Why Guitar Hero Sucks

Somehow amidst all the hoopla of guitar-shaped controllers and the bastard stepchildren of electronic drum kits, I have managed to keep from playing Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and/or any similar game. Admittedly, at first it was because I was being a total snob/asshole and didn’t want to be associated with the unwashed masses who could now, as CNN.com phrased it, “play as if they have talent.” But as time has gone on I have come to completely loathe the games, and for reasons much subtler and sinister than any hipster trend: they actually attempt to demystify the art and beauty of music. By reducing songs to their intrinsic physical values – notes of a certain pitch played at certain intervals in the company of, and in relation to, other instruments and/or singers – the games remove the mystery of music, for musicians and listeners alike. Additionally, they promote the theory that music is only “good” if it is played “correctly” – bringing back nightmares of overbearing music teachers to many ex-students. Screw it up and you get the grating guitar-flub sound; too many, and you lose the round. (I don’t even want to get into the fact that it completely ignores the realms of dynamic and intensity – a tap on the button is the same as mashing it.)
One way or another, the games advocate the idea that when someone writes a song they are merely lining up colored buttons on a timeline, and that songs can just as equally be reduced to their components. I'm sure some will favorably compare the timeline found in Guitar Hero to sheet music, but the games, by their nature, remove the human element. Sheet music provides (often very strict) guidelines, but they are still only guidelines - each performance of the same music can vary in tempo, dynamic, and even pitch, affected by a player's skill, memory, and even mood at the time of performance. Not so in Guitar Hero - you learn, not to play music, but to play a monkey while the console grinds its organ.
Any artist will tell you that art is the truest application of the idea of “synergy”: though ultimately a song is just a series of notes played in succession to a particular rhythm, and a painting is just a collection of paint strokes with different colors and styles of paints, and literature is just a collection of ink marks on pages, they are made more than that by the artistic processes which place them in the contexts they eventually exist within. They cannot be reduced again to their original elements – but they can be destroyed, if you so wish.
(I realize I may be over analyzing what is, after all, a game, but as more makers and users of the games promote their “instructional” benefits, I begin to balk at the comparisons to real instruments and practice.)

Top Five

A few weeks back I had a discussion about top five bands. It made me curious to see what other people would say, so I'll list mine here and anyone and everyone who reads this should feel free to add your own picks.

(In no particular order):

Foo Fighters
O.k., no surprise here. They remain my all-time favorite. Not only because they just released one of the best albums of their career (13 years in - who else can make that claim?), but because they consistently write good songs. Sure I love Coheed & Cambria's insane concept albums and The Mars Volta's outrageous prog-rock epics, but the Foos keep plugging away at making good albums made of good songs, and even when they fail at that (One By One, arguably In Your Honor), they still manage to have some of the most phenomenal songs - "All My Life," from One By One, could be the defining statement of the band's career, and "Razor" is probably the most unexpected yet subtly powerful Foo Fighters song, delivered at the close if In Your Honor's second disc. What I'm saying is, even at their weakest they blow everyone else away.

Unfortunately I don't have time to really flesh out the next four, but I will list them:

Sunny Day Real Estate
Jimmy Eat World
House of Heroes
Further Seems Forever

And what have you been listening to?

Friends always like to know what their friends are listening to, but when I hear a new album I'm usually curious about what the artist has been listening to, both when writing and recording their albums. Here are some guesses:

Shai Hulud has definitely been listening to Further Seems Forever. If you take the vocals out of their latest album, Misanthropy Pure (but why would you? Those vocals are sweeeeet), a lot of parts sound like early FSF in particular, and even the hardest and fastest parts still have that Josh Colbert (primary FSF songwriter) flavor (if you have any real doubts, just listen to 1:44-1:51 on "Be Winged"). It makes for one of my favorite hardcore releases in recent memory.

Coldplay has, ironically, only been listening to themselves, but that's probably not surprising to many people. What is surprising is how Viva la Vida is also surprisingly reminiscent of Take Me To Your Leader-era Newsboys. The main guitar riff from "Violet Hill" as well as the bridge on "Lovers in Japan" smack of Peter Furler and his boys. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing at ALL.

