Lahve: Hia, Azzaro! Okay, now can you tell us your realname, age, your group, your function in group, what school do (did) you study etc, you know.

Azzaro: hi there, dear czech (not only czech now - Lahve) readers. my real name is tomasz wisniewski, i`m almost 22 year old male, student of technical university of koszalin. i`m studying computer engineering and technics in multimedia, also some computer graphics oriented subjects. my actual demoscene group status is polish madwizards and finnish (basically) embassy forces. in mawi i`m organiser of those shit also responsible for group public relations, and delivering productions to the parties. also i`m little graphician (shitty) ans of course swapper. in embassy i`m swapper - one and only still active true snailtrader around the group now, eheh =) also i`m editor and writing articles to "excess", our diskmagazine (hope some czech pals understand polish language and read it, eh?). occasionally i support foreign magazines, mainly Depth`s "Eurochart". on the other side i`m ascii maker in our polish based group named sative mea. unofficially i`m also party hooligan who`s responsible for making people good fun and attractions at every party (something like clown =). and we (party hooligans) are members of our elite team named "obora design" but i`m simply: azzaro.mawi+embassy.

Lahve: Why just Azzaro? Can you uncover us your history of this nick? How long do you use this nick?

Azzaro: i`m behind this nick from august `97. previously they call me "ctp", but some day i look at aminet and there was another "ctp" on scene (counterpoint, musician from scandinavia). about history: i don`t know how it works but someday i look at those word and love it from the first time so i change "ctp" to "azzaro" and it still works.much later qix/nah-kolor told me that azzaro is also the name of huge cosmetics factory in french but when i change my nick i don`t know about it. all in all i still like it and there`s no more azzaros on scene (i hope).



Lahve: Did you have any other nick before Azzaro?

Azzaro: yes, as i said my scene handle was previously "ctp" but before entering demoscene i tried to "wisking", "caterpillar" or other strange handles (argh, i want to forget about it!)...


Lahve: How long are you in da scene?

Azzaro: i started to think about entering scene in 1994 but officially i`m scene member from july 1995 when i start swapping and send my first three letters to the magic world of scene community. btw: two of them was stolen unfortunatelly by post =) my first contact was largo/pride, not active today, but still in my memory and great friend of mine. so sad we had no continuous contact each other now.

Lahve: Many people in Czech doesn't know what means those strange ascii collections like "Hacka","Multiplastik micro form", "Alice on da second side" and other productions from Sative Mea group? Does it mean only some ascii collection done for some sceners or is it some strange ascii stories? Can you tell us about this great art of ascii making?

Azzaro: heh, it`s demo scene and ascii scene over it. members of ascii scene are also members of demoscene but not everybody. there`s so much ascii makers which are completely not known by demosceners. standard ascii collection is a bunch of ascii logos placed in one file with added author, title, some preface/wise advices and bbs adverts (must to be). but there`s also other way to made a colly. it`s a bunch of logos too, but with some sentences like a story. it makes collection individual. sometimes you can watch the ascii collection just for reading those stories besides see how to make a good looking logos. this seconds "ascii school" is much popular here in poland but sometimes we can see pearls from the foreign makers. each maker has his own, individual style and still works on it. it`s not ok to rip someone else style and sign it as yourself. but it`s also hard to stay individual and you must work hard on it.

Lahve: what is the way to do some asciiarts? Do you have to be a gfxman to make some ascii?

Azzaro: no, not really. of course guys with graphics talent are preferred, but everyone can made ascii logos. just not everybody can publish them officially without any shame =) if you`ll see at ascii scene you can meet graphicians, musicians and simply swappers doin` the logos. it`s universal - just your talent are worth of sign.

