The Beatles: Rock Band
Guitar Hero
When smug old children of the 1970s such as my friends and I get together, we play a game. We talk about the bands we loved when we were kids; we trade grumbles about the fact that music no longer seems to dominate youth culture, as we nostalgically recall the role that rock had in our past; and we try to guess what happened. I call this a game and not a discussion, because really it is diverting silliness that boils down to a competition to reach an agreed-upon goal--that is, to prove our generation’s superiority to our successors. The winning answers are invariably ones that reinforce an idealized conception of the classic-rock era more than they illuminate the present. They reiterate the dubious truism that rock was so magnificent in the 1960s and 1970s that it demanded attention in a way that no music that followed it could. And they cast as revelations the perfectly obvious point that contemporary pastimes such as video games and digital networking have taken up the social function of music.
There is a sizable problem with that line of thinking, and it goes by the names Guitar Hero and Rock Band, the trademarks for two competing sets of video games that call upon its players to get together, listen to music, and pretend to perform it. If electronic gadgeting has supplanted music in the social economy of young America, one has to wonder what it means for games about music and music-making to have become the teen craze of the year. Is Rock Band really a replacement for the rock band, its digital mutant spawn, or another thing altogether?
It is tempting to interpret the phenomenal success of music-oriented games--especially the wildly hyped Beatles edition of Rock Band, introduced in September of this year--as evidence of music’s return to the center of young life, or as validation of the aesthetic values of classic rock. The reality is more complicated and less flattering to boomerdom. For one thing, these games have fairly little to do with music. After all, they are games--like poker, the Olympics, or pro football; and like those and other games, they are, to varying degrees, largely about the pursuit of status and glory, wealth and sex. Guitar Hero and Rock Band involve musicianship in the same sense that chess involves military service. Rocking, like rooking, is the thematic action; but the content is the form, the rules.
For another thing--and this is the main failing of music games, and it is a significant one--they have the insidious effect of glorifying classic rock, a music with an already bloated reputation that is founded on its very bloatedness. In the games’ absorption with technical prowess, speed, flash, grandiose show, and fakery, they not only affirm the enduring allure of classic rock to kids and young adults, especially males; they also advance its tyranny. People like me who have kids of video-game-playing age no doubt get many things wrong about these games, and chief among the errors of our age group, I think, is inflated generational pride in the 1970s-style arena rock that Guitar Hero and Rock Band promote to our descendants--kids who might otherwise, and perhaps more appropriately, use their after-school hours to nurture interests in music of their own. The games reassure us that our aftercomers are our heirs. They are male-oriented tools of cultural primogeniture, applications of twenty-first-century technology with a very ancient mission.
As anyone who knows anyone under thirty knows, music games have, over the past couple of years, become an inescapable presence in the dorm rooms and subdivision basements of America--and also, I presume, in the parlors of more childless homes than their ostensibly grown-up occupants would probably admit to their girlfriends or boyfriends or creditors. Since the first edition of Guitar Hero was introduced in 2005 (by the game developer RedOctane, which had worked on the arcade hit Guitar Freaks, in collaboration with Harmonix, a savvy programming group soon afterward bought out by MTV), more than twenty-five million copies have been purchased in sales totaling more than $2 billion. Rock Band, which is basically an upgraded spin-off of the guitar game developed by Harmonix for groups of people simulating performance on multiple instruments, came out about three years after Guitar Hero, and it has already sold more than four million copies in sales of about $600 million. Moreover, because it encourages music downloading of new songs for game play, it is responsible for some thirty million digital song purchases. Tim Geithner might do worse than license the Fed to Harmonix.
