INTERVIEW WITH: GRAZEY of P.H.F. by McLaser / UCM
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Hello and welcome to another one of those neverending tortures by the
Undercover writer possee. This time with no one else then GRAZEY from
the P.H.F. from Kingston upon Hull.
UCM:
Hi Grazey! As for traditional reasons we ask everyone the same stupid question at the beginning (or is it just to get Mr. Pink pissed off?). Ok, how old are you and what are you doing in your real life?
GRAZEY:
Hello everybody. Well I'm at the sprightly age of 28. Born in 1970 (I'm good at maths) and I missed been a psychedelic 60's smiley-baby by 5 months :-( As for my REAL life. I live in the Yorkshire city of Kingston Upon Hull or simply Hull as it's commonly known. It's situated on the East coast of Northern England with a population of around 400,000, anyway I'm not going to do a tourist plug so swiftly moving on....... I left school in 1986 then for the next 6 years I studied computer programming/analyst at Hull College then Humberside University. I got a job programming management systems under Dataflex (SQL). I left that in late 1994 then travelled (inter-railed) around Europe for a few months, taking in 13 countries. Varied cities included Lisbon in the West to Naples in the South, Budapest and Zagreb in the East and Alvesta (Sweden) in the North. On returning I became a postman for a year mainly as I wanted a complete break from computing. For the last three years I've worked for the British government (that's all I can say!).
UCM:
Tell us and the readers a little bit of your history. How did you start computing and what groups you were in?
GRAZEY:
I 've had a computer since 1983. My machine was a C64 with speedy C2N cassette player! The Christmas of '83 was a real boom time for computer sales and it was a battle between the ZX Spectrum and the C64. Fortunately the Spectrum had sold out from all our local stores which is why I ended up with the the vastly superior C64!!! (Spectrums owners were/are complete dickheads!, hehe I've alienated half of you now aint I ). At first I just played games, my first C64 game was Maggotmania which was an in-house Centipede clone by Commodore. Not long after I bought my first C64 cartridge - International Soccer which was way ahead of it's time coded by Andrew Spencer who is still coding to this day (recently interviewed by The Edge). I got into programming by typing in those huge listings which use to appear in magazines (was I really that sad?!), I then use to modify them and ended up writing my own programs. 10 for i = 1 to 15: poke 53280,i: next i.. The PHF was set up in 1983 which probably makes us one of the oldest crews. I 've been a member since the beginning, I'm also a member of D-Bug which carried on when Automation stopped at menu 512. At first I just ripped music for D-Bug menus but later I was the menu compiler and also hacked the odd title, I maintain the D-Bug web site too.
UCM:
P.H.F. means Pseudo Hacking Force... Does this has a special reason and what are your jobs in P.H.F.?
GRAZEY:
NO it doesn't! ;) It stands for Psycho Hacking Force! We didn't publicise the meaning until the release of UMD 5, it added to the mystery. Why PHF? Well at that time in the C64 scene nearly all crews had a three letter acronym (eg. UCS, SCS, ESI etc). I know it's not very original but we were/are all psycho's and we all love to hack! I'm the main driving force behind the PHF. I do a bit of everything really, on the C64 I coded in BASIC, progressing of course to 6502 and this is also were I cut my music ripping teeth (very similar to ripping on the ST, most drivers had an init and play routine). I bought an ST in 1987 for the first year or so I just did graphix using Neochrome (Degas sucks.....oh yes it does), check out some of my art work in the "Grazey Gallery" at http://phf.atari.org So I've coded, hacked, mailed and done gfx, I suppose the only discipline yet to get the Grazey treatment is music composing.
UCM:
What is your current equipment?
GRAZEY:
I still have my original C64 but it's on it's last legs. It still just about works even with my D.I.Y. job on the VIC chip - one of the legs broke so I soldered a paper clip to it as a replacement!). Other peripherals for my C64 are a 1541 disq drive (Sloooooow), a C2N tape drive (slooow until Cyberload!), Expert V3.2 Rocket cartridge (invaluable in C64 hacking), MPS 801 printer (noisy!). For Atari stuff I have an Atari 1040 STFM, External Drive plus I've just acquired an STe for free. Amiga1200, 10 meg ram, 50mhz 030 processor 1.2 gb hd, external drive. Siemens 233 shitty PC with 32 meg ram and 2 gig hd. (ALL these fit on 1 desk, 2m by 1m!).
UCM:
Have you any hobbies or interests besides computing?