Weezer have been listening to... well, a lot of things. If I had to guess I'd say Gordon Lightfoot, Cat Stevens, Joan Baez, Eddie Rabbitt, Abba, Devo, Pat Benatar, Bruce Springsteen, Grover Washington, Quiet Riot, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Slayer, Debbie Gibson, Michael Jackson, the Fresh Prince (and Jazzy Jeff, I’m assuming), and Nirvana. (Sorry, that was a long joke, and not even funny, but I couldn't really resist.)

The worst offender as of late, and the real reason the subject came up, is the Offspring. Those guys have been pissing me off for years with blatant ripoffs. It's one thing to pay homage to someone, but when you blatantly reuse ideas (like on "Why Don't You Get a Job?," which pillages the Beatles' "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da") and achieve massive success with it, that's just bad form, as Capt. Hook would remind you. Their latest offense involves their single "Hammerhead," which steals so many dynamics from Rise Against's "Chamber the Cartridge" it should be illegal. Let's list them:
Intro
"Chamber" features an audio recording of the L in Chicago, eventually announcing "This is Noyes" (a stop on my way to work for many months, by the way, and I often thought about how sweet it would be to use that announcement as an album intro; RA beat me to it). As this is going on, a lo-fi drum roll starts, eventually joined by a dirge-like guitar riff. It eventually swells into a drum roll which leads into the (hi-fi) song.
"Hammerhead" starts with some (lo-fi) instrumental noodling before a crappy punk drumbeat starts up. Still lo-fi, a minor-key guitar riff joins it, then they play a fill which leads right into the (hi-fi) song.
Chorus
Shouts of "Woah-oh-oh" are nothing new in pop or punk-rock, but the striking similarities between the two songs cannot be denied.
Outro
"Hammerhead" dissolves almost completely before returning with a much more groove-oriented rhythm that destroys any energy the song had. "Chamber," meanwhile, dissolves to a kick drum and a new guitar riff before returning with a groove-oriented rhythm that kicks serious ass.

It's been ten years since the Offspring's biggest hits, and I'd probably be running on fumes, too. But since Rise Against has burst on the scene (I hear them on KROQ more frequently that any other band -they currently have four singles from their latest album, The Sufferer & the Witness), people have been taking notice. It's not surprising that the Offspring are some of those people. But by copying the band poorly, all they really illustrate is the massive discrepancy between the two bands - the Offspring is a bunch of rich ex-hipsters (seriously, they've got a corporate jet with an anarchy logo on the tail - if that's not irony, I don't know what is), while Rise Against are probably on track to be the first band since Refused to break up due to how strongly they hold to their worldviews - but in the meantime they're giving us some of the most raucous, fist-pumping anthems in years.

Prelude

O.k., I swear I’ve been meaning to write a few lengthy articles here, but things have just been slipping away from me lately. I have been actively preparing a few things, though, and hopefully will post them all soon.

In the meantime I just checked Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s MySpace and discovered the best news of the fall – Oct. 7th will see the release of two albums: Animal! and not animal, as they call it. I’m super excited for both. Not animal actually has more songs that I’ve been dying to have recorded versions of (“Broadripple,” “As Tall as Cliffs,” “The Ocean”), but Animal! will also be great, I am convinced. I’ve seen plenty of crappy YouTube videos of new songs and have remained skeptical, but seeing the new songs performed live recently (in person) really blew me away. Sure, they weren’t all as instantly catchy as “Vampires in Blue Dresses” or “Quiet as a Mouse” (“German Motor Car” definitely IS as catchy, though), but the new songs showcase an increased musical depth and lyrical, well… psychosis may be the most fitting term. It all adds up to a bizarre, Tom Waits-meets-Anathallo-meets-Indiana sort of vibe, which is hard to quantify but sounds like nothing else. “At the Carnival” and “Love Song for a Schuba’s Bartender” creep along like black smoke, while the aforementioned “German Motor Car” has the most radio-ready opening they’ve performed before devolving into something else entirely, and “My Baby (Shoots Her Mouth Off)” is reminiscent of twothirtyeight’s “The Bathroom is a Creepy Place” (at least in its live incarnation), and we all know that sounding like twothirtyeight is never a bad thing (don’t we?).

