Quality Or Quantity: More About Rock Band And Guitar Hero

By now you've been inundated with articles all asking the question "Is Guitar Hero/Rock Band going to save rock and roll?" I was reading one of the latest of these in the March issue of the Atlantic this year, and it felt like most of the rest of the articles in this style, someone, who at one point in their lives, had liked rock and roll when rock and roll ruled the entertainment world, saw the steady decline of rock and roll in its own hedonism and now sees "the kids" are coming back to rock.

The answer, is of course, yes, but that's assuming rock and roll needs to be saved. I don't think it does. There will be rock bands on top of the world and living lavish lifestyles beyond my fascination or imagination, but it's not going to globally dominating. What I think a lot of these people want, secretly, is not for rock and roll to be saved, but to be returned to the cultural touchstone it once was among the youth, everywhere. Sadly (for them), hip-hop and electronic music crashed the party and not all the youth dream in distorted guitar solos these days.

The industry will be fine, but they're going to have to adjust to new expectations. Those new expectations are simple: Records are not going to be diamond certified any more, unless digital sales are taken into account and a record is really, really lucky. So, if rock and roll is Motley Crue or Van Halen, then yes, rock is dead and it's not coming back. There are too many avenues to hear bands that aren't controlled by labels or radio stations and this means that among other things, that there probably won't be those same kind of cultural touchstones.

Music, nay, performance, lives and dies, James Parker, notes (at the end of that same peice), in the heads of teenagers everywhere, which is good, because Guitar Hero and Rock Band enable that. These products, hopefully, he says are exciting a new generation of rockers. And I include myself in that and enjoy these products, because, frankly, I don't have the backbone or courage to start a band of my own and it feels real fucking good to scream along to any Rage Against the Machine song, putting the microphone to my friends who also know the song and might be playing.

And yes, I know it's not real guitars and real drums. Baudrillard would be hung up on that. I'm not. It's a reasonable approximation of rocking out for the purpose of having fun and blowing off steam. But, as Parker mentions, rock and roll was always based on some delusion, whether it was a band starting wanting to be like an earlier group, or doing covers or, just being silly.

I see Rock Band and Guitar Hero in that tradition and the idea of hyperreality doesn't enter my mind. I know it's not real. It's not supposed to be real. It is supposed to mimic. That's why all the crazy avatars are there. It's not a real band. It's just fucking around and having fun. If you know anything about bands, then I might have just come full circle. Most bands start out as not being serious and then snowballing from there.

So, in the sense that Rock Band and Guitar Hero is not trying to be real, the closer it comes to being authentic. Funny thing, that. I wonder Baudriallard would think, but I hope he'd have the prensence of mind to drop the pretense and pick up a plastic instrument.

Demos: Don't Push Us When We're Hot

Discussions of breaking the theme aside, here's the draft I sent over to the newspaper to be published. Sometimes, the demos deserve to be outshown by their full studio release sibling, and I think this column is a great example of that. Fear not, I've got something for the theme week, but this will tide you over until I'm happy with the quality and quantity of my output.

There is a discussion among music industry pundits as to what, exactly, to do with the games "Rock Band" and "Guitar Hero". After you get through the usual "Why don't they just play real guitars?" question (Answer: It differs from person to person, but in a lot of cases because it's fun faster.) and the suits thumbing their noses (Hello Velvet Rope!), what emerges most often is the word "market".

Market is an important choice of word. It shows what gamers are thought of. It dehumanizes the subjects and dismisses the idea of a shared community, experience or anything else except for age or geographical location. I'll return to this later. But, they see an "emerging market" for music in gamers. This "emerging market" is the enthusiastic "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band" players who will buy new songs, sold as downloadable content. Why are we an emerging market? Because the record industry didn't pay attention to gamers before (even with the huge success of SingStar abroad), and now that downloadable content and "Guitar Hero" took off in numbers that raised some eyebrows, suddenly, gamers (and I include myself) courted.

This means, first and foremost, there's going to be a lot more garbage released on "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band", as any band who is smart enough will insist that part of their contract mandate that the label work with MTV or Harmonix to get their material on the games will, with the right push from the label (read: burlap sacks filled with money), get their focus tested single in. (See also: The upcoming Aerosmith edition of "Guitar Hero".) But, it also means that Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Beatles songs (what the industry might reasonable call high profile content) will become available to play.

