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Matthew Yglesias should know better than to IM me links to TNR stories, as I’ve told him countless times not to provoke me. But this David Hajdu piece arguing against Rock Band and Guitar Hero is truly the stuff of philistines. There are too many distortions, patronizing meta-points and refusals to address why people play these games to take it remotely seriously. Like for instance:
If electronic gadgeting has supplanted music in the social economy of young America, one has to wonder what it means for games about music and music-making to have become the teen craze of the year. Is Rock Band really a replacement for the rock band, its digital mutant spawn, or another thing altogether?
Oh my God, you stupid motherfucker, shut your idiot mouth. Not a single person who has ever played Rock Band has for a moment ever considered it a replacement for the creation of rock and roll. There is no attempt at this piece to even corrollate the rise of RB & GH with a decline in rock production. You couldn’t find one if you tried! Hajdu is just… inventing a problem. Under the mask of pretending to care about not burdening the youth with the musical tastes of their parents he ends up saying Goddamn kids and their video games! Wipe that filthy look of sheer joy off your face, junior!
Then there’s this:
For another thing–and this is the main failing of music games, and it is a significant one–they have the insidious effect of glorifying classic rock, a music with an already bloated reputation that is founded on its very bloatedness.
Take it up with karaoke, fella! With Guitar Hero and Rock Band you can play along with contemporary music. It’s really very easy; Yglesias and I spent Jewish Christmas doing so. You say that you spent “several dozen hours playing both Guitar Hero and Rock Band–alone, in online group sessions, with a couple of amateur-musician friends, and once with a colleague’s fourteen-year-old son and his best pal.” As Bob Dylan said during a moment you may be familiar with: I don’t belieeeeeeeeve you. You’re a liar. Or at least you’re not a very attentive individual.
Rock Band and Guitar Hero are fun distractions. They are not worth the vitriol of those who cross the line between Counterintuitive and Braindead. And this from a proponent of 60s Greenwich Village folk. All folk must be destroyed. I torch Carole King’s tapestry. Classic rock vs folk is the Iran-Iraq war of music debates.
Yglesias: I hold you responsible for making me write this.
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You’re totally off base – we’re lucky to have brave, enlightened anthropologists like David Hajdu, willing to depart Civilization for days – even weeks! – and live among the indigenous tribes of the Youth of America. How could we understand our strange ways without him?
In all seriousness, thank heavens you wrote this – I read that article a few minutes ago and was dismayed to find there was no comment section where I could express my displeasure.
I mean, like approximately half his article is based on the premise that people actually watch the background when they play Rock Band. Which pretty much proves he never played it, right there.
This article is truly bizarre. If it does anything coherent, it seems to reverse cause and effect. The popularity of rock band has to do with the expanding dominance of music in teenagers’ (and everyone’s) lives, and a cultural obsession with emulating rock stars. And, does this guy even own a dial-up connection to the internet? How can you not see the explosion of music creation that has been happening over the last couple of years? I’m reading a book about the Sex Pistols, and in early 1970′s London there were like 5 bands of note. AUGH! This guy is stupid.
Fuck your Grandpa stereotype derogatory headline buddy. Hadju maybe a fucktard with his silly ass opinion, but you’re a agist mofo.
Zombie Townes Van Zandt could kick the ass of any and every punk rocker, but Yankee folk indeed amply merits your derision.
But check yourself on your rock history: Carole King was not a folkie, but wrote songs (many of them quite delightful) for the Brill Building pop music factory: “Natural Woman” for Aretha Franklin, “Wasn’t Born to Follow” for the Byrds (featured in the Easy Rider soundtrack), along with “The Loco-Motion”, “Don’t Say Nothin Bad About My Baby”, and a hundred others. Neil Diamond was also a Brill Building vet. The singer-songwriter tendency contained much lameness, but it can’t be traced to Phil Ochs or Harry Belafonte.
Thirty years ago was 1980. Much music from them played now?
I’d say so. 70′s,too. 60′s? Yes.
Thirty years before I was borm was 1938. Did I grow up hearing much
of that time period’s music on the radio? No. 30′s? 20′s? Not at all.
Arlen, Mercer, Warren, Porter Fields were the Morrison, Hendrix,
Simon, and Dylan of their day. (You really want to compare Morrison to Mercer?)
There has been a tremendous push to lionize my generation’s music.
Too much of one. The argument you rail against is a valid, sound one. Your screeching response is unconvincing and you missed the points.