"I can play this," he says.
"What?" I say, not sure that I heard him right. To the best of my knowledge this guy is totally into hip-hop and rap. I never in a million years would have guessed that he knew who the Clash was, let alone knew how to play their songs.
"Yeah, I can play this," by this time Should I Stay Or Should I Go is fading into Running With The Devil by Van Halen. "Oh, I can play this one too, but not on expert."
"What?" I say, realizing that I'm beginning to sound like I'm deaf or something. "I didn't know you played the guitar.?"
"Rock Band, man," he says, clearly amused that I thought he was may be talking about something a little more tangible. "I got it for Christmas and we play all the time."
Well, it turns out that he can play almost half of the stuff that they played on the radio that afternoon, AND he is in the middle of a SOLO WORLD TOUR. Very exciting indeed, and he still thinks enough about us little people to come to work everyday. It's good when ROCK STARS give a little something back, don't you think.
Anyway, the whole thing left me with sort of mixed feelings. On One Hand I thought, well that does it, no one is ever going to learn how to play a guitar with actual strings on it anymore, but on the Other Hand, at least this guy is listening to (and perhaps even slightly appreciating) better music than he's ever bothered to before.
And maybe some of the younger kids with think that it's so cool that they actually pick up real guitars one day and decide to rock out without standing in front of a TV. Do you think Eddie Van Halen is playing Guitar Hero somewhere right now?
I wonder.
4 comments:
I ultimately see the popularity of the Rock Band and Guitar Hero games as a good thing because of most of what you already touched on. Kids today have no exposure to decent music whatsoever. These games do a good job of getting some of the newer bands that kids may have heard of along with a ton of classic and not-so-classic songs that they would've never been aware of before.
As far as replacing "real" guitars, I don't think that anyone that was already considering playing the guitar is going to change their mind because of a game. I do think that some kids that hadn't given it a thought will be drawn to the real thing and would be more likely to want to learn, so all in all I think it's a positive.
Is that a picture of you playing Guitar Hero?
Seriously, I find this phenomenon to be an issue with any video game. When I hear kids talking about skateboard tricks they can do---on Tony Hawk, or their driving skills, or their bowling scores. Sheesh. get out of the house already.
That's what you say now, but when your youngest son starts bragging about how many cars he jacked, or head shots he made, then you'll be glad he's talking about the 'ole XBOX.
He was talking about the XBOX right?
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