OK, time for a few changes around here.
The thing is, I have been feeling kinda separate from this blog for quite a while now. There are many reasons to this, that's for sure, but I guess the most important aspect is that I wasn't really happy with the shape Drequon's Playlist assumed as time went on. I originally meant it to be a place for NWOBHM, a near-lifelong obsession around here: not only a way to fulfill the intentions applied to a couple of blogs I attempted (but failed) to keep alive in the past, but also a vehicle to get in touch with like-minded individuals and people who were involved with the scene when it originally took place. A few years ago, I realized it turned into something else - something, quite honestly, not as funny as I originally envisioned. By allowing other genres and/or recent releases to appear on these pages, I turned the blog into something pretty generic, with nothing too distinctive on it - and this somewhat sad state of affairs surely reflects on the fact that hardly anyone come to visit it anymore. Not that it was ever crowded with visitors (it never really did), but there were readers once, and now they're mostly gone. Including myself. Why bother, if there was nothing really cool being published here anymore?
And it started ruining everything else, really. I could no longer bring myself into posting on forums. I got lazy with answering e-mails, and quite possibly offended a few people with my delayed responses (for which I wholeheartedly apologize). It got so bad I actually wouldn't even
listen to NWOBHM as much as before - not because I didn't wanted to, but mostly because it felt like a frickin' waste of time.
I could just press the button and finish this blog's misery, I guess. But I decided to do the exact opposite. I will try to make it fun again - to myself, at the very least. Not that I really expect anyone to become a regular around here anymore (blogs are such a thing of the past, right?), but everybody needs a hobby, goddamn it, and I won't give up having fun with my gloriously amateurish, rough-edged, lyrically brain-dead, technically-lacking small-town wannabes so easy!
So, that's how it will be for now on:
only NWOBHM-related reviews around here, with limited exceptions. I will sure post lots of '70s hard/heavy music around here, and I plan to include some neo-prog and '80s metal discographies as well, but these are going to be exceptions, as NWOBHM will be the rule in the foreseeable future. The non-NWOBHM reviews will often be posted somewhere else (
Encyclopaedia Metallum, most of all, and also on
Metal Observer, if they're still interested), but will hardly (if ever) appear on the blog. Most of previous non-NWOBHM reviews were deleted from the blog, never to be read again (in here, at least). A handful of interesting posts turned out to become temporarily unavailable in the process, but I hope to rework it in the not-so-distant future, with a good proportion of it being re-posted in due course. But, again, such posts will be hardly dominant on this space anymore. There are tons of NWOBHM-related stuff I want to review / write about in the coming months, and I'll focus on these inclusions, you can take my word for it.
I will honestly try to
publish diverse NWOBHM content, as much as time constraints allow me to. The reviews (packed with as much history info as possible) will always be the main feature, but there are some interesting interviews I can make possible, given I actually put my mind into contacting the right guys (and a few ladies) involved, and I think some articles / thematic posts are a distinct possibility too. Audio files will be few and far between, but there are a handful of nice gems in my possession (some, I think, no one but the band members themselves ever listened to), and I may provide links to some selected material, once I get the thumbs-up from those who own the rights in the first place. Some mixtapes, perhaps? Let's see what happens.
I'm also trying to improve the blog's structure, with improvements on the "Index" page (now totally updated and with some browsing options); updated "Wants List" page; eliminating some hopelessly long posts that were too thick and unfriendly to be read from start to finish; and some other minor changes I'll be implementing in the following weeks. I'll let you good people know of further developments, if there are any.
Rock on \m/
Drequon
