Chris Sievey - Camouflage - Sinclair ZX81 pop video!
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- čas přidán 15. 04. 2011
- In 1983, Chris Sievey (soon to find fame as Frank Sidebottom, and formerly of The Freshies) released a 7" single on his own Random Records label. The A-side was the song 'Camouflage'. Chris had recently started programming on the Sinclair ZX81 home computer, as so many of us did at the time, and included three of his programs on Side-B of the 7", as audio data recordings - exactly as they would sound when saved onto a cassette for storage.
Two of the programs were versions of a game called Flying Train, for the 1K and 16K machine respectively. (Note: contrary to what's been written several times on the internet recently, the ZX Spectrum version of FT was never pressed onto vinyl. Sievey distributed this on cassette, probably for the reasons explained below, and would chuck in a copy of the single as well...)
The third file was an animated (albeit very basic, and BASIC) pop video for the song on Side-A. I'd seen this demonstrated on TV some time after its release, possibly on Whistle Test, alongside Pete Shelley's XL-1 which came out slightly later. I never tracked a copy of the record down at the time. Nearly 30 years later, I found an unplayed copy, so set to work.
Quite a few people experimented with cutting computer data tones into vinyl, or even flexidiscs, in the early 1980s. The success rate of loading any of these was pretty bloody dismal, and there are letters/articles bemoaning that fact in several of the computer magazines of the day. One scratch, mark or even a bad mastering/cutting job at the pressing plant would scupper everything. In this case, even though the record was effectively new, it still needed a good clean (using PVA glue) to remove some muck lodged in the groove before I could get a good enough recording of the data with no odd noises, pops or clicks. I then had to filter off the unwanted frequencies at either end, fiddle with the levels and blah blah blah.
The program had to be run on an emulator on the PC, as my ZX81's 16K RAM pack went missing in the last ice age. The visuals didn't sync up with the music at all, probably as a result of this, so I chopped, stretched and edited it all over to (hopefully) fit properly, as Mr. Sievey had intended. It may not be the most sophisticated bit of computer animation you'll see today, but this was visionary stuff nonetheless... You know it is. It really is. - Hudba
Fantastic for it's time - never knew it existed.
As an aside, I thought I was going to be the 'next big thing' in programming back in the early 80's.
I wrote a game for the ZX81 and later rewrote it for the ZX Spectrum. (Called - A Night at the Opera) (somebody might remember it)
A Software company offered me a deal for the game. A one off payment of £100 or 10p royalties per game sold.
I reckoned that it would sell in it's thousands and took the royalty offer and waited for the cheques to roll in.
I got 3 cheques; £26.40, £18.00 and £5.60. It was then included in a compendium cassette along with 10 other games at £0.01 per cassette sold. I never saw another penny lol.
Who was that published by? I wrote a few C64 games, two budget titles for Codemasters. I think I had one off payments of £1200 each agreed, but both were late due to bugs and a took a knock on both. Not a hell of a lot for 2 months work each, really... Some people got rich out of it all, and a few of the people I knew then still work in the industry and are doing very nicely thank you very much, but the road is littered with the likes of us!
I've tried really hard to remember the publisher.........(it was nearly 40 years ago) I think (and only think) it was a small outfit in Hull called Arctic (ring any bells?)
I have searched google and cannot find any mentions on the net. As another aside (lol) Once Mathew Smith (Manic MIner etc) started writing games I knew my time was up. I couldn't compete with his brilliance. But I prospered from the programming learned in another way. Not to bore anyone but in the early 80's industrial machines started being controlled by computers (like the car building robots etc) I was an electrician and started learning the new logic controllers. I then set up a company that specialised in automation control. I retired 5 years ago (age 55) with shall we say - a good income. And there is no doubt it is all due to the XZ81 and the Zilog chip. Thank you Clive Sinclair, thank you ZX81....... I would never have done what I did without you.
Aah... Artic Computing. They lasted until the mid '80s. I had a couple of their text adventures on the '81, which I couldn't get anywhere with (never my forte, adventure games) and also published the notoriously awful 'Mad Martha' on the Spectrum...
Do you have a copy of either ZX81 or Spectrum version of your game? I can't find any reference to it online, and if it was published by Artic Computing (which was quite a well-known, reputable name in the early Sinclair days), I'd have expected to find at least references to it. It'd be nice to preserve it in the various online archives. (Did Artic publish both? It was one of the companies that published for both ZX81 and Spectrum.)
PS The Mad Martha series was issued by Mikro-Gen, not Artic.