Over the past few months I have rationalized as research for this article several dozen hours playing both Guitar Hero and Rock Band--alone, in online group sessions, with a couple of amateur-musician friends, and once with a colleague’s fourteen-year-old son and his best pal. I came to the task happily, as a former garage-band guitarist and piano player with no particular enmity, and no particular zeal, for video games. I have never stopped any of my three kids from playing the games they liked, and I count as luck the fact that they have not been interested in the ultra-violent stuff. Still, our family time has never been spent sitting around the PlayStation console. Ours is more of a movie-night house. Playing Rock Band, I knew I looked ridiculous holding a cheesy plastic faux-Stratocaster; yet some of the best times I have enjoyed with my children have required me to look ridiculous. (For more than a few of those movie nights, we have all dressed in clothes to match the films.)
As with most video games, the play action of Guitar Hero and Rock Band takes place in a fictive landscape conjured in a vein of digital stylization now so familiar to gamers that it has become a form of realism, a projected reality of the digitally fabulous. As usual, the player is represented on screen by an avatar--in these games, either a real rock star or a custom hybrid of actual or player-invented characters such as one, say, with the hair of Billy Idol and the nose of your cousin Donny. The player chooses a song from the game’s selections (or downloads one) and plays by fingering the colored buttons on one of the goofy, cheap-looking plastic instruments designed and marketed for the purpose. There’s a bit more to the games, and they are not all the same, but the main idea is to approximate the notes played on a recording. With success at that, the player progresses, and the avatar gets richer and more famous. Billy Idol/cousin Donny goes from playing in small clubs to concert halls to stadiums, amassing more and more of the material benefits of rock celebrity--first a van, then a tour bus, eventually a private jet … grander stage sets and bigger speakers, more dry ice and lasers, larger and more adulatory crowds of sexed-up kids….
Elementally, then, the games are concerned with the creation of identity, the mastery of rules, and the navigation of social systems as means of earning distinction and rewards. It fits that they would appeal to adolescents (and regressive adults) struggling to come to terms with the grown-up world. There is no harm in all this, though clear dangers lie in the consequences of success in these games’ schemes--that is, in their opulent glorification of ego-gratifying luxury, idolatry, and easy sex. Foremost among those hazards is the delusion that an ego adequate to achieving rock stardom can be gratified by any amount of anything.
Print
COMMENTS (8)
It's hard to know what to do with this column. Inasmuch as I almost never agree with Mr. Hajdu on musical matters, being a fan of that brand of rock 'n roll he casually dismisses as "outrageously stupid" and "blandly hyperactive" (can one be both bland and hyperactive?) and "formulaic", there's really no point in getting on my high horse and declaring that any music critic who presumes that there's no difference worth mentioning between Mudhoney and Motörhead or Queen and Queensrÿche has effectively removed themselves from the conversation about rock 'n roll as it stands today.
But leave aside matters of taste. I would hope that the subhed of this article did not come from the author, bec ... view full comment
It's hard to know what to do with this column. Inasmuch as I almost never agree with Mr. Hajdu on musical matters, being a fan of that brand of rock 'n roll he casually dismisses as "outrageously stupid" and "blandly hyperactive" (can one be both bland and hyperactive?) and "formulaic", there's really no point in getting on my high horse and declaring that any music critic who presumes that there's no difference worth mentioning between Mudhoney and Motörhead or Queen and Queensrÿche has effectively removed themselves from the conversation about rock 'n roll as it stands today.
But leave aside matters of taste. I would hope that the subhed of this article did not come from the author, because the piece makes no effort to prove that Guitar Hero and Rock Band are ruining rock music. The first step in doing that would be to assert that rock music is being ruined, and I can find no passages in this piece that make any such claim; indeed, none that talk about the current state of rock music at all.
The claim that Mr. Hajdu does seem to be making is that these games are turning kids who might be forming rock bands, and thus improving rock music, into kids who are playing games where they pretend to be in rock bands. This claim is short on evidence, but it does strum the chords of kids-these-days-ism that are the stock in trade of so many cultural critics. How could it be the case that a series of video games which began publication in 2005 has deprived us of budding rock musicians when there is more rock out there than ever before, in so many different forms and genres, available from so many different outlets?
