! (Yet I still wait for the day when an Amiga 500 can be fully emulated on a whatever Gigaherz Pentium III, I have promised that when my Musicdisc "His Master's Noise" can be fully emulated on any PC, I will eat my hat!) Have you ever been tempted to enter a demo scene on another platform? Well, I have made demos for ZX80, ABC80, ZX spectrum, Commodore 64, Amiga 500, Atari ST, unix, Macintosh, PC and on my Casio pocket calculator. I have even made demos on "custom built hardware", which includes hooking up a HC11 with a display and LEDs all over. Distracting but fun! One of my last "demos" was an psuedo-intelligent robot, which moved on the floor, avoiding furniture and potential dangers. It had a display where you could play a clone of "Dare-Devil Dennis" (a 64-game where you picked balloons and avoided crushing the flowers by jumping over them), at the same time as the robot was moving. How did you control it? With a remote control, of course. So the object of the game was walking around behind the robot (the name was Marvin - does the number 42 say anything to you?) while trying to look at the display where you were supposed to be playing Dare-Devil Dennis with your remote control. Oh boy, did people think we were nuts then, running around in the corridors of our university chasing a robot? But anyway... the scene was C64 and Amiga. I briefly got in touch with the Atari ST-scene through the nice guys in the group Sync (Hi.. I will never forget you!), but since I never actually owned an Atari, which made it was hard to become an active member of the scene! Your design and styles were simply great. What was it that made you and Kaktus code "alternative" productions, instead of copying like everyone else did? I think it was a protest against the commercial community that we have today. - or maybe just a total lack of common sense? You go to the store and buy one of these bumper stickers, you put it on your car, and you praise yourself for being a funny guy with humour. But that does not mean that you are funny at all. Have you ever made you own bumper sticker? With you own words on it? Well... i didn't think so. Kaktus and I made stickers, buttons and disc labels that later became rarities. People were actually collecting them. I guess they did not spread as much as our demos, since they were quite a bit harder to copy, but they were not bumper stickers you bought in a shop. Kaktus and I made intros, demos and music discs that later became rarities. People were actually collecting them. I guess they did spread a little bit more than our stickers, since they were quite a bit easier to copy, but they were not bumper stickers you bought in a shop. Kaktus and I made water-gun tournaments and blew up youghurt and pizza salad with firecrackers. You don't get it? We are not bumper stickers you buy in a shop. We are ourselves, 100%. We didn't even care whether people liked our stickers or not, we made them the way we wanted them, and strangely enough - people did enjoy watching. Seen too much commercial TV lately? Get a life! See what I mean? I remember reading all the scroll text in "Sounds of Gnome". It sounded to me that back then, all you guys did was party! Were there really that many parties / meetings back then, and were they as much fun as they sounded? When we got together in the south of Sweden, yes - it was partying. That did NOT mean alcohol, if you want to know. It meant putting candy in the microwave oven to see if it could get any better after heating. It meant bringing friends to the piano and sing a little bit. It meant helping each other with programming, mathematics, volleyball, girls and how to cook the ultimate romantic dinner. It meant putting roasted onion on your ice-cream to prevent the others from wanting to eat it. It meant fooling around and being funny without buying bumper stickers. (oh... here I go again!) It meant living - despite having a "nerdy" hobby. What was the last party you attended? How was it? I don't remember where, I don't remember when. But I do remember people playing "Doom" until their eyes bleed. I must say that I miss the old times when partying ment programming and creating stuff. Are you aware of the modern day parties, with the thousands of dollars sponsorship money and all... What do you think of that, has it killed off the party spirit a little? Well, those commercial wizeguys they sneak into every part of society nowadays. Every song you hear on the radio is paid for, every word you read in the newspaper has a cheque on it. Every single byte on the internet costs money (yes.. if you don't believe me, wake up!). But back to the question: I don't need money to have a good time. Perhaps you need money to hire a large enough building to have a giant party, and it might be worth it if you are the person who likes big events. I don't. I have more fun with five good friends alone than I have with five good friends and 2000 other people playing Doom. Why the fascination with gnomes and gnus? :) We (Mahoney & Kaktus) made a music disc totally dedicated to Gnomes. I think the inspiration came from our good friend Gluemaster "http://www.df.lth.se/~glue", who constantly drew awful paintings with gnus on them, and the step from gnus to gnomes is far smaller than you'd think! Thanks Lars! Have you any productions that are outstanding, if so, what are they? Outstanding? Well, that I cannot decide alone. But I am proud of * NoiseTracker v2.0, which eventually grew to be today's PC-trackers FastTracker, ProTracker, ImpulseTracker, whatever they are called. The EWS64XL soundcard for the PC (a real dainty!), still plays NoiseTracker-modules in hardware! I love it! * His Master's Noise. Our last demo on Amiga 500, which was a two-disc musicdisc with over 100 original tunes by us and 20 of our best friends. A great way of ending a career! Every tune has its own scrolltext, and oh how I love to write scrolltexts! I'm happy to say that I've heard from people spending hours of reading them, too! * Skruv & Sirap. Two full-disc demos for the 64, where every sq. millimeter of the 64 was sqeezed to achieve the "impossible". Mahoney, it has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you very much for taking part! Do you have any last words? Now go away from your computer and hug your girlfriend! If you don't have any, go and find one! If you don't want one, then I suppose you are a girl, and then go and get yourself a boyfriend. And stop watching that silly TV. By the way, real people tend to call me Pex Tufvesson, and if you want to, drop me a line at "mahoney (at) c64 (dot) org". *----------------------------------------------------------------------* End! *----------------------------------------------------------------------* -- "Snootchie Bootchie Nootchies!" - Jay. | Trevor Lake | | (Majic Mushroom / Tesko) | | www.scentral.demon.co.uk |