I have now used far too many parentheses in this post. More soon.

P.S. - Animal! will be released only on vinyl and digital download, while not animal will be released on CD and digital download. Apparently that's how you solve a game of tug-of-war with your record label. Win-win for the fans!

Self-Promotion

I'm currently preoccupied (in addition to keeping up at work) with writing lyrics for the songs I've got recorded/demoed. Recording vocals tonight, so for those of you that like my music, hopefully there will be some new, mostly-completed songs very soon.

Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Red

I'm off to San Francisco in just a little bit here, visiting the Stawarzes!! And anyone who knows who they are know how fun it's going to be. I hope they don't expect me to change any diapers, as I still have never done that IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. No joke.

So this week I'm not all full of musical thoughts (or maybe I am, just not verbose). So let's go straight to recommendations!

Something Old:
Steve Taylor, Squint
I may have mentioned this album before, but it deserves another bump. While the music is starting to feel slightly dated, Taylor's lyrics still hold up as a modern masterpiece of genuine Christian critique, not slander, cynicism or disdain. Thoughtful and catchy, with an undercurrent of humor and even joy, Squint stands, sadly, quite alone.

Something New:
House of Heroes, The End Is Not The End
While I'm still withholding a complete verdict until hearing the album as a whole, after hearing 8 songs I'm pleased with most of it. While they sometimes flirt with too much studio trickery, HoH are poised to present an enjoyable follow-up to their unexpectedly fantastic self-titled album.

Something Borrowed:
Foo Fighters, "Band on the Run"
I'll be honest, I've never been a huge fan of Foo covers, this one is incredibly good. Just search around and you'll find it online, it's well worth whatever amount of effort you expend.

Something Red:
Weezer, "Pork & Beans"
From their third self-titled album (otherwise known as "The Red Album"), Weezer seem to be getting at least a little of their old spark and ingenuity back. The chunka-chunkas right before the chorus are monstrous, and the "I don't give a hoot" line is reminiscent of their early carefree attitude. Throw in the fact that Rivers Cuomo is sporting an unabashedly horrific molestache now, and you can feel the excitement building.

H.A.A.R.P.

I picked up Muse's new live DVD on Tuesday, H.A.A.R.P. It is a mind-boggling picture of a band that has reached the pinnacle of rock and roll - their performances are flawless, the stage show is captivating, and their sonic presence is incredible. The fact that they remain a three-piece for most of their songs adds to the unbelievability of it all. But what really impressed me was their resonance with the crowd.

And by resonance, I mean the singalongs.

I don't think Muse would strike many people as a "pop" band, yet their rhythms and melodies get stuck in the brain, and their songs are easy to sing along to, even if you can't reach Matthew Bellamy's high range. What is probably more influential, though, is their lyrical content. The only area where comparisons to Radiohead can be even partly justified, Bellamy's lyrics tend to focus on conspiracies and paranoia. Even uplifting songs ("Invincible," "Starlight") have sinister undertones. And while Bellamy finds inspiration in contemporary subjects like aliens, government mistrust, and the scientific program their live album is named after, paranoia in music can easily be traced back to the blues, if not further.

You may be looking for the blues/paranoia connection, but it's there. What is the draw for so many people to blues music, and for that matter, any music with sad or depressing sounds or subject matter? Paranoia. Maybe your life is going great, but everyone can relate to a bluesman singing about a broken heart. And our paranoia causes us to revel in someone else's singing (whether based on real events or not) about such hard times: we like the reminder that things aren't so bad for us, but we also want to be prepared for when things get tough again (as they surely will). And, of course, we like feeling a little bit of sympathy for a sad troubadour.

When it comes down to it, we listen to music, and experience art in general, because of an artist's ability to better or differently express feelings and emotions we ourselves experience. Listening to music that can give us the creeps - or, alternatively, suggest a way to fight such creepy feelings - is a form of release. Even (especially?) if it's hearing Bellamy scream, "Our time is running out!"

Other recommendations:
Led Zeppelin's fourth album. Is there a better opening riff in rock music than "Black Dog"? I propose to you that there is not. The middle of the album has some high points too.