Even if one is willing to grant the rather counterintuitive premise that a budding musician could be dissuaded from taking up the axe by the lure of CG boobs in Rock Band (rather than, as seems more likely, becoming even more interested and focused in music as an avocation) surely it's not potential rock virtuosos who would fall by the wayside in this fashion. Casual listeners who admire musicians, but lack the talent or discipline to take the stage themselves, are much more liable to prefer spending $99 on a copy of Rock Band rather than a used Fender Stratocaster -- how is rock harmed thereby?
It seems almost self-evident to me that Rock Band helps train (in a rudimentary, but still valuable way) its players in the minimum requirements of making rock music. Manual dexterity and timing -- and yes, Mr. Hajdu, "speed and flash" are also integral to the form in some of its best incarnations -- are things that one must develop to make rock music that's worth hearing. There is a difference between making music with a punky, anti-virtuosity aesthetic and making off-beat noise full of sour notes and sloppy phrasing.
Finally, it seems Mr. Hajdu wants it both ways. He criticizes Rock Band for privileging "speed and flash" (i.e. technical competence) over "imaginative power" -- and how much imagination can we make room for in a game where your task is to produce faithful covers of someone else's music? -- but finds fault with The Beatles: Rock Band for reimagining the career of the Fab Four rather than slavishly following the mythologized version of their history he favors.
It is certainly a valid point of view that the Beatles of Abbey Road and Let It Be were more "interesting" than the Beatles who recorded "She Loves You" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand", but it is not an unassailable one. It is worth remembering that those early, poppy singles launched the band into a position of prominence that made their later experimentation possible. Without "A Hard Day's Night" there is no audience for "She's Leaving Home" or "When I'm Sixty-Four." And rock 'n roll specifically has always been a popular medium -- it's no accident that most rock bands today want to recreate Beatlemania, not Sergeant Pepper.
I try not to waste time liking music; what time I have must be devoted to needing it.
When I'm on deadline at work, I often need Mozart or "Kind of Blue." Sometime's it's outrageous drumming and percussion of Santana's "Dance Sister Dance," or Lucinda and Emmylou harmonizing on "Greenville." Yesterday I repeatedly watched/listened to Joan Osborne backed by the Funk Brothers ripping through "What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted" until I tired of the hairs standing up on my arms.
You got to need it. All else is artifice.
I try not to waste time liking music; what time I have must be devoted to needing it.
When I'm on deadline at work, I often need Mozart or "Kind of Blue." Sometime's it's outrageous drumming and percussion of Santana's "Dance Sister Dance," or Lucinda and Emmylou harmonizing on "Greenville." Yesterday I repeatedly watched/listened to Joan Osborne backed by the Funk Brothers ripping through "What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted" until I tired of the hairs standing up on my arms.
You got to need it. All else is artifice.
I hardly know where to begin responding to this. austinexpat (hey, I'm one too!) has made far more eloquent points than I could. But let me add a few of my own. David Hajdu, you have completely missed the point of these games.
First of all, I don't disagree about the tyranny of classic rock. It's not that it's bad (which is a personal value judgment, a matter of taste), it's that it has retained its spot on the throne for too long perhaps. But what makes it appealing in this form of game, is that it's fun to play. (Let me quickly point out that there are all manner of rock genre songs on these games, not just classic rock, so your assertion is simply factually incorrect). What are you suggest ... view full comment
I hardly know where to begin responding to this. austinexpat (hey, I'm one too!) has made far more eloquent points than I could. But let me add a few of my own. David Hajdu, you have completely missed the point of these games.
First of all, I don't disagree about the tyranny of classic rock. It's not that it's bad (which is a personal value judgment, a matter of taste), it's that it has retained its spot on the throne for too long perhaps. But what makes it appealing in this form of game, is that it's fun to play. (Let me quickly point out that there are all manner of rock genre songs on these games, not just classic rock, so your assertion is simply factually incorrect). What are you suggesting? That it would be more fun, or "enriching" to play as a classical guitar quartet, or to play folk music? No one would play that game. So I guess my point here is, lighten up a bit. The "outrageously stupid" music is really fun to play. If popularity has any relation to quality (humor me for a second, oh music critic), then this music is actually really good!
