Flashback, tracks from the past – ERICADE.RADIO

Epic space battle warfare and music is what this hour is all about! More specifically: Wing Commander 1 and tracked music with ONLY epic symphonies. Nothing sounds thin today as we dig into the first installment of the Wing Commander series and try to see if the game stands up to today's standards. So sit down in your chair, pour something to drink and get ready to deal with a race of evil cats that want you out of the Enyo-sector.

I have long wanted to create an episode with my favourite tracks and when Coreus from Discord suggested a number of his own tracks he wanted on the station and played, it was clear that this just had to happen. So today is his requests and then the tunes I really like. So sit back and enjoy some brand new tracks on the station mixed with some of the best of the oldies. Here's a special episode that was broadcast live on a sunday in November.

Halloween was last weekend here in Sweden and today it is All Saints day. So the episode is about both the silly and “safe” scares and horrors of Halloween and the somber feelings of the Saints day and remembrance of relatives and friends that are nolonger with us. The show zig-zags between the funny and the dark. As it should.

On today's episode we go deep into the hard facts and questions about the music, the station and everything around it. Who's the most popular artist, the the most hated tune and which countries bring the listeners? And is the Amiga still king of this station? DJ Daemon tells you like it is!Corrections: “Vintage Vinyl” is by Roz, not Saga musix.

And this is where our story of the Swedish BBS-era must end: with the story of the wander in the desert and how the boards made a small come back when we were all old enough to become nostalgic. I also want to thank Fabian Norlin, Sysop for “Fabbes BBS” for giving me statistics and a cool story to tell. It’s all in the show, and let’s get that started then!

The show

00:00 ericade.radio – Time for another episode of Flashback – Tracks from the past

00:06 DJ Daemon: Welcome to a wander in the desert and the third part in the three-part miniseries about the Swedish BBS-scene. It’s been quite a ride, but in 1997, the scene was dissolving as people found GeoCities and used Alta-Vista to “Google” for stuff, which was quite a trick as Google had not yet been founded. This is not about that – this is about us, the Sysops, wondering what the heck had happened.

00:40 Meztli Blue – Moonflower

02:48 DJ Daemon: In the previous episode I noted 1995 as the year that the Internet started taking over. A technology doing such a thing is called a “disruptive technology”. And it was. The demo scene started shifting to webpages, IRC-chats and FTP-servers and the Sysops were looking at diminishing returns. The Internet was everyone’s darling and the boards had faded into obscurity as they required you to know their numbers, deal with busy lines and sometimes pay long-distance fees. Most of the development of the software the boards were running, ceased as the focus was shifted to more viable communication-forms. But not all was lost, the Internet offered a solution for the Sysops: telnet

03:48 Bassie of Image – Gradually unfold….

10:39 DJ Daemon: Telnet, the much-maligned, non-encrypted form of direct communication that could use Internet for transport promised a place for the boards. The problem was that in the late 90s, very few people had access to broadband or any other always-on connections. Some people found refuge in the large University networks, where they could get a 24/7 connection for their BBS:es. Other found corporate networks and some actually had some of the earliest forms of broadband that could be bought. Fabbes BBS was one of those survivors, turning to telnet for aid.

11:27 Melcom – Doom

15:04 DJ Daemon: I wish I could give you some hard numbers on the decline… AAAAAAAAAND, I can! A huge thanks to Fabian Norlin, Sysop on Fabbes BBS, which I will talk about later in this show. I contacted him to get an interview, to which he kindly declined. But he did create a list over the logins per year on his BBS, beginning in the year 2000. At that year, nearly 42000 logins were registered. In 2001 it was down to 35000. 2002 marks a sharp drop-in activity with only 18000 logins. This is close to a cut in half. With some notable exceptions it dropped and was down to 944 in 2008. The end came on the 31st of May 2009, when the system crashed. Fabian dryly notes that Michael Jackson died on the 25th of June that year and was just as likely to be resurrected as the BBS. He was wrong.

