Rock Band

Summer, 2008. I was twenty-five years old and had recently dropped out of college for the second time. (Okay, I actually was put on academic dismissal) I lived in a two-bedroom townhouse in a suburb of Dayton, Ohio, with my sister. My brother had lived with a friend somewhere nearby but moved in with us just weeks prior. My parents lived about a forty-five minutes’ drive away in a Cincinnati suburb. They were there for my dad’s job whilst my siblings and I were in the Dayton area for school the past three years. My sister was the only one who graduated, as my brother had also dropped out of college. We weren’t planning on staying in the townhouse for long since none of us were going to school anymore; my parents certainly weren’t about to continue paying double rent when we weren’t furthering our education anymore.

Nevertheless, that summer, the three of us were in the two-story townhouse for a bit longer. I was fortunate to have the master bedroom – a privilege I would no longer have again, even to this day – whilst my sister took the second bedroom. When my brother moved in with us, he stayed on the couch in the living room. Thankfully, he didn’t have a lot of possessions, and I’d recently gone through my excess items and got rid of a large amount of it. We had a small storage unit behind the townhouse, which my sister and I used to store our extra stuff.

At the time, my brother, at twenty-seven, worked at Best Buy and was fascinated with the “latest and greatest” in technology, especially when it came to mobile phones and video games. One of the latest consoles of the time was the Xbox 360, and he just had to have it. He bought one, of course, and played lots of NFL games on it, as well as some other games here and there. He was always obsessed with playing the coaching/management side of Madden NFL games, rarely playing an actual football game. When NFL Head Coach came out, he bought a copy, but was disappointed in the game. I never really understood why, but then again, I never understood the appeal of just managing players on a team within the game and not actually, you know, playing the game.

I had a Nintendo 64, along with a “cobalt” Game Boy Advance SP (it’s the purplest cobalt I’ve ever seen) and the boxed Atari 2600 that once belonged to my parents. My brother had given it to me, claiming the console didn’t work, but the games and controllers still worked. I’d planned to eventually have it repaired or replaced, but almost all of it sadly went missing in the move to Pennsylvania in late 2010. My sister had a PlayStation but never played it; I once borrowed it, along with a friend’s copy of Final Fantasy VII, and had a blast playing the first twenty hours of the game before returning both game and console to their respective owners. I also obtained a black GameCube around that time, as the aforementioned friend got a Wii for Christmas and didn’t want his GameCube any longer. He gave it to me, along with his copy of Tales of Symphonia and a purchased copy of Mario Party 4. At the time, I still wasn’t all that serious about game collecting, but I liked all the systems and games I owned.

Then my brother introduced us to Rock Band.

He got the game on his 360, and had even bought a drum set, a guitar and a microphone for the family to play. Our parents were coming up for a visit soon, so he’d downloaded “Call Me” by Blondie so my mom could participate as well. I’d only heard of Guitar Hero prior to this, so the idea of a similar game, but with more instruments and an option for vocals, was quite intriguing to me. The last time I’d played an instrument was in the mid- to late 90s, when I was in the school orchestra and played the cello. I’d quit because I couldn’t stand the teacher and her obvious bias towards certain students, so I dropped the class and never played the cello again. Don’t get me wrong, I loved playing the cello, but those instruments are big, heavy and expensive… and nobody in the family, not even my parents, had the money to even buy one second-hand from a pawn shop.

However, with Rock Band, there were options to play an instrument, though technically only three. There were the drums, rhythm guitar and bass guitar. In addition to the instruments, one could pick up the microphone and just sing, keeping one’s pitch in tune to the actual song.

And I love singing.

Going back even further than the cello in middle and intermediate high school, I was in the school choir when I was in fifth grade. I’d tried out for it my last year of elementary school, made it and was placed in the alto section. I’d had so much fun singing in the choir then, but the idea of playing an instrument in middle school appealed to me more. That was why I’d joined the orchestra in sixth grade instead of the choir. Regardless, over the years, I continued singing along to my favourite songs; if my parents heard me, they’d harshly critique my singing – as if they sang any better – so I’d fine-tune my voice the best I could. And tried not to sing around them as often.

