Public Enemies

The Early Days

As the co-founder and the person who came up with the name “Public Enemies” back in the late 1980s, the story starts even further back when I, as a 9-year-old, met “Chuck C” in the early 1980s out in the countryside north of Stockholm, Sweden, where our parents had summerhouses in the same area.

It was our BMX bikes that brought us together, but we also shared another interest — computers. I started out on a ZX81 before moving on to the C64 while Chuck C rocked his ZX Spectrum 48K. It was a lot of gaming back then, but I remember sitting in his loft bedroom (literally a crawl-in as the ceiling height wasn’t more than 1m) learning the basics — no, not that BASIC — of programming from him.

The Amiga Era

The real passion for programming didn’t start until we both got an Amiga in 1987, with Chuck C having “pitched” the idea to my dad who was very sceptical given the hefty price tag. Luckily, Chuck C’s strong sell managed to convince my dad, and I believe Chuck C then used this to convince his mum by saying “Look, he’s getting one so can’t I have one too?”.

Armed with our Amigas we set out to master the Motorola 68000, and more importantly the Blitter and Copper that put the Amiga a head above the rivalling Atari ST.

Forming the Crew

Having been impressed by the early demo groups on the C64 we decided to form our own in 1988. The challenge was to come up with a cool name, which took some debating. Eventually we landed on Public Enemies, a plural version of the legendary Public Enemy hip-hop group. Personally I was already using Honcho, a name I picked from an Agent X9 comics magazine years earlier, but with the new name for the group it isn’t hard to see where Chuck C comes from, with the C picked so it would come before Chuck D alphabetically ;)

Around this time we also had a couple of computer-loving friends joining the crew: Psychomaniac and Seargent Pepper. I was also trading games and had started to exchange floppy disks with Zeus (an absolutely brilliant coder) and eventually managed to convince him and some of his friends to join the crew in 1989.

Copy Parties & The Split

Back then copy parties were the main place to make new friends and swap coding tricks. The one I do remember is the Phenomena and Censor party in Arboga in 1990 where we released a couple of demos as well as one of Chuck C’s best ever tunes. However, the best copy party I ever attended was one organised by a close friend of mine, the Atari legend AN Cool, and his TCB crew — an epic party held in Haninge, Sweden, in 1991 with over 250 visitors.

Unfortunately things didn’t last and in 1990 the group split up as some of us decided to form a new group, Adept, together with members from Top Swap. Looking back I regret the split and wish we’d stuck together as I lost contact with some great guys.

The Revival

30 years after the split, the almighty Public Enemies are back! I recently “revived” the group by releasing a one-off and our first ever C64 intro, 30 Years. This is why it has been quite exciting to release a new demo under our old name — although I decided to write the intro on the C64 rather than the Amiga, a first for me :)