Lahve: Can you describe one day of your scenelife? )

Azzaro: boring. really boring. every day is the same now. writing letters, reading books, watching television, riding the bike, riding across the city in car (i`ve got skoda favorit, just like yours, by my parents are white =). i spending before monitor sometimes 7-9 hours - at school and at my home. i`m using strongly pc at the university but at home i`ve got just amiga 1230/50/882 with 32mb of fastram, cd-rom x4 and two harddisks - 3,2gb and 850mb. all in micronik`s tower which i win at astrosyn`97. nothing special but nowadays standards. also i`m drinking a lot with my school and/or scene friends here in koszalin (we have special place named "dworcowa" at the rear of railstation). standard scene day - 5-12 hours before monitor and doing nothing special - typing, painting, thinking and playing another wad in "doom". sometimes i don`t turn my amiga on. just rest and relax. it`s so much using before party. a week before going to partyplace i try to finish all of started works, collect madwizards releases from our members and make asciis for them (boring!). also code some crazy demos under my secret handle, hehe =) so, i`m normal scener. one from hundreds but unfortunatelly little much known...

Lahve: What do you think about that there is the greatest Amiga scene in Poland? What is the reason that there is not so great and function scene in other states?

Azzaro: i`m proud of it because i`m polish scener. yes, we are biggest amiga scene around europe now but we still waiting for real asskicking releases. some years ago everybody respect polish demo scene (mad elks, freezers, old bulls) but today there are quite bunch of not known sceners who just doing the haujobb =) there`s few sections of world giants like polish division of dual crew-shining (renton, bonzaj , evan), endzeit (x-ceed, bonzaj) or embassy (me). at the other side there are groups like whelpz, phase truce, decree, madwizards and others which still knocking to the scene pantheon of fame. most important polish sceners are those few charts addictors like bonzaj, zig, fame, dzordan (our graphics god!), lazur (still active), kazik (backs to scene and graphics), evan, mcr, revisq, x-ceed and others. i don`t know if they are respected over our country (yes for sure! Lahve) but they are really respected here in poland. i don`t know why there`s no so big and productive amiga scene in other countries. two-three years ago norwegian scene backs with a lot of new faces which rocks now. also please concentrate on italy, spain, still strong finland and france or eastern europe newbies like russian or czech scene (ahoj kamrati =). i think we`ll survive because we don`t wait for new amiga. we just do what we love - prods and increase our informatic skills.

Lahve: Which groups did you walk through? I mean the names of groups which you were active in.

Azzaro: at first i was independent member like hundred others in 1995. later me and friend of mine - drf - formed venal - local group which grows a little and collect some known members like uhu or budgie. later i joined mawi (june 1996) as swapper and when heron, our organiser, left scene i ask all members and become organiser of madwizards. this still works good i hope and don`t think about any changes =) after gravity`97 i joined anadune as doublember and i was kicked by kazik one year later (due some old and forgotten misunderstandings). at the beginning of december`98 i joined embassy as doublember after their "members wanted" action and nothing happens till today. some other groups like dcs asked me to be a member of it but i don`t agree. two groups is enough. I`m not name collector like renton or evan...



Lahve: What is your opinion about diskmags? What is thier function in da scene? Do you think that we need more and more mags or it would be better to have only one?

Azzaro: sceners needs disk magazines to be in touch with other ones. i know - internet works ok but still small disk magazine is most important and popular way to know what`s going on. also everyone sometimes want to read any press and demoscene related diskmagazines are most interested in my opinion. it`s our teenage press where you can say "fuck" or "kurwa" if you must to and nothing happens. no censored. just freestyle. it`s why i am editor of one of the biggest polish amiga diskmagazines named "excess". we also plane something like international edition named "excess gold" with best texts translated to english. of course it`b better to have a lot of mags - nice and worst, beauty and ugly, with cool and crap articles. but you can still choose between them and compare. if there`s only one mag you can just read one point of view and think like authors. it`s suxx in my opinion...

Lahve: Can you write the best coder, gfxman and musax in da scene (Amiga only!) in your opinion?