Great story dude
Genius is often appreciated years later. It really is astounding for its time - nice song too.
I see my chance to be "That guy" for the first time but who is here because of Nostalgia Nerd?
"Being Frank - The Chris Sievey Story" brought me here. I dig this tune hard at the moment.
It's a great documentary, isn't it?
@@soundhog09 It really is, I've gone Chris Sievey mad since watching it. I'm even making my very own Frank head.
@@ElvPresidente Oh blimey... :o
Wow, this bought back memories
Thanks Soundhog for going to all the troubles that you did in making this available to a whole new generation of Chris' followers - always look forward to your next works too - Cheers!
The fine line between genius and insanity was never more evident. RIP frank.
Today's Wikipedia "Did you know?" section brought me here. Being an old programmer myself I appropriate the effort of both the original programmer and the great Mr. Hog09 for bringing it to us. I'll go see if I can paste the link to this video in the wikipedia article.
I loved this song!!! never realised it was the same person as Frank Sidebottom
I remember ordering this in WH Smith, Glasgow when it came out in 83! They got the 7" single in by mistake instead of the tape and I had to connect a turntable to my ZX81 to get it to load. The synchro was never perfect but you could catch up by pressing any key during one of the may pause statements used. Thanks for uploading this. A real blast from the past.
This is utter genius. Fantastic work!
Incredible, Guru Larry introduced me to this, and the song is quite the banger as well.
I actually liked the song. And, perhaps, this was actually just the first time that music and on screen lyrics were introduced worldwide - definitely predating the CD+G format by decades.
That is amazing in so many ways, to get the programming done and timed perfectly to the song on a ZX81 is miraculous.. That thing was a bugger to program at the best of times! Great share.
oh so it's his wife Paula who did backing vocals? I've wondered that for ages! thanks for uploading this, I love Chris Sievey.
I can see and hear Frank in my mind. WWonderfully bizarre
Thanks for putting this up, it's a fantastic piece of history and I'm glad it's being preserved properly.
That is just too brilliant. I did something similar: a poor man's rendition of Duran Duran's 'Reflex' video on my Atari 400 back in the day. It took days writing the different subroutines and timing it up with the music but it was mad fun.
Yet another first for the ZX81. I've been having a lot of fun with my old ZX81 over the holidays checking out hard to find software. I'd never heard of this one however.
Even now, this feels "innovative". Huge thanks to ***** for pulling it together!
Thanks for doing this. Fantastic
FANTASTIC! The medium. The concept. The realisation. A pioneer and a true artist.
Not to mention he seems to have invented full Kigurumi before the Japanese cosplay hit off!
I can remember getting thin floppy singles on covers of sinclair mags and trying but failing to get them to load.
Also BBC radio would broadcast sinclair data that you record on tape. A cassette by The stranglers Aural Sculpture had an adventure game for the spectrum at the end of side 2.
Heard the music on Andy's 80's today first time. I've entered geek nirvana, I don't have a geek level clearance for this. This is more geek than when they hacked the PBS feed of Dr Who in Chicago with Max Headroom and the bare bottom, ping pong paddle video. Thanks!
Awesome.
Fantastic! Incredible, not only the original idea and video but yourself for your work in uploading it. I love it!
I love this
Great to see this again. I bought the cassette at the time and it worked for me. Can even remember where I bought it - WH Smith in Hastings. Happy days!
I thought I had seen everything on the ZX81 ...
Well, you just proved me wrong ... thanks for uploading the amazing work !
It's on the UK release of Pete Shelley's "XL-1". Thanks for even considering it! GREAT WORK!
Loved it. Reminded me of the good old days.
Great find and great work getting it out here, soundhog09. Noticed that Soundhog site has some other gems, so checking that out next :)
Excellent! And he seems to agree with my new mantra: when in doubt, jump :).
Came here from the Guardian, this is genuinely cool... it's actually aged really well. Given the constraints of the ZX they would probably have to have worked out the timing of each CPU instruction... old programming was hard.
I haven't looked at the listing for ages, but there are a lot of PAUSE commands in there to keep everything lined up. It's quite wonderful.
Wow many thanks it's awesome and a historical mark and what a great tune, love it!
Fantastic, without a doubt.
I actually managed to get this to load on a couple of occasions and the 'FT' version of the game. I'm afraid the full version of 'Flying Train' evaded me though.
I have still got a copy despite at least 8 house moves. Funny how you keep hold of the things you grew up with yet leave other stuff behind.