Second, your assertion about the quest for sex and money being the driving force of the games is completely myopic. It's again, factually incorrect in the case of Beatles Rock Band, and in the other games, it's a sideshow. "Easy sex?" Which game were you playing? If you're implying that real life rock stars get easy sex, and this game is a rock star simulator, then yes, I guess easy sex is implied. But don't blame the game. Blame the people who like to have sex with famous people. The driving force of these games is playing them with your friends, who have to work together to master the techniques. That's sort of the definition of cooperative gaming. Your tired jibe at "male gratification" is evidently false as these games have a huge appeal among women.
I don't know what to make of your vague comments about what the relationship is between music games and playing actual music. Who cares? People know the difference between games and real life. Plenty of musicians play these games. The games are just a simulation. Do people who play the Sims have some sort of strange relationship with real life?
You claim the instruments are cheesy, and that may be true, but when looked at another way, they are really quite brilliant. These games have created a new way of interacting with your game machine. There's no reason they couldn't be played with the regular control pad (is the control pad cheesy too? It's also plastic.). But they have taken a control pad and completely upended the form factor, freeing you from the tyranny of the regular button layout and deepening the visual of the simulation. And that's just the guitar. The drum pads are basically electronic drums. To learn to play them in Rock Band, is to actually learn to play the drums. To me, that seems incredibly cool. I, personally, am proud of my new-found sense of rhythm that Rock Band has given me.
Now, onto the Beatles. Dude, come on, you can't see the forest for the trees. This game is a reverential experience. This is linking two generations together like never before. Nine year olds are getting into the Beatles. _I'm_ getting back into the Beatles. The sound mixing is incredible. When you play, it doesn't sound like you're listening to a Beatles record. It sounds like the Beatles are playing in your living room. You are seriously asserting that two Beatles at a time, alone in their studio's glass boxes, with Ringo walking out midway through, would make a great video game? Just watch the documentary and leave the rocking to us from now on.
I think in many ways, your assessment of these games shows that they actually worked on you. They did their job. They are so good that you forgot your were playing a video game. Your comments all veer towards your perception that your were doing something real, but the whole time, you forgot what it was that was actually going on. And the brilliant part about it is that the virtual experience, with the plastic guitars, the screaming fans, the fact that when you pushed a button, the notes of a song you knew were coming out of your TV, became a real life experience. That's awesome! Next time, just enjoy it. Act like a jack-ass. Jump around swinging your axe. Do a freakin' windmill. Throw your drum sticks in the air and pull a spare from your sock. You're never going to be a rock star, so just enjoy this instead for a few hours because tomorrow, you have to go to work, just like the rest of us.
The real tragedy of Guitar Hero and its progeny is that "kids" (including college students and graduates, as well as tweens and teens) devote an incredible amount of time and effort to "mastering" the skills needed to succeed at the games--utterly useless skills, which have no applicability beyond the gaming world. If only those same kids would as relentlessly and doggedly pursue mastering an actual instrument (or anything else worthwhile, like, say, reading, or learning a language, or studying)!
The real tragedy of Guitar Hero and its progeny is that "kids" (including college students and graduates, as well as tweens and teens) devote an incredible amount of time and effort to "mastering" the skills needed to succeed at the games--utterly useless skills, which have no applicability beyond the gaming world. If only those same kids would as relentlessly and doggedly pursue mastering an actual instrument (or anything else worthwhile, like, say, reading, or learning a language, or studying)!
My latest obsession recently jumped from 'The Ballad of John & Yoko' (TBOJAY) to 'God Part 2' (GP2) by U2.
TBOJAY was the Beatles last number one in the UK and for me represeented the inversion that Hadju discusses here in the end of his piece.
