Blex's DragonForce Connection
The Background:

A long time ago, in an internet galaxy far away, the best way to get mp3 music was to have personal contacts on IRC. On IRC, people connected to networked servers, joined chat rooms, and got to know people from all over the world. IRC was and still is the beginning of any underground movement. There, any and all software, music, movie, television series, porn, etc. were distributed to the masses. I say that with respects to newsgroups which really were the first medium of distribution. In the modern internet era, pirated ware distribution is all over the internet with online communities such as torrents, p2p networking, and websites being very popular. But, back in the good old days, people ran private and public FTP sites on IRC. It was there, that I met a lot of cool and not-so-cool people from about 1994-2004.

The Connection:

If you haven't read my top 25 albums of all time list (and judging from my web server log file a lot of you haven't read it), you know my favorite genre of music is rock/metal. Specifically, I probably prefer the sub-genres of rock/metal such as power, symphonic, progressive, viking, heavy, keyboard, concept, etc.

Anyway, in the years that I was on IRC, I hung out mostly in the #metalmp3 channel on undernet. It was there that a large portion of my musical discovery began. The good bands I discovered there were countless! One of those bands was the awesome world famous DragonForce that we all know and love. If you don't know or love them, you probably shouldn't be reading this because I consider your music appreciation inferior (I'm kidding)! One person that I met on #metalmp3 was a guy from the UK who went by the screen-name of SHRED. I talked to him back and forth here and there and he even had access to my private FTP site! Then, one day he asked me to listen to his band's new demo song titled Valley of the Damned by DragonHeart (their original name). Usually when people used to send me homemade crap to listen to I wouldn't even listen to it or would just flip through it for a few seconds and say "sounds good, gotta run!" BUT, this time it was different! I decided, WTF, I'll give it a listen. I immediately heard the opening riff of Valley of the Damned and the song BLEW ME AWAY! To this day I still consider it one of the greatest songs... EVER!

In Time, the song was became the #1 most downloaded song on the entire mp3.com web site (which only provided access to music from unsigned bands). Overtime, I talked to SHRED here and there on IRC and eventually found out his band changed their name from DragonHeart to DragonForce and got a record deal! I figured, damn, hopefully this band becomes famous because the song I heard just kicked my ass it was so good! During one of the last times I conversed with SHRED, he informed me they were touring with legendary metal bands across Europe! I asked him if he could bolster the "Blex" name on their debut album and toss me in the liner notes. He agreed and thanked me that my private FTP site led him to discover a ton of new metal bands that influenced his guitar playing! Then, after the album was released, I purchased a copy and SURE ENOUGH my internet name along with a few other #metalmp3 names got put in the liner notes!

Now that I've got out of the early '90s and finally bought a l33t n3w HP printer/scanner/copier, I figured "why not scan the liner notes and toss it on my web page in case anybody ever wonders if the Blex mentioned is the same Blex that ran Blex's Page of Good Mp3?"

Being bored out of my mind, still unemployed, and needing some more amusing and updating content on my web site, here we have it !!!



Fast forward to 2011, DragonForce is now a worldwide phenomenon and selling millions of albums! They also are apparently the highest skill level to play on guitar hero (I've never played the game).

So, who was SHRED? None other than the WORLDWIDE FAMOUS GUITARIST... HERMAN LI

Someday, I hope to see DragonForce live and meet one of the fastest and greatest guitar players EVER!

Hopefully, he will remember me and I can thank him because his music has been some of the most phenomenal metal music I've ever heard in my life! In fact, if somehow you read this, feel free to contact me!
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