GRAZEY:
Mainly football. I support my local league side Hull City (The Tigers). I go to all home matches plus some away too. Went to Luton yesterday to see the mighty Tigers maul those southern softies... Yesss!! Also music, I've got a varied taste in music - indie, dance, hardcore metal. I go to a local club called the Adelphi which is two terraced houses knocked into one, you see lots of bands there before they become famous such as - Pulp, Oasis, Radiohead and Stone Roses. Also like the Prodigy, Beautiful South, Stereophonics, Red Snapper, Tangerine Dream, Fila Brazilia, Vest, Dog Muck & Alanis Morissette. Other hobbies? Drinking!!! Love Black Russian's (Tia Maria, Vodka & Coke) also Stella Artois. Travelling.
UCM:
You have announced to release the Ulimate Muzak Demo 6 at the STNICC 2000. Can you please tell us a little bit more about that and other future projects?
GRAZEY:
Well I'd been thinking of coding one last music demo for ages, but when Richard announced the STNICC it really spurred me on and motivated me to start UUMD (Ultimate Ultimate Muzak Demo). We've got alot to thank ST News for as it was TEX's coding articles which inspired all PHF members to learn 68000. Back to the demo, what I plan is a demo which will have the most comprehensive list of chip musics available. It will of course combine all the musics from the previous 6 demos (excluding digi zaks) but will also contains lots of new tunes too. Many tunes have been written since UMD 5 was released, most using the sid sound routines. I'm also collaborating with Mr. Styckx who is going through lots of old stuff for tunes which were never ripped for one reason or another. The current number of tunes for UUMD is 3283!! and there's lots more to follow. The only downside is that the demo is so big a floppy disk version will be out of the question. Even if the data is packed it would still need 15 disqs! So it will be hard drive only. Fortunately the demo will also work with the many emulators around now (Winston, Pacifist) so it should still be available to a large audience.
UCM:
We all know you are a true old school ripper, so... have you any idea how many chiptunes you have ripped during your long career in the computer world?
GRAZEY:
Oooh that's a hard one. Let's think.... I reckon I've ripped around 200 on the C64. The ST mmmmh say 700 music files which equates to around 2000 tunes. I have also ripped tunes on the Amiga but I don't count these as they are only MOD's hacked with a custom ripper such as Exotic or Gryzor's Pro-Wizard (apart from TSL's Pinball zaks which I manually ripped, they use their own player - Digital Illusions player). I rip ALL my tunes by 'hand', the tools I use are :- Toxic Monst, Easy Rider 4, GSRv3.2 plus many little utils I've wrote - I use no automatic rippers.
UCM:
What was the 'hardest to rip' music you've ever ripped?
GRAZEY:
Aaah, another hard one. That's a difficult question, I would say for length of time to rip, then it would be Barry Leitch's Rock N Roll. The thing is I was still new to ST music ripping and used a really lame way to hack it! I think it took about a couple days to do! Nowadays of course it would take only 5 minutes to hack. I always make my music rips PC-Relative which usually takes longer than the actual ripping, thankfully most musicians now use PC-R code. Going back to the Rock N Roll at the time I still wasn't offey with 68000 so there were lots of things I was doing which were completely wrong or that could have been done in a fraction of the time. With Rock N Roll it was originally absolutely located low in memory $1b000 and I manually altered over 500 addresses in MonST to $6b000 so it was higher in memory (aaargh!) With my GSR this would be done in microseconds. By the GSR was a program which patched some of my code onto a music file which automatically relocated a music file to play from any memory address. Once you become a competent ripper you get to know each musicians music driver so any new tunes they do are dead easy. For UUMD I'm still finding some new music drivers eg. Paul Tonge (Civilisation and B17) this took about an half an hour to work out but now it's done the other ones he's composed will be straight forward. The only tunes I gave up on (my head was starting to explode) were done by Jason Page (Graftgold) but thankfully Mr Styckx persevered and finally ripped the tunes (Rainbow Islands, Realms) so they'll be all included in UUMD (Nice work Nic). Graftgold use their own operating system which is very hard to hack, just try and find a file version of Fire & Ice or Realms.. go on I challenge you!!
UCM:
What about the other guys from P.H.F.? Are they still active like you, or are they all gone today? Have you still contact?
GRAZEY:
Well the PHF has had a number of members over the years, which is what you would expect from a 15 year crew. The most members we ever had at one time was 4 (Me, Cal, Johnny 99 & Steely Dan). The 3 core members still remain to this day (Johnny 99, Cal & Me). Cal is my best friend and we share the same interests with regards music and computers. He works for a local computer firm programming in Visual Basic, he also spends his lunch times writing 3D dot demos in Delphi! He doesn't have an ST any more but he will be coding some bits for UUMD. His last major coding project was writing the Amiga conversion of Hollywood Hustler which got released commercially. I still occasionally see Johnny 99 but the scene flame blew out a number of years ago, his interest has recently been rekindled with the emulation scene. We were never a crew spread all over the place, more like a set of friends who coded for fun. Other ex members included The Morts, Glenn (supplier) and Nev.
