TW #6 — The NAID Music Compo: Opinion Interviews (Psibelius)

psibelius, signing as "TraxWeekly Columnist", collects two views of the music competition at NAID 1995 (the North American International Demo competition): island-of-reil of epinicion, who attended, and mosaic of renaissance, who placed 4th with Tears. The first part is an IRC log; the second "a brief chat".

Key claims#

• Island of Reil: Jesse Rothenberg, 16, Epinicion ("eye-oh-are", ior on IRC); went to NAID for the American scene people, not the party; stayed with Epeius beforehand; had been at Assembly '94; tracked "a whole 5" songs in 1994.
• Seen at NAID: necros, CCCatch, Mosaic, Snowman, basehead, maelcum, DareDevil.
• Necros won first place in the music compo (and "didn't like his song too much"); his acceptance speech — that he respected everyone who competed because they "had the guts to submit" a song and have it played to the whole audience — made the biggest impression, "and not just on me".
• The compo played all entries — "65 songs (or however many there were)", about 7½ hours — and much of it was unoriginal: "a lot of Spartacus (Basehead) rips … with the drum solo at the end", "attempted Purple Motion (still)", and techno. Mosaic's song "did stand out from the lot"; Mosaic: "I can't believe they squashed me between 2 techno toons!"
• CCCatch, "the Sloth Tracker", actually tracked an entry, Modern Society; the organisers announced it as by "Kenny Choo" until the room corrected the name.
• Composers' names were announced before each song — "Bad move": "And the next song is by Necros" ⟨cheering⟩; some songs "were cheered for before they even started". ior calls it a popularity contest, though he says placement was not decided by the audience vote and the top four would have stayed the same.
• Organisation was worse than Assembly '94: a first-time event that did not consult the three or four attendees with Assembly experience or the one or two who had been at The Party 4. Side entertainment included an "American Gladiators" contest — "I don't go to a demoparty to go swimming."
• Mosaic: names should not be released; "a tune should be judged on the technical (effort it takes to make it) and how it sounds to the public … it's hard enough to compete against the best, without being stereotyped before even starting"; he liked that the judges "chose originality" over "general demo music". He had a hangover from drinking with Necros the night before and slept on the floor; CC slept on three desks.
• ior's closing motto: "More is more. Less is less. More is better …"; thanks to "all the people that have given me the chance to show that just because you start small, doesn't mean that you aren't good" — "epinicion philosophy", notes Psibelius.

Practical takeaways#

• Blind judging matters: announcing authors turns a compo into a popularity contest (compos).
• What a 1995 audience heard as clichés: the Basehead Spartacus drum-solo ending, Purple Motion imitations, generic techno — stand out by being different (Mosaic), see tracking-workflow.
• Judge on effort and sound, and reward originality (Mosaic).

Notable quotes#

• "It was a popularity contest." — Island of Reil
• "It's hard enough to compete against the best, without being stereotyped before even starting." — Mosaic

Relevance#

The wiki's only eyewitness account of NAID 1995's music compo — the result (Necros first, Mosaic fourth), the format failures (announced names, every entry played), and the "originality over demo music" judging that the 1996 debates would return to.

Pages touched#

island-of-reil, mosaic, epinicion, renaissance, necros, basehead, maelcum, psibelius, compos, hornet, traxweekly.