That is pretty awesome, never knew anyone had done anything like that on the old micros.
Great to see this. I have the single, and a ZX81, but never got it to load. At last... there it is! Brilliant. (Right, I'm off to play 'The Biz')
This is actually really well done for what it is, isn't it? (Also, thanks for taking the time to upload it!)
Ah, Man, that's so lovely on many levels. Well done.
ABSOLUTELY AMAZING.
This is pure genius made when genius wasn’t easy work lol 😂 good job soundhog too
thanks a million for your hard work preserving this amazing piece of history!
Excellent work. Thanks!
So cool!
That's a lovely piece of work, really brightened up my day that has. Cheers for taking the time and effort to share this!
Excellent stuff! The video does enhance the song too! Great find thanks
Flipping magic!!!!!
*Nice work, man! A technical achievement!!*
Very nice work, really a nice piece of computer art!
Superb. Thanks.
Wow - really cool! Song produced by the legendary Martin Hannett too!
Utter genius!
Great song! :)
Even though I’m watching this in 2020 on an iPad this looks amazing and would have been so much cooler running on the real thing
Way ahead of his time
Genius.
Unbelievably brilliant and clever. Song was naff, but the idea of a real-time video using a ZX81 is inspired. Kudos!
Chris Sievey was a karaoke pioneer... Who knew?!
I assume the two dislikes are from Little Denise and Little Buzz Aldrin the American Space Puppet, you know it is, it really is.
I assume if it didn't synchronise then it wasn't listening to the audio and was just BASIC with some pauses. I'd thought it may have had a huge REM line with the z80 code available for native execution, withing the program after the listing we see at the start of this YT vid. It should be possible to listen for specific audio edges and act on them. Maybe I'm asking too much ;)
wow
Fantastic! Thank you so much for all the effort, that was brilliant. I never saw it at the time and always wanted to. Now I have! Now I just need to find a copy of that fake ceefax program on the flip side of that 3d star wars style program. U believe it was called spectacle wasn't it?
Anyone else getting "I am a real American" vibes from this song?
Thank-you!!!!!!
Would you be a dear and do the Pete Shelley one, too? :D
Okay, so I can accept video games on cartridges, CDs, DVDs, Blu-Ray Discs, and cassettes, but vinyl records?
Sadly, these 3 are the only games to ever be stored on vinyl records.
Dang! This guy was never known for being a programmer, but he managed to program this himself in BASIC?!
I myself could barely even get an RPG working in Visual BASIC.
It turns out that he was beaten to the punch by Sudden Sway, who had a Sharp MZ game on a 1982 7" release. Hardly anyone knew about that one though, and I've still not managed to get it to load. Various other games and demos were committed to vinyl by other artists, but it was a short lived idea...
Brilliant. Some clever coding going on there.
:)
This was a huge feat for the time! Absolutely incredible for a computer that only had a black-and-white text-mode display. I know you made this video a while ago, but if you still have a copy of the emulator file, I would be very grateful if you could send me a link.
Not sure, but I might still have it somewhere... watch this space.
@@soundhog09 Any sign of the file?
@@connosoft1949 I have found it, yes. Not sure how I can send a link though this thing, though.
@@soundhog09 That's okay, I know it's on Spectrum Computing - I'm a member over there. Thanks very much for getting it preserved! :)
I think Frank Sidebottom accidentally invented karaoke here
HELLO TOSH
Aside from the ZX81 gimmick, its actually a really good track. Production by Hannett always helps of course. Its a shame he didn't do more stuff like this instead of the rather irritating Frank Sidebottom stuff.
Yes the track is fantastic....BUT....it wouldn't have been a hit if it wasn't for Frank Sidebottom!!
Hmmm. I don't think it ever was an actual "hit", was it? Also, this was released in 1983. I don't think he even started the Sidebottom stuff until 84.
It wasn't a hit in any way. The closest Sievey ever had to a hit was '...Megastore Checkout Desk', which didn't quite crack the top 40. Sidebottom existed back then, under the premise that he was The Freshies biggest fan (there was a track on a promo 12" with 'Frank' interviewing 'Chris'), but it wasn't until 1985 that the first proper Sidebottom record was released.
It went straight in with a bullet at NUMBER ONE!!! (...in the Timperley top ten, compiled by Frank Sidebottom).
You know it did. It really did.
Sounds like Jarvis nicked this song
I don't understand why this song was a flop.
What is meant by camouflage sinking Americans?
I have no idea.
Definitely not bobbins