UCM:
Have you any fave games/demos for ST/Falcon?
GRAZEY:
I'm really wittering on with my answers aren't I?! Well I'll try and make things more concise. Firstly games , I'm not a strategy freak, I love shumps and aardvarks (Zzap! 64 phrases - meaning Shoot Em Ups and Arcade Adventures) - Hostages, Great Giana Sisters, Gridrunner, Kick Off 2 & Llamatron. that was such a hard selection narrowing down all the great games I've played over the years, but every one has the same ingredient....Playability which is sadly lacking with most of today's packaged tosh. Demos..... well I'm not going to be surprising here of course the legendary Union figure with the B.I.G. Demo, and Union Demo. Also a British demo which I think often gets forgotten, and for it's time was technically excellent is the XXX International demo (also a member of the Union). One more to add to the list is the Inner Circle's Things Not To Do demo which is the most humorous demo I've ever seen.
UCM:
The best memory you have from your life in the atari-scene? (best party, etc...)
GRAZEY:
Well it has to be the PHF coding piss up held 1989 at a picturesque country farmhouse in deepest Yorkshire. All members of the PHF were present along with our college friends and also some commercial coders (who later went on to write such classics as Lure OF The Temptress and Beneath A Steel Sky). Each person selected one game and we all competed in a rota (the points scoring got scrapped as the alcohol began to take effect), I chose Great Giana and under the glare of the other 20 people there I completed it for the first time (what a crap end sequence BTW!), there was lots of cheating going on with people knocking power sockets when a high score was in progress but a great unforgettable day none the less. concise? yep.
UCM:
VR-SECTION. DUNGEON MASTER. You are one of the four characters in Dungeon Master... which one would you choose (Magician, Warrior...) and what guys from the Atari scene would you choose to complete your party?
GRAZEY:
Dungeon Master? naah to strategic for me, I would play Virtual Gauntlet. I would be the Red Warrior..... "Red Warrior neeeeeeds foood badly!" who would I have on my team? Well I'd have a Blue psychiatrist (aka Alien of the Pompey Pirates) he would delve into our foes minds then torture them with Conservative Party Political propaganda and if they still didn't submit he'd nuke em! My Green Elf (aka Was (Not Was) / Vapour / Hot-Knife) would definitely be on my side as he's the best hacker ;-)) and to complete my formidable squad I'd have a Yellow Magician (aka Ruthless Of Awesome) because of his magical disappearance skills. We would be unbeatable!
UCM:
BRAINSTORMING! Please give us a short comment on following topics.
A. AMIGA - Nice demos, un-friendly scene.
B. BIG DEMO - A C64 in my ST, miraculous Jochen!
C. CODING - An ambient playing CD with a cup of tea.
D. DEMOS - What kept my scene interest over the years.
E. EL!TE - You may have won the battle, but D-Bug won the war!
F. FALCON - Prefer Fighter-Bomber ;)
G. GSR - Superb! If only I coded that in 1988!
H. HTML - $65,$84,$77,$76 $84$65$68$77$65$78
I. INET - Contact old friends.
J. JAGUAR - YAK's play thing. Baaaahh.
K. KRAFTWERK - Way ahead of their time. Manikin vid rules.
L. LIZARDKING - Love his Flum tune! Funky Amiga muso.
M. MS-DOS - -
N. NINTENDO 64 - Can't wait for Zelda
O. OLD SCHOOL - Wyke Junior High.
P. PAULA - She rides a Yamaha, but I drive with Sid!
Q. QUADRALIEN - Automation (LSD/WNW) 12ish?
R. ROB HUBBARD - God.. and comes from Hull too!
S. SCAVENGER - Didn't know you were a Madness fan.
T. TURBOASS - Fast but Devvy is for me.
U. UCM :-) - Keeping the scene alive, respect.
V. VCS 2600 - Do you get em free with cereals?
W. WINDOZE98 - -
X. X-RATED - "WELCOME" Pdemo2/MCA
Y. YAHOO - Limited, Hastlavista...
Z. ZACK HACKS - Relaxing recreation
UCM:
Have you any last words for the Atari-public?
GRAZEY:
Save the environment and think of others (deep eh?).
Many many thanx. It was a pleasure for me to interview you. Bye.