Story of SRA started in 2009 at AROK#11 8-bit Party when three C64 musicians (Hermit, NecroPolo, Vincenzo) met.

All three were C64 fans with similar attitude and seasoned instrumentalists as well, it was easy to start some plan about forming a SID tribute band. Some time later, the album "cover" of NecroPolo's rakBIT acmum can be considered to be the first SRA co-op project because Hermit did all the programming the C64 executable demo that functions as an album cover. The name "SIDrip" came from here. It is a new C64 bytestream player developed by Hermit that made including old music files possible. It was a huge challenge.

Around March of 2010 intensive e-mail and phone activity started to select the setlist from 10.000s of SID tunes. It was a difficult task because the personal favourites of each member alone consists hundreds of SIDs...

The first official live-project was Navy Moves remix that was started, orchestrated and arranged by Chabee then later spiced with live instruments by NecroPolo and Hermit. The track had a rather positive reception in relevant remix sites. More soon :)

After heavy and hard selection process, the setlist was narrowed down to 13 tunes that were re-worked for live playing, in details. Individual practising started somewhere around the middle of June, as a preparation for the only available rehearsal opportunity. The reason is: the members started to live quite far from each other back in the time when they did not know that such a project will be realised :)

Three weeks before the first concert it turned out that Vincenzo had to miss playing onstage due to his sudden and urgent deadline work assignments that had to be done. He advised to find a new keyboardist, because these wicked chiptunes require much more than just "playing around". So, Hermit contacted Werdy who quickly impressed the others with his constructive attitude, skills, talent and awesome sounds. Learning all the setlist in 3 weeks was a huge challenge but he was completely into it. Drummer SzléjerCsabi added his part to the whole pretty well, too, with the shortest available preparation time (2 weeks).

The one and only rehearsal session with the actual live crew was 1 week before the gig. During the refinement of the set many ideas appeared and also became clear that there will be some "blind flights" :)

The last week passed with individual practising the songs (1 day before Hermit could even successfully overstretch his wrist with his high-action bass). After all, the band started playing with some "flying blind", hitting strings and other anomalies. Vincenzo contributed to the concert greatly behind the mixing desk, with his experience he created healthy live sound through the PA system.

Audience was awesome. Playing was not 100% perfect - but the atmosphere and fun in the concert was.

We thought we are ready to the next gig. As always things are never going to be that easy: Hermit and SzléjerCsabi had another program when we had to be on the stage. At least we found a solution: Küki played on the bass and we found a new drummer - Tamás Ölveczky (Ched) - who could easily get the job as he is a skilled musician.

This concert (Function X) gave us another crew member: Vector who was convinced by our passion. With his help you can watch our gigs later if you missed them.

Thanks
... to the Crew of the Árok Party for the opportunity,
... to Füvesi for the audio and video recording, video editing and
... to YOU who were there!

Crew
Hermit - bass
Küki - rhythm guitar
NecroPolo - solo guitar
SzléjerCsabi - drums
Vincenzo - live sound
Werdy - keyboards

Thanks
... to the Crew of the Function X party for the opportunity,
... to Bambusz, Füvesi, Geri, Jutka, Vector and
... to YOU who were there!

Crew
Küki - bass
NecroPolo - solo guitar
Tamás Ölveczky - drums
Vincenzo - live sound
Werdy - keyboards

Thanks
... to the Crew of the Árok Party for the opportunity,
... to Bambusz, Bubu, Geri, Jutka and
... to YOU who were there!

Crew
Hermit - bass
NecroPolo - rythm and solo guitar
Ölveczky Tamás - drums
Vincenzo- live sound
Werdy - keyboards

Concert film

Thanks
... to the Crew of the Function 2011 party for the opportunity,
... to Geri, Jutka, QXY,
... to Poison for the cool mineral water,
... to our fans in front of the stage and YOU who were there!

Crew
Hermit - bass
NecroPolo - rythm and solo guitar
Ölveczky Tamás - drums
Vector- video recording and edition, DVD (concert film)
Vincenzo- live sound
Werdy - keyboards

Thanks
... to the Crew of the Árok Party for the opportunity,
... to Füvesi, Geri, Joshi, Jutka, QXY, [SOULVOID],
... to the enthusiastic audience :)

A csapat
Hermit - bass
NecroPolo - rythm and solo guitar
Ölveczky Tamás - drums
Vector- video recording
Vincenzo- live sound
Werdy - keyboards