On November 5th 2005 PRESS PLAY ON TAPE hosted the first "Copenhagen Retro Concert" at Park Café in Copenhagen. This event featured a crammed program with 5 hours of pure C64 entertainment. The bands in order of appearence:

• Introduction by Uffe Christensen
• Visa Röster
• Axes Denied
• Rob Hubbard and Mark "madfiddler" Knight
• Jon Hare featuring PRESS PLAY ON TAPE performing Cannon Fodder on game controllers
• SID80s
• PRESS PLAY ON TAPE
• Jeroen Tel DJ'ing

In addition to this we had competitions running from stage, an art exhibition by Isabella Rosendorf showing pictures inspired by C64 game characters, as well as Chris Abbott selling stuff off www.c64audio.com.

The 300 tickets for the concert was sold out in less than 10 days showing that there is a need for events like this We certainly enjoyed it all very much and from what we hear people seemed to have fun as well. Here is a few comments on each act:

A master of stage performance Uffe Christensen, one of our friends from the Computer Science Department, kicked off the show with an "interesting" conspiracy theory.

This was the second time we saw Swedish vocal group Visa Röster perform C64 tunes a-cappella LIVE and it was just as fantastic as we expected. Their interpretation of IK+ was absolutely brilliant and a real-life scroller with greetings made from paper and cardboard was hillarious. Go Visa Röster!!!

We had looked SO much forward to actually hear these guys from Finland who apparently were as crazy as ourselves when it comes to choice of music and we were totally blown away by their performance. They really rocked the crowd with their hard-rock interpretations of classic arcade and PC games. We MUST do a gig togehter some other time! (We'll fly to Finland for you!!!) Highlights were Leisure Suit Larry, Mario Brothers, and Bubble Bobble (with Uffe and Jesper helping out throwing ballons and blowing bubbles from the stage).

We really felt that it would be nice to have Rob perform something now he was here, so he teamed up with Mark "madfiddler" Knight and they did a small set of some of Rob's tunes performed on piano and violin. The crowd was certainly very pleased to see Rob on stage

Quoting our introduction from stage: "We are PRESS PLAY ON TAPE. We are the geekiest band in the whole wide world --- or so we thought! But tonight as you all can see we have a pretty tough competition on that account! SO, we decided to raise the bar just a little bit to become once again the ultimate geek-band in the world. So, what we are going to do is: We are no longer going to be the band that plays old game tunes. No, we are going to be the band that plays old game tunes on game controllers!"

For this happening we rigged a Playstation Guitar Freaks controller, a Playstation scratch controller (Beatmania game), a Playstation dual-shock controller, a Playstation dance mat, an X-box controller, a set of Gamecube Donkey Congas, and finally a real "The Arcade" C64 joystick, and connected these as joysticks to a PC using USB-adapters. Then we coded a small Java program that converted button presses into MIDI signals and fed these into a sampler with the original samples from the MOD from the Amiga version of the game Cannon Fodder. This enabled us to actually "play" the tune using the original samples (we had to record a few new ones, as drums, bass, and keyboard was in one sample).

Get the video!

To round everything off we got Jon Hare himself to get on stage and perform this with us for a totally geeky experience.

SID80s

Even though Ben Daglish's now legendary bare-footed flute playing was missing, the rest of SID80s delivered a stunning performance! This event must be proof that this band just plays better on hangovers, since the headaches from friday night's rehearsal and heavy drinking 'till early morning only seemed to make things better Andreas' drum solo was awesome, Jeremy's handling of the bass inspiring as always, Marcel Donné's 100 kg heavy analog synth kicked ass, Jon Hare really got into the role picking up a beer bottle for playing the guitar, and Mark "madfiddler" Knight, although limited by not using his wireless transmitter due to the crammed room, played like hell. Good work guys!!!

At the time we got on stage at the end of the show we were a bit worried that the audience would be tired after standing up for three hours already, but our fear proved to be wrong: The audience gave us such a warm welcome after we kicked in with Commando, that we just enjoyed the rest of the concert immensely. This was truly a fun gig to play in from of a really turned on audience. Thanks for your support!

After our performance we had some more up our sleeves. A small set with Rob and Mark! First we played the very rich tune to Nemesis the Warlock. Rob has told us that his thoughts about this tune is a description of a huge army coming closer and closer. After that we played Thrust, a huge SID classic. This time we had Mark on stage as well, after he remembered his violin, which he sort of forgot For the grand finale we played Monty on the Run, which was a perfect way to end the live music. The solo at the end of the piece is so intense and the crowd seemed completely flabergasted by Jesper's and Mark's magnificent solos. The crowd ended the live show with a huge applause - and we must thank you for that and an unforgetable night.

After all the LIVE music we had managed to talk Jeroen Tel into doing an hour worth of lounge DJ'ing. It was great to have yet another C64 celebrety on stage and Jeroen sure didn't turn us down! Played a well picked selection of C64 remixes and other stuff, this kept the party rolling for yet another hour. Thanks Jeroen! Hope to do something with you some other time.

More pictures are available other places on the net. We will perhaps get copies of these and bring them here.

All pictures are copyright of their respective copyright holder.
Larger versions are available upon request.

Thanks to Trine for taking the photos!

Visa Röster Commando Formula 1 Simulator Comic Bakery Bomb Jack MULE C64 mafia Spy vs spy International Karate Armageddon Man	Axes Denied Delta title tune Super Mario Brothers Ocean Loader Leisure Suit Larry Bruce Lee Turrican 2 The Great Giana Sisters Bubble Bobble
Rob Hubbard and Mark Knight to be investigated SID80s ExplFist/Int. Karate Pimple Squeezer Paperboy/Arcade Classics Think Twice 3 Deflektor Spellbound Rasputin	PRESS PLAY ON TAPE Commando Ghosts'n Goblins Sacred Armour of Antiriad Arkanoid Wizball Aztec Challenge Phantom of the Asteroids Tiger Mission Roland's Rat Race Last Ninja Comic Bakery Warhawk Beyond The Ice Palace Das Gamer Monkey Island PPOT++ Nemesis the Warlock w/Rob Thrust w/Rob & Mark Monty on the Run w/Rob & Mark

Read about our other concerts and see many more pictures here: