Beatles Rock Band or The Decline and Fall Of Civilization

Okay maybe the title is a little strong, exaggerated, maybe even over the top but………

This past week it seemed every time I turned on the television, two things hit me on the screen. 1. A commercial for Jay Leno’s new show and 2. the commercial for the Beatles Rock Band game.

My opinion, (and you are reading my column, whose opinion would it be?) I have to tell you something. 1. Leno’s show is going to suck no matter how much promotion NBC gives it and 2. Is that Beatles commercial the creepiest thing you have ever seen!

It is well known here that I am a Beatles fan, love the Beatles but come on, the cut ins of John especially in that commercial are really creepy. Do you think with the millions of feet of footage available of the Beatles they could not come up with a better image of John to use? It looks like a commercial that 7 year old doing the Windows commercial would do on her laptop cutting and pasting and telling us “I’m 7 and I’m a PC and I just did a Beatles commercial”

Okay, enough about the commercial. The real problem I have here is with the game itself or the whole genre of Rock Band and Guitar Hero games. When this first came out I originally thought it was pretty cool that the gaming industry was bringing gamers into the music world but what it seems to be doing now is losing a generation of musicians.

What do I mean? I have seen so many kids playing these games that they think playing guitar is simply pressing a series of plastic buttons on the neck, that’s all you have to do. I had a friend that was showing me the game one day and was flying thru “Welcome To The Jungle” by Guns N Roses, I mean flying thru it! The way he was acting you thought Slash was in the room with me. When he was done, he looked at me with a huge grin on his face, sweat rolling off and said “What do you think, cool huh!” I just looked at him with a blank stare and reached over and handed him one of my guitars lined up against the wall and said “Now play it, that’ll impress me.”

This guy spent weeks, months playing this game. Learning the songs or should I say learning which button to press to be a rock god. You know the worst thing; his kids are the same way with the game.

How about this for a novel idea parents. Buy them a real guitar to play on! Sign them up for lessons! If the kids I know spent the time they did learning how to play this game on a real guitar, we would have a whole new generation of Eddie Van Halens. Maybe I’m becoming an old “fuddy duddy” (wow, I just used the words “fuddy duddy” in a story. Man I am getting old!) but in my day (double wow, I just said “in my day” in a story, I am channeling my father here folks!) a game system didn’t replace the real thing, whether it was playing baseball, football or being a rock musician!

Remember your first guitar? The one where the strings were so high off the frets that your fingers bleed trying to push them down to play a single note but you kept coming back and you built up the calluses and you got better guitars as you got better and the next thing you knew you were playing in your first band. How cool was that!

Now you can have your first band without ever learning to play a note. Play guitar, bass, drums and microphone without a single music lesson. (Can someone explain to me…. How the hell do you play microphone? Do you fake singing? Is it like a Brittney Spears concert?)

What could be better for your kids in this day and age? The new life lessons…No work, no sacrifice, no commitment. Just turn on the game and be a rock star…Does fake tattoos come in the box also?

Nuff said….least till next time
Peace Out
Bear