Crock Band

Filed Under Culture

So I was waiting in line at Best Buy this afternoon — my 3-disc special edition of “Hellboy II: The Golden Army” in hand — when I heard some dinkus pattering away on a fake drum set nearby. He was playing that abortion of a video game, Rock Band, and succeeding at driving a wedge between sanity and me. It was a confluence of him, the endless slapping on the plastic drums and that goddamn Billy Idol song, “White Wedding,” three and a half minutes of unholiness that needs to be flushed from our popular culture sooner rather than later. The cacophany was a bigger buzzkill than learning the third disc of my “Hellboy” set was one of those worthless digital copies.

What the stink is Rock Band, you ask? Well, if you don’t already know — and I’m envious of you — it’s basically a set of Fisher Price musical instruments that you plug into your PS3 or XBOX 360 or Wii to play a sort of instrumental karaoke, mashing buttons on your “guitar” or banging on your “drums” in time with some crap song by Aerosmith or another sellout musical group that hasn’t topped the charts in forever. You’re making about as much music as a toddler playing with pots and pans.

If you want to play a musical instrument, play a friggin’ musical instrument — a real one. I regret never learning to play the guitar, but I still have time to learn. I know some video game console isn’t going to teach me, though. The amount of time these goofballs devote to playing with a plastic musical instrument could be spent learning to actually play a musical instrument. I think you’ll impress more girls that way. Ask Billy Idol.

-Brad Lohan

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