FAQ

1) WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?

I'm a 30-something years old guy from Brazil. I work as a journalist, though I never had the chance to work as a music journalist. I play bass and write songs for a few musical projects (most of it Heavy Metal related and none specially sucessful in any sense), and I also run a number of personal projects on literature and video.

2) WHY HAVING THIS BLOG?

I toyed with the idea of having a HM blog for quite a while now. I even tried a few times, using the soubriquet MetalRorschach and opening a few webpages - all short-lived ventures, unfortunately. Writing about music takes a lot of time and a lot of research, and I simply didn't have the time for a number of years.

The thing is, I'm deeply interested in HM in general and obscure HM in particular, mostly the wondrous days of NWOBHM, and I wanted to put together some of the things I came to learn in over 15 years of pure Metal obsession. This is the reason Number 1.

I also wanted to create some sort of listening discipline in my life, as there are tons of CDs and MP3s in my possession for quite a while (many years in some cases) that I simply never heard for a single time until now. I'm a heavy Internet user and an amateur HM collector, and I want to create a more rigorous routine so I can actually listen to all this stuff. Writing a few words about some of these recordings seems like a useful way to force myself into being a little more disciplined at this. This is reason Number 2.

There are a number of items I never had the chance to obtain in any format - and listing it all in one place would be helpful as a strategy to locate at least some of them. This is why I have a Want List here, and this is the reason Number 3 to have this blog.

Finally, I'm no native English speaker - my first language is Portuguese. It's important for me to practice English, as a professional journalist and amateur music researcher. And I was kinda lazy about it recently, so I thought that it would be good to have something to exercise my english writing / reading from time to time. This is why this blog is in English. Besides, being an English-language blog allows the info herein to be available to a larger number of people than it would be the case if I was writing it in Portuguese. This, in resume, is reason Number 4.

3) WHAT "DREQUON'S PLAYLIST" IS ALL ABOUT?

It's a blog about Heavy Metal - most of it from the 80s, most of it very obscure. I'll try not to be too restrictive on what I post around here - most of the time it will be album and/or video reviews, but you nice people can also expect a few biographies and even some interviews from time to time. I will include as much information as I can gather about every band displayed, sometimes in the form of videoclips, old photos and, in very specific situations, a few audio files. The idea is to help other collectors and aficionados to hand some good (and mostly reliable) info about the bands they're looking for, or to learn a bit more about the bands they already heard but are somewhat overlooked all over the web.

4) DREQUON WHO?

Drequon is the name of a very obscure British band whose only known song ("Goddess of the Night") is in a ultra-rare compilation EP from 1983, released on DTA Records. I never heard them until a few days ago (and I really enjoyed their song, actually), but always felt that it was a nice-sounding name for a band. I came to learn that Drequon was also a (not very common) first name in some countries, so I thought that it would be OK to adopt it as a soubriquet. I'm not at all interested in using my real name - not that I'm afraid of anything (if wouldn't even be that hard to find out my true name if anyone would bother) is just that I like the idea of the contents being more important than the person generating it. And I no longer feel that MetalRorschach (the user I once was) represents me well enough. So, I will be Drequon for now on, in here at least.

5) WHERE ARE THE DOWNLOAD LINKS?

No download links around here, sorry. This is not my point with this blog - I want to gather information about the bands and their releases, not to be a source of downloadable links of any kind. There are zillion places all over the web for you to try your luck. The only exceptions will be if the musician(s) involved ask me or allow me to do so - or if I decide to include some cuts from my own personal HM music projects. Such situations will be few and far between, though.

6) DO YOU USE P2P? HOW CAN I GET YOUR FILES?

No, I'm not consistently using any P2P nowadays, and I'm not really interested in spreading MP3 files all around. I know this may sound a little cheap and selfish, but it's not the case really - it's just that if I start directing this blog to MP3 sharing I'm afraid it will rapidly lose its spirit as a source of information and become a tool for greed instead of discussion and enlightenment. I have accounts on some very nice music forums and will be posting some selected music there from time to time, and that's enough for me.

7) I DON'T AGREE WITH YOUR RATINGS!

Well, that's OK for me. I don't really expect everyone to agree with my taste in music - there will surely be some bands I will not like that much, but other people will really love and admire, for instance. And I REALLY think that there's absolutely nothing wrong about that. In fact, I don't even think my personal opinions are that important at all - what really matters here is the information about the bands. This blog is a "playlist" only in the sense that I actually heard all of this stuff, which is not to say that you should or shouldn't listen to any of it, no matter how good or bad my impressions are. I rate it only as a way to give people some references about the music. If a single or EP received a low rating around here, maybe you should still give it a try - perhaps you will like it immensely, who knows? And that's exactly why I try to be as polite as possible in all my reviews, as I don't hate any of these bands or musicians, it just happened that I didn't like their music in some cases. I will be more than happy to discuss about it with any of you good people, given that we can keep the conversation in civil and polite terms. Peace and love to you all, and thanks for all the music!

8) ARE YOU A TRADER? WOULD YOU WANT TO TRADE OR SELL SOME MUSIC?

Well, I would like to, but I'm not a trader really. Most of the stuff I have are MP3s, and I'm sure that any real trader would be more than happy to tell you that such files doesn't really qualify as a collection in any sense. I also have a lot of CDs and a few LPs, but I'm not interested in trading these original items. That said, I would surely discuss some MP3 or FLAC trades (no money involved whatsoever) so to get some audio files I'm desperately looking for. If you want to discuss this possibility, please e-mail me. And no, I will never sell any music files, sorry - please, do not insist.

9) OK, I WOULD LIKE TO HELP YOU. IS THERE ANYTHING I COULD DO?

That would be great, any help would be extremely appreciated! My e-mail address is drequon@gmail.com and I open my inbox nearly every day. I'm always in need of help to:

- correct me on wrong, imprecise or misleading info (I REALLY want this blog to be as accurate as possible);
- gather even more info about the bands or their releases (offshot bands, scans, video files, photos, extra releases I'm not aware of and so on);
- contact people who were involved, as musicians or associates, to any of the bands mentioned here;
- obtain audio files from my Want List (I would discuss specific trades if you want to, please kindly read item Number 8).

If you can offer me any help on any of this, even the slightest, please don't be shy and kindly get in touch. One of the nicest things about blogging is the chance to get to know a lot of nice people with similar interests - so, if you can't really help me at the moment, but want to chat about the bands here featured or the music they gave to the world, you're also more than welcome to e-mail me!