By Joe Procopio

You know what I don’t need? I don’t need anybody else telling me how I should not take another breath on this Earth until I play Guitar Hero. I get it. I’m a nerd. I play guitar. It’s as obvious as telling a cowboy he needs a hat or an operations manager he needs a bad attitude and an ugly shirt.

I am a rock star in my own deluded mind. Back in the ’80s, I toured with the Police, U2, and many other mega-acts armed only with a tennis racket and a boombox. I still sneak into the garage on weekends to play Rock Band for real. But for me, this new wave of air-guitar-as-video-game has been like when a friend gives you a ceramic chicken and you display it prominently in your kitchen because you respect the giver if not the gift, then suddenly every birthday, Christmas, and Father’s Day is a constant parade of ceramic chickens.

Yes, I play guitar. Yes, I dig video games. But you know what I can’t do in real life? Mow down a bunch of belligerent aliens, toss a perfect spiral to Jehrico Cotchery, or wield a lightsaber that isn’t a flashlight and a stick. I can play guitar. And it’s not that exciting. Well, it is, but only to my imaginary fans, and that includes a burgeoning and lively fan club run by an overtly, almost annoyingly energetic young woman named Suzy. With a “Z”. I don’t know why she spells it like that.

The static I’m getting on Guitar Hero mirrors what happened to me when the Sims was the latest evolution of video games and I was a loser until I played that. While the faithful were deciphering the grunts and garble that comprised “Simlish” and waxing far too seriously on whether or not the line between virtual reality and painful reality had been permanently blurred, I pretty much missed the whole fad because I already felt like I had the high score when it came to cooking, cleaning, and going to the bathroom.

Anyway, I had been open about my disdain for Guitar Hero for a very long time. I say “had” because not too long ago I was Christmas shopping offline and wandered into a game store with my twin toddler daughters so they could pretend to play the Wii demo – they watch the running 30-second clips from various Nintendo games and smack each other with the controllers, it’s priceless – and next to us is a group of teens, probably college freshman, HUGE nerds, putting a hurting on a Pat Benetar song. I was impressed, in a video-game way, not in a real way, and then one of the teens who had been watching his buddies roll to untold fake fame strapped on a wireless Les Paul controller and proceeded to suck. Mightily. It was like watching Van Halen with Gary Cherrone singing. Even my daughters looked at him like… “Dude.”

So he wraps up and his friends are being merciless, and he explodes. He issues this proclamation about how it’s well know that actual guitarists are statistically much worse at Guitar Hero than your standard gamer, which is true, because the intangibles that make one guitarist better than another work against you in the game. However, he should have stopped there, because the next thing he said got him into trouble:

“I do this every weekend for real with a real band in front of real people…”

And the next thing sent him over the edge.

“…at the Cat’s Cradle!”

That happens to be one of the most well-known alternative/independent live rock venues on the eastern seaboard (and also happens to be 10 minutes from the mall we were at). I still hear the laughter of his friends when I close my eyes. I mean, I was laughing too, but you’ve got to take your cautionary tales where you find them.

So now I’m not so pompous when I talk about eschewing Guitar Hero and Rock Band and the like. I started brushing it off with an excuse about how I was worried that it would affect my guitar playing, but this ultimately put me right back there with Cat’s Cradle Kid. I’m no virtuoso, I just like playing loud music and jumping around for a couple hours every week. It’s a little like the tennis racket and boombox thing.

A little.

So these days I respond by talking about how Guitar Hero isn’t really my bag, the way that Grand Theft Auto and Aquaman: Battle for Atlantis weren’t really my bag. But the thing is, as I’ve woefully drawn out for you, it’s totally my bag. The bag actually has my name embroidered on it in a kind of metallic silver thread with unmistakable workmanship. I could and should be playing this and, what’s more, I should probably enjoy it. The song choices are inspired – stuff everyone knows that isn’t too annoying on repeat play, and since it’s all about the guitar, I’ve already learned quite a few of these songs on my slowly-antiquating analog guitar. It’s like I’ve already practiced, save for that bit about guitarists not being good at it, which probably isn’t that true.

Oh, and I’m not afraid of not being good at video games. Geek as I am, video games are still just video games to me. I’m afraid of not being good at life.

Furthermore, now that the phenomenon has blown up – along with the Wii, Guitar Hero III was one of the must-have, out-of-stock-everywhere items this past holiday season – the game crossed over from geek to mainstream. Example: I laughed and laughed at the World of Warcraft episode of Southpark because it was funny and I only had the slightest general grasp of what they were making fun of. Wizards and hit points, yeah, I know of them, but I’ve never worn a “magic” bathrobe or addressed anyone using the pronoun “thou.” The Guitar Hero episode of Southpark, while probably funnier, made me feel a little sick inside.

As usual, I’ll be honest with you. That’s what’s really bugging me. As much as I pride myself on being a geek, I’m very protective of those things which keep me rooted in things non-geek. And there’s a pattern here that’s just kicking off but will eventually turn rock into the new geek. It happened with sports. I love sports. I played sports. Sports are invariably not geek. Except now they are. What began uneventfully with the Madden franchise slowly evolved into fantasy football and now when I talk sports, I find I’m talking about X numbers and trends and statistical variances.

Hey, wait! This is what I talk about when I’m talking about technology!

I think what it comes down to is that rock was the last bastion of cool in my life. I’m too old for a risky haircut, too responsible for a trendy wardrobe, and I gave up the convertible and a whole lot of drinking. Sports, as I mentioned, became fantasy sports, which contains the word “fantasy,” which brings to mind elves. And the life was already sucked out of every other genre of music by keyboards, digital studio overkill, and sampling, all brought on by advances in technology. Rock was all I had left. It was tech-free. Rock was three chords and a black T-shirt. Now rock is red-red-green-red-blue-yellow-greeeeeeeeeeeen.

Rock has become Simon.

So that, in all honesty, is why I don’t want to play Guitar Hero. You can look at me like I’m the oldster hippie clinging to his tie-dyes and 8-tracks if you want. And I know what you’re thinking. Wrong forum. This lament about technology invading the rock universe is more suited for RockJournal South, which, incidentally, is where I give most of my imaginary rock star interviews. But the thing is – I don’t believe I’m alone among the techies on this one. There are hordes of us in the industry who have learned to embrace the geek badge without completely succumbing to the cliché. We’re in rock bands and we play sports and we follow fashion and, all in all, we’re still pretty hip. We like to put technology back in its box at a certain time of day. So when technology begins to encroach on those things we hold dear, we get all uppity.

Or maybe I am alone. Maybe I’m the one nerd out of millions who happen to play guitar and who isn’t looking at Guitar Hero as the perfect crossover between chic and geek chic. After all, Slash is in the game and in the ad. Not Mark Mothersbaugh. Not David Byrne. Not even John Flansburgh. Slash.

Either way, this will still be my stance twenty years from now, when I’m complaining to the kids about how in my day guitars had strings and plugged into amplifiers, and you played it with a little piece of plastic called a “pick,” and the music didn’t come from your fingers, it came from your soul. Which you then sold to the devil.

Now get off my lawn.

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Joe Procopio is the founder of Intrepid Media, a company that merges the social and business web (intrepidmedia.net) and a publishing company/creative network (intrepidmedia.com). He is currently writing Gleaning the Cube, a collection of humorous techie columns that includes exclusive new material. Joe is also working on his solo debut album, “XML on Main Street.” He can be reached at joe@intrepidmedia.net.

 

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