Quality Or Quantity: More About Rock Band And Guitar Hero

By now you've been inundated with articles all asking the question "Is Guitar Hero/Rock Band going to save rock and roll?" I was reading one of the latest of these in the March issue of the Atlantic this year, and it felt like most of the rest of the articles in this style, someone, who at one point in their lives, had liked rock and roll when rock and roll ruled the entertainment world, saw the steady decline of rock and roll in its own hedonism and now sees "the kids" are coming back to rock.

The answer, is of course, yes, but that's assuming rock and roll needs to be saved. I don't think it does. There will be rock bands on top of the world and living lavish lifestyles beyond my fascination or imagination, but it's not going to globally dominating. What I think a lot of these people want, secretly, is not for rock and roll to be saved, but to be returned to the cultural touchstone it once was among the youth, everywhere. Sadly (for them), hip-hop and electronic music crashed the party and not all the youth dream in distorted guitar solos these days.

The industry will be fine, but they're going to have to adjust to new expectations. Those new expectations are simple: Records are not going to be diamond certified any more, unless digital sales are taken into account and a record is really, really lucky. So, if rock and roll is Motley Crue or Van Halen, then yes, rock is dead and it's not coming back. There are too many avenues to hear bands that aren't controlled by labels or radio stations and this means that among other things, that there probably won't be those same kind of cultural touchstones.

Music, nay, performance, lives and dies, James Parker, notes (at the end of that same peice), in the heads of teenagers everywhere, which is good, because Guitar Hero and Rock Band enable that. These products, hopefully, he says are exciting a new generation of rockers. And I include myself in that and enjoy these products, because, frankly, I don't have the backbone or courage to start a band of my own and it feels real fucking good to scream along to any Rage Against the Machine song, putting the microphone to my friends who also know the song and might be playing.

And yes, I know it's not real guitars and real drums. Baudrillard would be hung up on that. I'm not. It's a reasonable approximation of rocking out for the purpose of having fun and blowing off steam. But, as Parker mentions, rock and roll was always based on some delusion, whether it was a band starting wanting to be like an earlier group, or doing covers or, just being silly.

I see Rock Band and Guitar Hero in that tradition and the idea of hyperreality doesn't enter my mind. I know it's not real. It's not supposed to be real. It is supposed to mimic. That's why all the crazy avatars are there. It's not a real band. It's just fucking around and having fun. If you know anything about bands, then I might have just come full circle. Most bands start out as not being serious and then snowballing from there.

So, in the sense that Rock Band and Guitar Hero is not trying to be real, the closer it comes to being authentic. Funny thing, that. I wonder Baudriallard would think, but I hope he'd have the prensence of mind to drop the pretense and pick up a plastic instrument.