I Want To (Pretend To) Rock!

I’ve had the urge to play one of several music based video games lately. Sometimes my sons will play these games along with me but, most often, I go it alone in my basement after putting them to bed. When playing Rock Band, I usually play the guitar and sing at the same time, using my makeshift microphone stand constructed of an old music stand and duct tape. If it’s Guitar Hero, I sing along anyway since I was too cheap to upgrade to Band Hero.

Needless to say, I have a lot of fun and it’s a fantastic way to blow off some steam after a long day. However, even though there are so many volumes of each of these games and extra track packs, I find myself growing weary of the same songs. I think if I sing Radiohead’s Creep one more time, I will completely burn out the octave I use near the end to sing, “She’s running out the door” and while Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun was a popular song whose lyrics I know, it’s not exactly my favorite. Frankly, singing it sort of gives me the heebie-jeebies.

I dream of a day when every song can be downloaded for play on Rock Band or Guitar Hero. I have no doubt this is somewhere in the future of gaming. Eventually, as soon as a song is available for download on iTunes, a video game playable version of it will be created and available as well. Despite how obscure a track may be, you will be able to play several levels of difficulty of it on your faux guitar and have the words to sing along to scrolling across your screen. Someday, I will be able to rock out to The Killers’ A Dustland Fairytale and follow it with Air Supply’s Making Love Out Of Nothing At All, though you certainly wouldn’t want to be in earshot for it.

Of course this does make me wish I’d had the foresight to learn to play a cool instrument when I was a kid. Had I learned the guitar or drums, I might have had the courage to start my own band. Alas, I played the trombone in the school band. Not exactly a big demand for trombone players on today’s rock n’ roll scene.

Often, I actually find myself wishing I’d learned to play the piano. I would most surely assemble a monster band then. I’d base it upon Electric Mayhem from the Muppets and myself after Dr. Teeth.

In fact, since there have been music games released specifically for various bands (Aerosmith, Metallica, AC/DC, The Beatles) why not come out with an Electric Mayhem version of Rock Band. You would just have to add an organ. Seeing as their library of hits wasn’t very extensive, they could just cover other band’s songs and just have the Muppets displayed on screen playing along. Of course every song would have to have a raging drum solo added to its end. Then there would have to be a headset microphone to make sure that upon the song’s completion, the drummer breathed in and out heavily and did the “Ahhh ahhh ahhh” trademark Animal laugh.

Can you picture that?