Rock Band
January 19, 2009 – 1:39 pm | by Treyl right, here’s my problem with Rock Band:
Rather than playing a fake instrument, learn to play a real one.
I know a ton of people who love this game and that’s fine, I guess. But they all talk about wanting to be rock stars (and can we please, please for the love of whatever God you dig, lose ‘He’s a rock star,’ as any kind of cultural conversational touchstone? It’s as bad as ‘thrown under the bus.’) but none of them want to actually learn to play.
Pick up a damned instrument. You wanna be a rock star? Learn some chords. Learn some funkadelic bass lines. Buy some drums and toss on a Dave Matthews or Rush CD, play along to those. Or Billy Cobham or Manu Katche.
Holy hell, just do something!
Instead, this being the land of the lazy, we’d rather play a game and pretend to be a musician than put in some actual time and become a…you know…musician.
When I worked at DJ’s Music Box in Denver, an odd combination of sheet music, instruments, and music boxes, there was a guitar instructor there. His belief was that music was too easy, too accessible. He believed that music had lost some of its elegance and mystery and romance because anyone could be a musician. It was too easy, he used to tell me, to become a musician.
That was crap then and it’s crap now. I believe there was more music in centuries gone by because people didn’t have radios and TVs and daily newspapers and the Internet. Other than dueling or weaving your own clothes or castrating the livestock, there wasn’t squat to do! So there were entire families who were musical. Go back and read diaries and daily accounts of family life 100, 200, 300 years ago. When there was free time, which was very damned often because of that whole castration situation, they yanked out the instruments.
With absolutely no evidence to support it, I’d lay even money that there was a musician in damn near every family. Everybody played something – piano, guitar, harmonica, violin, fucking brown jug.
So Americans, many of whom have gotten so lazy that the American dream has gone from ‘work hard and better yourself’ to ‘buy a winning lottery ticket,’ or ‘slip on the ice and sue everyone,’ have decided that learning to play an instrument just takes too much damned time. It’s much easier to pretend at making music.
‘Trey, Trey, take a breath, it’s just a game.’
True enough, and I realize the game isn’t really about playing at being a musician, it’s about playing at being a celebrity, ‘cuz that’s what we all want now. The entire country, at least those younger than me (and it’s always those young whippersnappers fouling things up, ain’t it?), worships now at the altar of celebrity. But even better than celebrity is instant celebrity, doubly so if built around…well…nothing.
Oh, for the days when you had to do something to get famous. Neil Armstrong had to…you know…land on the moon. And Paris Hilton’s contribution? Well, she was born with the right genes. And then there was that ‘accidental’ flash of her vajay-jay.
Wonder which of the two is more famous…hmmmm….something to ponder.
The upside, I guess, is that now, rather than people posting video of themselves on YouTube doing nothing in an obvious and desperate attempt at celebrity, they can post of themselves playing Rock Band and being a Rock Star…in an obvious and desperate attempt at celebrity. That’s progress, I guess.
3 Responses to “Rock Band”
By Stace Johnson on Jan 19, 2009 | Reply
Okay, Trey, so here’s the big question. I’ve never played Rock Band or Guitar Hero, but I do pretend that I can play guitar. Is it better to suck at guitar playing than to rule at guitar gaming? Or is there something to be said for mastering a plastic instrument compared with disrespecting a classic instrument by playing poorly?
By Trey on Jan 25, 2009 | Reply
Ah, Stace, always tossing a wrench into my works…the logic of it all. You make me laugh but it’s a good point. The instrument manufacturers would say buy the real instrument and disrespect it all you want. The game companies would say nay nay, show true respect and play the game instead. And what of air instrumentalists? And what of young kids playing Rock Band who are getting their very first exposure to music? One guy I work with said his youngest son is getting a taste of rhythm in all its glory and he’s having a ball with this new thing he’s discovered. Ah, the complications of a simple rant about lazy people.
And just for the record, Stace, your actual question, “Is it better to suck at guitar playing than to rule at guitar gaming,” seems like one of those Oracle at Delphi questions that ponder the very nature of reality and man’s purpose on this little still-slightly-blue planet. And, did you know, the Oracle at Delphi had business hours? That’s right, if you got there at the wrong time, there was a sign on the window that said something along the lines of “Back in ten.” That, my friend, while a non-sequiter, is reality…”back in ten.”
By Stace Johnson on Jan 27, 2009 | Reply
I heard Alice Cooper on the radio the other night, talking about a Guitar Hero competition he and another artist participated in. He said the kids who won were absolutely marvels at the game, but when he asked them if they were going to apply their skills to real instruments, they said, “Nah, I just want to play the game.” Fortunately, I don’t think all Guitar Hero/Rock Band players are the same.
As for the Oracle, even Oracles need Starbucks once in a while.