Previously the Beatles took everyday stories and put trippy music and behind them to make them sound intense or surreal, like Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields Forever or Day in the Life. With TBOJAY, John Lennon was living this crazy life with Bagism and Border Agents and the 'Biggeer than Christ' thing, but backing it up with ordinary music. Their lives were crazy, but the music was work.
Now I catch GP2 and the thumping bass just sticks in my he ... view full comment
My latest obsession recently jumped from 'The Ballad of John & Yoko' (TBOJAY) to 'God Part 2' (GP2) by U2.
TBOJAY was the Beatles last number one in the UK and for me represeented the inversion that Hadju discusses here in the end of his piece.
Previously the Beatles took everyday stories and put trippy music and behind them to make them sound intense or surreal, like Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields Forever or Day in the Life. With TBOJAY, John Lennon was living this crazy life with Bagism and Border Agents and the 'Biggeer than Christ' thing, but backing it up with ordinary music. Their lives were crazy, but the music was work.
Now I catch GP2 and the thumping bass just sticks in my head. I check my iPod and it's not on any of the 6 U2 CD's I have. So I google it and find out it's from Rattle & Hum. Looking into Rattle and Hum, this is kind of a 1989 Homage to Rock & Roll, similar to Rock Band video game 20 years later.
U2 was criticized for copying so much 1960's music and putting themselves in the same league as the Beatles and Bob Dylan. But 20 years later, Rattle & Hum works for me. U2 is one of the few bands that gets 'All Along the Watchtower', instead of just covering it. They listened. Throw in Helter Skelter, When Love Comes to Town, and Angel of Harlem and you really have a tribute to American Music.
When I found out God Part 2 was built upon John Lennon's 'God' off the 1st Plastic One Band album, the whole thing came together,
Don't believe in the 60's
The golden age of pop
It glorifies the past
While the future dries up
Heard a singer on the radio late last night
He says he's gonna kick the darkness
'til it bleeds daylight
I...I believe in love
I suspect Mr. Hajdju's unspoken complaint is intimacy or lack thereof.
I suspect Mr. Hajdju's unspoken complaint is intimacy or lack thereof.
To follow up on austinexpat's comments, I can vouch firsthand that exposure to Guitar Hero can lead to the development of a musician. I'm very much a music enthusiast and bought Guitar Hero shortly after it came out. At that time my son had no interest in music. He was soon playing the game obsessively, eventually beating Freebird on expert level (one of the hardest challenges of that first game). Within six months he received a guitar for Christmas. Three years later he now plays guitar obsessively (and only rarely plays Guitar Hero or Rock Band with friends). He and 3 of his friends have formed a band and recently won a competition at their school. They have also started writing the ... view full comment
To follow up on austinexpat's comments, I can vouch firsthand that exposure to Guitar Hero can lead to the development of a musician. I'm very much a music enthusiast and bought Guitar Hero shortly after it came out. At that time my son had no interest in music. He was soon playing the game obsessively, eventually beating Freebird on expert level (one of the hardest challenges of that first game). Within six months he received a guitar for Christmas. Three years later he now plays guitar obsessively (and only rarely plays Guitar Hero or Rock Band with friends). He and 3 of his friends have formed a band and recently won a competition at their school. They have also started writing their own songs. One example perhaps, but I bet not the only one.
Honestly, I know not what to make either of the article or the bulk of the comments (though I do find the one from dave.bates@etc. heartening). I'm not particularly familiar with either game, but I don't find myself worrying much over the fate of music at the hands of video games; music of whatever ilk has a long-established tendency to survive, somehow or other, the worst that society can do to it, and I don't see either of these games changing that.
Honestly, I know not what to make either of the article or the bulk of the comments (though I do find the one from dave.bates@etc. heartening). I'm not particularly familiar with either game, but I don't find myself worrying much over the fate of music at the hands of video games; music of whatever ilk has a long-established tendency to survive, somehow or other, the worst that society can do to it, and I don't see either of these games changing that.