16:23 Timelord – Disillusion

22:01 DJ Daemon: Let’s leave Fabbes for a moment and look at the Internet that was everywhere now. In 2000 we were vary buying stuff on the Internet, ten years later we bought expensive electronics on the Internet and today we buy pretty much everything over the net. In 2000 security was horrible and the hackers were amateurs, today our security wears army boots and the hackers drive tanks. In 2000 forums were where it was at, and today we look beyond Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit for the future of communication. In 2000 people on the Internet were joking about how bad the old people were at using computers. Today, Sweden has 109 years old blogger Dagny Carlsson. We love you, Dagny! She may be on hiatus due to bad health, but I hope she makes a comeback soon.

And this is where our story of the Swedish BBS-era must end: with the story of the wander in the desert and how the boards made a small come back when we were all old enough to become nostalgic. I also want to thank Fabian Norlin, Sysop for “Fabbes BBS” for giving me statistics and a cool story to tell. It's all in the show, and let's get that started then!

Deadline 2021 was held in Germany between the 8th and 10th of October 2021. We run you through 13 tracked tunes and 8 old school ones. 75 minutes of retro artistery and some dry humour from DJ Daemon.

This is the second out of three episodes, talking about the BBS era in Sweden. We’ve hit the 90s and lead you towards the sunset of the BBS scene and the Internet taking over. But this journey is an hour, so we will cover who the typical BBS-user might have been, why the some hated how easy it had become to start a BBS and quality of some of the discussions on a board like mine.

The term “Board” and “BBS” mean the same thing here, just so you know.

The show

00:00 ericade.radio – Time for another episode of Flashback – Tracks from the past

00:06 DJ Daemon: Start up your terminal programs and let’s dial into an episode about the sunset era of the bulletin board systems. In episode 50, we covered the BBS-scene from the late 70s to the early 90s. If you didn’t know anything about what was in store back in 1990, it was easy to believe the age of the boards would last forever. It would not!

00:33 Necros of PM – “Click”

03:41 DJ Daemon: In early 90s, everything got faster, cheaper and better. The system operators were almost gods in their owning of expensive hardware and hard to setup software. And now, any dude with a 386, Amiga or Atari could create a board for themselves. And rule over the debating forums and file areas. A frustrated, but unknown Sysop wrote this in 1995: “The Modem scene is FAR TOO BIG. Face it, how many boards have you ever heard of? Too many! And it’s still just a “fart in space” of all the boards that have ever and does still exist. Did you know that 60% of all the boards closes down within a month due to user inactivity? EVERYBODY with a modem has come up with the dream of starting an own board, letting people call to yourself, gettin’ free warez instead of big phone bills. Cute, but few’s succeeding. ” If we ignore the bad grammar and that fart of a Swedish colloquialism that no one really understands outside our country, that’s a brutal take down of the scene don’t you think?

05:07 ArchAngel – Archons of light

07:58 DJ Daemon: I don’t think that elitist nonsense is good for anything except the feeling of being superior and the creation of a camaraderie that just made the scene look like a king of the hill scenario. With the possibility of anyone getting to cut their teeth as a sysop, this was the advent of BBS:es as a true hobbyist network. I started my own BBS on the 18th of October 1993, running on an Amiga 500. But we’ve discussed that in an earlier episode of this podcast. It was a great way of learning computers, script-based programming, social media before they even existed and just how much of a diplomat you had to be. I will share a few memories never told on this podcast before, but we must then continue into the sunset of the modem era.

09:03 Cooth – The Misty Lake

13:27 DJ Daemon: Even if it was easy to setup a typical board compared to the 80s, there were still a number of hurdles to overcome. I wrote a lot of commands in Arexx, the Amiga flavor of IBM Rexx. It was an easy language to learn, and I had a good reference manual. So, I often got questions from people asking me how to fix problems or build functions. This was very fun and sharing the code and the knowledge was what we did. And others could show you ways to improve your own crappy code. Then there was Peter… The name is his own because way should we protect the guilty? He didn’t ask people to help him, he tried to make the write the whole script that he wanted for his board. And once he offered to pay another sysop to build a script, then refused to pay. Quite a character and he had to flee the scene after the other sysops running him out on a metaphorical rail with tar and feather. Let’s hope it was metaphorical.

