It Looked Easier on MTV

When I woke up with a headache last week, I was tired and grumpy and felt like I had a hangover. I’m almost always tired and grumpy, so I didn’t care about that part, but the headache and hangover were new and undoubtedly caused by spending the previous few days playing in a rock band.

Or rather, not just any rock band, but Rock Band.

Yes, I have finally jumped on the video game bandwagon.

I usually prefer a good book (and sometimes even a bad one) to playing a computer game, but my interest was first piqued by the Wii, which promised to be so simple that even I could work the controllers. Since my preferred method of playing video games is to wildly push buttons and hope for the best, you can see that I need all the help I can get.

The search for a Wii consumed me for a few months, culminating in an ugly session during which Chris forbade from ever using his Ebay account again. After that, Chris took over the hunt for a Wii, which is why we were eventually successful in obtaining one.

Wii games, it turned out, were perfect for someone like me. My interpretation of Nintendo’s ad campaign was the following:

Do you lack manual dexterity?
Do you have a low tolerance for high learning curves?
Do you find yourself spending most of a game yelling, “Which one am I?” only to have the game end just as you locate yourself on the screen?

Then we have a video game system for you!

Eventually, though, the allure of fake bowling from my living room while remaining seated began to fade, which meant that by the time Guitar Hero came out on the Wii, I was primed and ready to be seduced.

“You have to get this,” my friend Craig said. “It’s really fun.”

Since Craig is essentially the unmarried male version of me, I gave his recommendation serious thought. And when, a few weeks later, he admitted that he had to take a vacation from Guitar Hero because he’d played it so much he got tendonitis, I was hooked.

So I got Guitar Hero. But I never really got good at it, mostly because I hated nearly all of the songs it came with (Pat Benatar, you may ignore that sentence). And because I never improved, I never unlocked any additional songs. It was a vicious cycle; one which could only be broken by retiring the Guitar Hero.

So when Rock Band hit a few months later and Craig couldn’t stop talking about it, I was suspicious. But I had never heard him so excited, so engaged, other than that one time when he met some indie band I had never heard of and had his picture taken with them.

“Rock Band is so much better than Guitar Hero,” he said.

A week later: “I went out and bought an X-Box just so I could get Rock Band, because I really need to practice drumming.”

Two weeks later: “I’m inviting people I barely know to come over and play Rock Band with me!!!”

Rock Band had become his new crack, and I was beginning to worry about him. The game was making him not only TALK to people, but actively seek them out. This was unprecedented behavior.

Maybe I needed to see what all the fuss was about, so that I too could experience the thrill of being changed into a Normal Person who could talk to people without immediately turning around to whisper bitingly witty yet highly negative comments about them to her spouse.

“Well, Rock Band’s coming out on Wii eventually, right?” I said. “Maybe I’ll look into buying it then.”

Craig was dubious. Or perhaps he merely wanted to drag me under with him, because I hear that smoking crack is so much more fun with a crack buddy. “Their peripherals might not be as good,” he said, or something like that. “And I don’t think you can download the extra songs.”

“Really?” I said. “That’s so stupid! What’s the point of even making the game on the Wii if I can’t get the Nine Inch Nails 3-pack?!?”

Fortunately, before I had to write a scathing email to Nintendo telling them exactly where they could stick their Wiimotes, my cousin sent Chris a Playstation 3 as a belated Christmas gift. And though Chris hadn’t seemed too interested in Rock Band when I had relayed Craig’s comments to him, some of what Craig said must have stuck, because Chris went out and bought Rock Band the first weekend he had the Playstation.

This weekend happened to coincide with the time that my cousins were visiting, and Terry and Jessica had scarcely put down their bags before we pushed them in front of the Playstation. Terry claimed she couldn’t play any instruments, so while Chris drummed and Jessica played the guitar, Terry took over the microphone.

We didn’t have an extra guitar, so I watched. Jessica had trouble with the guitar but progressively got better. Chris seemed to be doing fine with the drums, and Terry was singing like a trouper even though she didn’t know most of the songs.

We switched parts every so often. When I played the guitar, I tended to punctuate my playing with “Fuck” and “Shit” and “Damn” with every mistake. Since I was making a lot of mistakes, this meant that there was a constant murmur of swears coming from my corner. No one could hear me though, because we were each concentrating so hard on our individual parts that we had no idea what anyone else was doing.

I went to bed around one in the morning, but I could still hear the thumps from the Rock Banders, as they went through “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” over and over, over and over, until I wanted to scream, “Go! You should go!”

The next day, we were joined by Chris’s cousin Steve, who apparently managed a friend’s band. Again, not a real band, but a Rock Band. I didn’t quite understand how this worked, but I didn’t have time to contemplate this for long, because we were soon busy making Steve use his skills to unlock songs for us.

Steve was a rock god compared to us. He even changed levels from Easy to Hard and Expert. Sure, we’d briefly flirted with Medium, but Hard? We didn’t have the courage for that yet.

When Steve finally left, we had advanced far enough so that we felt more confident. Terry was even willing to try the drums, while I sang and Chris played the guitar, and we decided to let the game choose what song we would perform.

We should have known things would be difficult when the song title flashed up.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I don’t know this,” Terry said.

“Uh-oh,” Chris said.

And thus we began Boston’s “Foreplay/Long Time.”

Terry drummed. Chris guitared. I waited.

Terry said, “Oh my god, how long is this song?”

Chris said, “We’re not even halfway through yet!”

I said nothing. I was waiting.

Terry died, and Chris brought her back in, and the singing still hadn’t started. Eventually the lyrics started.

“What’s this song about?” I muttered.

“Isn’t it over yet?” asked Terry.

I was having trouble following the song, because I was focusing on hitting the right notes. From what I could tell, though, it was about a very long time; a time so long that it was being explained in real time.

“I have a blister!’ Terry said.

“Why won’t this song end?” I said.

Grimly, Chris kept on playing the guitar. He was all that was holding our band together. We had an injured band member (”My blister popped!” Terry wailed), a singer who was getting mad at the lyrics (”For god’s sake, it’s been a long time, we get it!”), and various dogs hiding from the noise under blankets on the couch. We would have never made it through the song without Chris bringing us back to life every so often.

We finally finished. We collapsed. The fake crowd on the screen cheered (or maybe they were booing).

“My voice hurts,” I croaked. “This song sucks.”

“I decide to try drumming on one song,” Terry complained, looking at her blister, “and it has to be this one.”

“That was awesome!” Chris said.

Thank you, and good night.

Posted by: ssjane | May 12, 2008 | 6:18 pm
Posted in: Entertainment/News