The music industry sees the energy and willingness to spend money in the gaming world as something worth tapping into, and worth trying to profit off of. (They are not wrong, gamers are an reliable market which generates revenue consistently and in a physical retail environment. For an industry losing its core demographics left and right, this is an especially tempting pie.)

The interaction between the players in "Rock Band" and "Guitar Hero" and the feeling of "yes, I'm nailing this song" are what sells copies, and makes believers out of gamers. This is at odds with the current state of the music industry. There's enough economics people in the music industry, which is common knowledge, but not enough believers.

What remains to be seen is how the people making "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band" will respond to the tempting offers of money to stuff their high profile game with sub-par material. "Guitar Hero 3" (the latest iteration) had small, but unforgivable problems with button response time, which is crucial in a timed response game. On the other hand, it had a more varied and deeper track list, which made "Guitar Hero 3" unbearable to play, knowing that when I hit the notes correctly, and on time, the game would not register it, making a "plunk" noise and taking me out of the experience.

That edition of "Guitar Hero" has since sold over a couple million copies, which is a success for any game. The problem is, players who bought the game got frustrated with the controls, and have since stopped playing that edition. As the music industry loses goodwill left and right, it's important to note that the "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band" franchises have had some crossover success. Let us hope the success is not Pyrrhic.

Amusement.

Where half of the staff currently resides, it is in what might refer to as the snow belt of America. After a certain period of time, the darkness (and consequent lack of sunlight) assaults and overruns my sense of humor and sometimes, the reserve of hope I carry for nights starting at 3 p.m.

It is no surprise then, that my family has purchased for me, at great cost, a piece of technology I simply refer to as the happy lamp. I fully expect the nice lady to come around with the happy needle sooner or later. This, and other happy needles have been instrumental in my continued survival around here.

Augustine reminds me I gain little from telling you this. I note otherwise. It is my hope, readers, that you learn from what I am about to say.

You do not have time to spend your free time doing things you don't like. Your free time is valuable enough as it is. I realized this some time before playing Rock Band for 5 hours more or less straight. True, I do have other homework to do, and I had about 3 hours of sleep last night, but my mind hasn't felt that clear afterwards for weeks at a time. Yes, I had to wake up with a half can of Jeff Gordon approved energy supplement, but I felt (finally) like I was doing something worth doing. And, when the band got a sound guy and bodyguards, I took that as confirmation that something was going right.

Perhaps it was another misplaced urge to play some Hot Water Music songs and having to settle for Deep Purple, Blue Oyster Cult and Black Sabbath. (Toward that end, if I must pledge fealty to a Black something band, then I bend my knee to Black Flag.) It is not that Highway Star, Don't Fear the Reaper and Paranoid are bad songs, and the original bands are not good, in fact, quite the opposite. But, I don't really want to play a nice, clean guitar part with a singer who has, you know, notes to hit. I want to play a song where the guitar players are great, and the singer looks over at the crowd and passes them the microphone.

Alas, Rock Band in it's wisdom, does not understand this. I did, however, have a little leap for joy when I saw that singer's avatar now had a NYHC shirt on. I took that as a little tip of the cap and a secret handshake between someone at Harmonix, and anyone else from the punk and hardcore scenes who found themselves playing their game. And my heart sang, just a little, when I saw on Kotaku that At the Gates (From Slaughter of the Soul, no less!) was going to be on the March 4 DLC update.

As I write this, I have a couple other projects and assignments I should be turning my head to, including an interview with the Out_Circuit mastermind, Nathan Burke, in advance of his new disc Pierce the Empire With a Soundwhich is a fantastic little disc, perfect for wandering out in the deep, deep snow and getting lost with your thoughts and neuroses.

Brand New might still have the words "wake up, you are going to die" on their myspace page, and they hit the nail on the head for the first time since they wrote Moshi Moshi and Guernica, but this is Eleven Names, not Long Island, so I'll do this a little bit differently. Find something you enjoy. Find something that amuses you, and do it. It (especially around this time of the year for our readers in the Northern Hemisphere) is a cold cold world, and if you can make people laugh, then you have warmed it, if only for a moment or two. There is enough pretentious, humorless garbage floating around me that I can guarantee you with all my heart and soul, humor and joy are two of the few things still worth doing.

Carpe diem. Carpe noctem. But carpe something.