14:45 Purple Motion – Sundance

17:37 DJ Daemon: I wrote a joke-full text with severa...

This is the second out of three episodes, talking about the BBS era in Sweden. We've hit the 90s and lead you towards the sunset of the BBS scene and the Internet taking over. But this journey is an hour, so we will cover who the typical BBS-user might have been, why the some hated how easy it had become to start a BBS and quality of some of the discussions on a board like mine.The term “Board” and “BBS” mean the same thing here, just so you know.

Presenting Mr Electric Demon – an old hand on tracked music. In this session, we will give you an hour of some of his best work. Both sampled and chip-tunes along with his own story and demo scene career as told by DJ Daemon.

Links

Listen to his music directly here:

https://med.planet-d.net

About the man himself:

https://en.everybodywiki.com/Mister_Electric_Demon

His band camp:

https://misterelectricdemon.bandcamp.com

The show

00:00 ericade.radio – Time for another episode of Flashback – Tracks from the past

00:06 DJ Daemon: Do you need some nice retromusic for those cosy dark autumn evenings? Sit back with a warm cup of tea and listen to this week’s artist: French artist Mister Electric Demon or Cyril Georges Pereira as is his real name. This is one hour with his best tracked tunes and chip tunes.

00:31 Mister Electric Demon of Condense – Where is my poney

04:11 DJ Daemon: We’ve done some artist portraits in the past, but it was after the one with Awezoom, it became a thing on this podcast. Mister Electric Demon, today’s artist, contacted me and sent me links to his music. I sat down and listened and thought let’s do this. During this hour, I will talk a little about him and his contributions to the demo scene, but mostly you get to know his music. I will talk more about my impression of it as well, but not before sharing it with. You. All music today is by him. It’s funky, lounge and chiptunes if you want to try to define it. And it fits this podcast perfectly.

05:11 Mister Electric Demon of Condense – Houche les GlaouiX

07:58 DJ Daemon: Before we talk more about Mister Electric Demon, here is a nice set of his shorter tunes. We will give you three sets like this in this tracked music session. Many of them are classic chip tunes, but not all. So here come three great tracks signed a certain demonic man from France.

08:24 Mister Electric Demon – Newjacko Room

09:46 Mister Electric Demon of Myth – Guimove

10:54 Mister Electric Demon of Myth – Deepthroat

12:45 DJ Daemon: Mr Pereira does not delve deeply into his background but tells you that he was the third out of four children and that he has a French mother and a Portuguese father. In 1993, hip-hop was quite a thing with samplers being heavily used and he wanted in. The French group Ärsenik gave him the opportunity to create music and he later started the groups La Onda and HKM. We’ll delve into his demo scene experience, but first it’s worth mentioning that he wrote music for several indie-games like Black Sheep, Grizzly Adventure and Bounce. Nah, I haven’t heard of them either. I’m mostly retrogaming these days.

13:41 Mister Electric Demon – suXX my DiSc0 MixXx

17:42 DJ Daemon: We’re about tracked music and the demo scene, so lets jump to 1998, where Mr Electric Demon created chip tunes for the demo group Analogik, which he also cofounded with Kenet. And he then goes on to found the demo group Mandarine with AlexKidd. According to his web page he was also member of several groups like Condense and Mankind and joined an acidjazz and an electro music group. All good things must come to an end, and he got less active in the demo scene in 2004 leaving over 60 tracked tunes for us to enjoy.

18:33 Mister Electric Demon of Condense – Funkamodchip

22:28 DJ Daemon: All right. He hasn’t left the demo scene, as he won the second prize in the Shadow party 2021 demo competition with his group Mandarine. We made a podcast episode about that party as you may remember. It was episode 34 called “Liberty, Equality and tracker music”. He was not featured, as he did the music for the demo “Shadow-Party 2021”. Let’s do another set of shorter tunes just to enjoy a nice medley as assembled by yours truly.