A recent phone conversation which took place between me and my 13-year-old cousin:
So what's new, Garrett?""
""Well, I don't know. I can play guitar now! I've been doing that a lot.""
""Oh yeah? Have you learned any cool songs?""
""Yeah. My friends and I made a band. We're learning all the songs.""
""That's sweet man! What do you guys sound like?""
""We sound really good. Like all those old bands. Ramones and [the] Strokes!""
""Wow. So your friends play drums and stuff? Do you have a singer?""
""Yeah! All that. It's such a cool game!""
""Wait, game?""
""Yeah, Ben! It's called 'Rock Band.' My friend's dad got it for all of us!""
""Oh, right. So you learned to play a game controller guitar?""
""Yeah, it was so easy. You should try it.""
And so on. When I asked him if he had gotten a chance to check out his dad's real Gibson Les Paul guitar, his response seemed to suggest, ""What's the point?""
""Rock Band"" has taken things to the next level of realism by offering a multiplayer experience which includes a drum set controller and a karaoke microphone. Apparently, the way you form a band these days is by plugging into a game console and interacting with a screen. I can understand that as a fun pastime, sure, and lord knows I've binged on ""Guitar Hero"" now and then. But I got to thinking, is this how a younger generation is going to perceive the grand tradition of forming a garage band and foraging into the world of self-made music?
Maybe, maybe not. I could see it going either way - or perhaps no way at all. It could be that music exposure of the ""Guitar Hero"" and ""Rock Band"" sort will inspire kids to eventually put down the plastic and pick up actual instruments. Truth be told, I was impressed that my cousin was becoming familiar with bands like the Ramones and the Strokes. It's great that the songs these games offer span many genres and eras, reaching from the 60s through today, and it might very well turn out that this will give kids a wider appreciation of music history, in turn providing enough of a taste for them to try going it on their own.
On the other hand, the recently released ""Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock"" sold 1.4 million units in its first six days, and I highly doubt that Fender even sells that many Stratocasters in five years. An MTV-sponsored battle of the bands has taken place with ""Rock Band,"" culminating in a broadcast on TRL which featured the top two ""bands"" squaring off against each other. Rockband.com even offers a community page where one can search for other ""band"" members to complete their ensemble and conduct photoshoots. All this doesn't seem too far off from the recently aired ""South Park"" send-up of how these games are becoming strangely legitimized as the real thing.
In any event, it's impossible to ignore the fact that the two games are making a sizable splash in the music industry. Many of the songs featured in them have seen their real counterpart skyrocket in digital sales on iTunes, making the games yet another new and unprecedented avenue of promotion and revitalization for classic to modern rock. It's astounding, really, to think about this turn around of process. Whereas once musical imitation would naturally grow out of appreciation of an artist, for some that tradition is now being subverted and reversed into a process of exposure via participation.
Slightly more strange, both ""Guitar Hero III"" and ""Rock Band ""will be used in efforts to promote music from lesser-known bands more actively than the previous incarnations of ""Guitar Hero"" have. It seems completely bizarre for music to introduce itself to the world through the controllers of gameplayers though - won't that somehow take away from the aura of wide-eyed discovery that happens when you hear something autonomously new out of, say, a friend's stereo?
Metallica will even be debuting a new single from their upcoming album as a download for Rock Band before releasing it anywhere else - hard to imagine from the same curmudgeons who once hated this sort of thing and helped rob the world of Napster.
Props go to Led Zeppelin, king of all classic guitar-shredding bands, who have stayed clear of all this gaming business and decided to revitalize themselves in a more substantial, albeit often misguided, way: by reuniting. In the end, I think, they will be greatly more respected for it.
Want Ben to join your rocktastic ""Rock Band"" and compete for the MTV battle of the ""Rock Bands"" ? Send solicitations to bpeterson1@wisc.edu.
