Inteview with Judge Drokk
found in | Type | Author | Year |
Diskmagazine interviews | LSD 2-cool - 2Tone - AJW - ... | a10/92 |
INTERVIEW WITH JUDGE DROKK OF ANARCHY By Fish of LSD Q: Introduce yourself, and tell us your computer history. A: Are you talking to me? Well as i'm the only other person here I guess you must be! Well, since your asking, i'm Judge Drokk of Anarchy, i've had an Amiga since September 1988, formed Anarchy early 1989 and never looked back! I recently became a 24 year old, in real life i'm a Civil Servant and have been employed in this position for 5 and a half years. Q: What is your function in Anarchy? A: First and foremost i'm the WHQ Organiser, or "Organiser of Organisers", if you prefer. I'm also the main editor of Stolen Data, but not the only main editor, issue 9 of Stolen Data had 5 main editors, all as important as each other, I bring it all together Kreator tracks it. Q: Do you find it difficult to organise a project when so many guys from Anarchy are writing commercial software? A: No not really. Quite a few members of Anarchy do work in the Software Industry, some freelance, some full time, but that's work and the scene is separate, people do take time out of the scene when they have some really heavy commercial work that needs to be completed, but it doesn't affect the group in any way. As to your original point, generally speaking, people behind a release organise it themselves, for instance, if Kreator wants to make a demo, he will work with the artist and musician of his choice and ideas and design will come from the trio. This creates a healthy group atmosphere and its proved successful so far. Q: Did Mr Big and yourself ever think that Anarchy would have become as successful as it is today? A: Oh Yeah! of course!, we always knew we would be the best! There was no doubt about that! (Hee, Hee!) Actually No. In fact I was completely stunned when Anarchy broke into the EuroChart. I think that fate has been kind to us, when I look back, the bad things that happened in our history seem to have made us a stronger and wiser group. In some ways we tend to stand aside from the scene, i'm not sure if this applies to members outside England but here we tend not to worry too much about what is going on around us and concentrate on what we are doing. Q: As a Diskmag Ed, do you think there are too many Disk-Mags on the scene? A: Well, a little maybe, especially if new magazines keep appearing at their current rate! I don't mind reading a new diskmagazine everyday, but editors are in short supply and the more magazines appear the smaller magazines will become. There will, however, always be leading magazines and weaker ones. Q: Would you like to see lesser known DiskMags, join forces to make a bigger DiskMag? A: I suppose if two small magazines co-operate, it should produce a better final product, but only if both producers give equal effort. Then again if both magazines were bad then you're just going to get an even bigger pile of shit! In the early days, Stolen Data was a Co-operation Production with DCS and Tristar. Then with Flash Production and Axis, the input from the other partners was virtually zero! If I remember correctly the total input from all 4 groups was maybe 3 articles! Q: In your opinion, without being biased, list your favourite diskmags? A: Without a doubt R.A.W is my favourite, not only of today, but all time! I would say McDisk, I.C.E, and HACK-MAG (not seen for a while now though) are of a generally equal quality and deserve second place in my estimation. Freedom Crack, Maggy and Top Secret would be next I think, though I have to say I was very impressed with the finely produced first issue of "Eternal". Q: What do you think is the most important feature that makes a disk mag successful? A: There are a number of factors that combine to make a diskmag successful I think. Design and layout, GFX and music are only the "icing on the cake", what matters are the articles, if the articles are bad then a magazine has no future. The magazine has to interact with the scene and its readership, it has to provoke a reaction from the scene and react to scene changes, events and trends. It cannot just print hundreds of mindless articles about anything from "Star Trek" to "How to wipe your ass", it must also not just be a tool to "report and review". A perfect magazine is a magazine that completely interacts with the whole feeling of the scene, only R.A.W comes close. Q: Why is it so long between each issue of Stolen Data? A: When Stolen Data began, the first few issues were very frequent, only about 5 or 6 weeks apart I think. Then we had a few problems with the the groups Stolen Data was (at that time) cooperated with, namley the lack of support. So we took time out (about 10 months) to think about wether we should bother at all. Time passed and we decided to bring the magazine back to life (although it had never been dead, just asleep). The magazine had a whole new look, but we started to hate this design after only a short time, so it was time to think again. Another long delay as one idea after another for a concept behind Stolen Data came to came and went. The Stolen Data of today is the way we always imagined it should be, but never was. To put it simply, Stolen Data has been infrequent because we spent so long thinking of a concept between every issue! Q: When is the next issue of Stolen Data? A: How long is a piece of string? Q: Do you believe that every article received, whether good, boring, crap or otherwise, for Stolen Data should be published? A: No, I can't speak for other magazine's but with Stolen Data we publish what we believe are quality articles, our ultimate aim is to reduce "real-life articles" to an absolute minimum and optimise scene- topic areas. Q: Do you not believe in freedom of speech? A: Yes, but I don't think that this is an argument you can use to defend using every article you have sent for your disk magazine, what about Quality before Quantity? Q: An article to you might be crap, but may be very interesting to the next man. What is your opinion? A: I don't publish articles just because I find them interesting, I aim to give Stolen Data a high quality content and for this reason I don't publish articles which are "low-class" or unoriginal. Agreed, some may like this kind of thing but I think that it is important to appeal to the majority rather than deface the magazine with inferior articles merely to please a minority audience that might not even exist. Q: Do you enjoy being an DiskMag Editor? A: To tell you the truth, its a kind of masocistic satisfaction! Q: How do you think you could improve Stolen Data? A: Wait while issue 10! Q: Everyone knows that Anarchy are legal, would you not like to see Anarchy move to the illegal side of the scene? A: No!, Illegal means problems, too much competition over speed, to much business, its a rat race man, its also not creative, its destructive. I prefer to express and create, Anarchy creates entertainment. Q: Then why do you use pirate software? A: Because its there, I load it, I throw it away. To me it is just a medium for seeing what I would not normally see if piracy did not exist. Q: Do you think that your European divisions turn out better productions than the English division? A: We all have our highs and lows, our thoughts and ideas, we are (in my opinion) of a consistent quality throughout our membership. I must point out however that we are not divisions, we are individuals who interact, regardless of state or nationality. Q: What do you think of the Slipstream`s resourced version of your Pack Menu? A: Not half as good as the real thing! It was an old pack menu so I don't really care, but its the principle of what they did that annoys me so I'll be having a little word in their ear. Q: Use this space to write whatever you want! A: Send all articles, adverts, Clipart, News, for STOLEN DATA to; 9 Back Lane West, Royston Barnsley, South Yorkshire. S71 4RZ. England. This address also applies to anyone interested in joining the Stolen Data team. Thanks for the interview Fish, it was certainly an experience. It was a good laugh for me as well, Fish! end.