Azzaro: amiga only? so sad because my favourite graphicians and musicians are using pc. but nevermind. if we concentrate on programming and best hardware using it`s elf/venus art but if we look at simply motorla coding it`s zig/floppy. he`s best amiga coder but stupid designer and his ideas of demos are totally crap (like "napalm" by floppy). favourite musician is mortimer twang/dcs+mono211+disciples of ageema. also i like modules by dave/oftenhide (pc), revisq (pc), xhale/dcs (pc), spectra/madwizards and of course mad-e/mo`playaz (ex-raze). if you`ll see at whole scene my god is falcon/sunflower (pc). fave graphician is of course dzordan/anadune+moons. but if we`ll see at whole scene it`s made/sunflower (pc), visualize of sunflower (pc), saffron/tbl (pc) or just destop/cncd (pc). i respect their works but i vote for lot of scene members in different charts because it`s hard to find one and only one favourite scener in each category.

Lahve: Do you like travelling to some foreign parties or do you like only Polish ones? ) Can you comapare some foreign parties with Polish parties?

Azzaro: the one and only foreign party i attend was yours apocalypse`99. i plane to visit some other parties in germany or denmark but it`s too expensive for me. for example - the party`99 entrance is 6x higher than polish party entrance. add also costs of travelling, food and alcohol and it`s damn expensive for poles. so this is why poles doesn`t attend foreign parties. german or danish organisers don`t think about free entrance for foreigners like it`s at every polish party. it`s not right in my opinion. but me and some other friend plane to visit mekka/symposium`2000 and rock it a little. i can not compare polish and foreign party because i only heard about scandinavian events and see a lot of photos. it`s mainly quake lamers net-party with little amount of really sceners who compete at any compos. if you`ll come to poland you`ll see the real party spirit, unique atmosphere and mixture of fun, drinking and watching compos at big screen. i think polish parties rocks so i attend every of them =)

Lahve: Try to write some instructions how make the better scene . How inportant are friendship, respect and support in da scene?

Azzaro: friendship and respect is a bases of scene. if you care about friendship you`ll have a lot of real friends after quitting scene, too. it`s not important how many years you got. the only important thing is what you can do with your skills. best sceners should be respected by rest of them. it`s scenish history - small group of elite freaks who rocks the scene and hundreds of normal sceners who still works, learns and sometimes become elite ones. support is so important too, because without any support we`ll not be able to see new productions. no matter if they`re sucks and not worth of seeing. nobody rocks from the start and all of respected ones starts from zero. try to look at first tbl demos - nothing special but after all they rules. how to make scene better? i don`t know. try to made new demos, intros, slides, music disks, magazines and other stuff. support parties by your own productions and have a big fun of it. it`s only fun and don`t treat scene ambitionally. smile, smoke and learn. if sometimes in the future your grandson ask you you could tell him a lot of stories from your youth (and twentieth century =).

Lahve: How many parties did you visit in your scenelife? What was the farest party (state) you've visited?

Azzaro: farest one was apocalypse`99 [870km] and nearness was astrosyn`97 and `99 [1km =)]. best of the bests was intel outside`95 - my first and most respected party.

Lahve: What do you think about charts in diskmags? Do you think it is important to have it?

Azzaro: no, it`s not important to have charts section in every diskmagazine. people are lazy today and don`t want to fill votes for you so 90% of charts are totally old and unobjective. the only one quite respected are charts in eurochart because of rather high number of voters. if you care about charts please fill whole votes - you can help your friends and see more relative comparations. also don`t try to put charts in all of the magazines - it`s enought of them today so vote for other ones.



Lahve: Okay, what do you want to say to our sceners in Czech Republic? Some prophet? =)

Azzaro: hej, kamrati, have fun! when i saw czech sceners at apocalypse`99 i was shocked - no one wants to have real fun. all poles drink all the day in the garden with some czech sceners/smokers. fun starts at evening when compos was showed at small-screen and some czechs drink with us. best greetings to all of you and remember - you can spend before monitor every day but while you`re entering party place try to have some fun with your scene friends! best regards and please visit astrosyn `2000 which me and some friends of mine will organise in koszalin, poland on next year`s march. best regards, be productive and keep good work up!

Lahve: Thank you very much to fill this very long and hard interview Hold on and keep Amiga alive! Thanks ones more!

Azzaro: it was pleasure for me. see you soon!