As mentioned in previous stories, when it comes to video games, I tend to watch someone else play it for a while before I pick up a controller. It’s just something I’d done when I was younger, and it’s something I still do today. It helps me figure out how to play the game better, as opposed to rushing in blind and getting killed right off the bat. I’m not very skilled at video games – whether it’s poor eye-hand coordination, some unknown problem with brain functionality or something else, I don’t know – so taking this approach has helped me tremendously. I rely heavily on strategy guides and walkthrough videos, especially when it comes to RPGs. With Rock Band, however, no regular game-playing skills are needed; one just needs to know how to do the basic motions of playing a guitar (holding the neck with one hand whilst moving their other hand up and down on the pickups on the body) or drums (hitting a certain drum in a certain pattern and rhythm with drumsticks) or holding a microphone to their mouth and singing. That’s it.

When my parents came for a visit, my brother let them go first. He gave my dad the microphone and let him sing along to “War Pigs” by Black Sabbath. My dad was a huge fan of Ozzy and loved to sing the opening lyrics to “War Pigs” in a very exaggerated manner. When he tried doing so in Rock Band, he lost points right away. He was frustrated and disappointed, and quickly gave up before the song had even gone halfway. My brother offered the mic to my mom to sing the Blondie song, but she politely refused. I have a feeling she didn’t want to try when she couldn’t sing it the way she wanted.

That left me and my siblings to play the game.

Through trial and error, my sister ended up on the drums, my brother on rhythm guitar, and me on vocals. We played through Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs”, Radiohead’s “Creep”, Blue Öyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” and many more. My sister became frustrated with how hard she had to hit the drums sometimes, but we all had a lot of fun playing through the songs and delighting in unlocking more of them. We normally never got along for more than ten minutes or so, but Rock Band brought us together for several hours across one or two days, and I’ll never forget that.

I think we chose this logo because it looked like Japanese kanji. yeah yeah, weebs blah blah blah

Later, my brother let my sister and I play by ourselves – this game was seriously addicting – and we created our own characters within the game and formed a two-person band. I don’t recall the name we chose for the band, but we had a logo consisting of a red flag with some weird symbol in the middle. My sister’s character looked like she stepped out of the grunge era of the 90s whilst my character was head-to-toe emo. Think My Chemical Romance.

oh yeah, totally emo

The above photo is of the television when I’d made the character; I only had a digital camera at the time and no other way to preserve the character designs. I took several pictures of my character with the intention of drawing her sometime. I believe I drew two pictures before running out of ideas and inspiration.

kurt kobain called, he wants his ripped-up clothes back

My sister and I played through many, many songs together, with her on drums and me on vocals. We were a bizarre little band, but we had so much fun playing each song and unlocking even more songs. I learnt about several songs I’d never heard of before, such as “Maps” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs and “Time We Had” by The Mother Hips. My sister soon grew tired of slamming the drumsticks on partially unresponsive drums and quit playing.

Before I knew it, I was alone with my brother’s Xbox 360, Rock Band and a USB microphone. I used my emo gal and sang through countless songs, from “Dani California” by Red Hot Chili Peppers to “Go with the Flow” by Queens of the Stone Age to “Say It Ain’t So” by Weezer, and more. I learnt to hit exceptionally low notes with “In Bloom” by Nirvana and maintain long-held notes with “Black Hole Sun” by Soundgarden. I even discovered songs that quickly became favourites of mine, including “Vasoline” by Stone Temple Pilots and “Learn to Fly” by Foo Fighters. It was so, so much fun to me, since I was only graded on how well I sang (and I got 100% on most songs on easy and normal modes) and didn’t have to memorise waves of enemy formations, know how to effectively use combo attacks or have hair-trigger responses to unexpected events in other video games. I just sang and sang, nothing else.

Eventually, my brother moved out again and took his 360 with him, along with Rock Band and the instruments. My sister and I later visited him, and we all played Rock Band Beatles, but I didn’t know most of the songs and the trippy backgrounds made it hard to read the lyrics on-screen. It also only lasted about an hour. My brother later sold the instruments and games; I’m not even sure he still owns his 360. Currently, I own Rock Band on several consoles, including the 360, as well as sequels and “track packs” and a microphone, but I don’t play any of them as much as I had in 2008.

I was certain that summer we’d played together would be the only time we’d do so, and I was right. Despite this, it’s still a great memory to think back on and recall all the fun my siblings and I had playing Rock Band.