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.