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Pools of Sorrow, Waves of Joy--The Beatles: Rock Band Priced and Dated

MTV Games and Harmonix have dropped a handful of details on The Beatles: Rock Band, the official name of that Beatles game that was announced last October. Key among those details was the fact that it would be called The Beatles: Rock Band. That certainly doesn’t sound like the “new, full-grown, custom game built from the ground up” that was mentioned back then, but I’ve spent the months since that announcement dreaming of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club RTS so it’s possible that my disappointment is not exactly, um, sane.

I’ll get my other crazy compliant out of the way now, too: the release is scheduled for 09/09/09, which is cute and all but totally conflicts with the Decade of Dreamcast blowout party I have been planning in my mind since, oh, January 1st 2009. But maybe that is just the ship date and everything will be fine!

Surprise! Nickelback Misunderstands Guitar Hero

I am sorry that I have to bring up Nickelback here, but this thing they said on Leno just gets me so angry. Even angrier than I usually am at Nickelback, which for the record is “pretty angry.”

But that’s not game-related bile. This is, though: Chad Kroeger told Jay Leno he wants kids to stop playing Guitar Hero and start up real bands. This in and of itself is not a horrible thing to say: apparently Kroeger is having trouble finding bands that are willing to interact with Nickelback, but rather than thinking that is a problem with his own band or his own douchey personality he is rationalizing it away as “there aren’t enough rock bands out there these days.”

But his statement is also based on another fallacy—that a significant number of talented musicians are lost to the world because they get their fix from rhythm games. You hear this all the time, and it is crazy and must be stopped.

Rhythm games are for people like me: those who enjoy music, but don’t have any particular talent for it or drive to create it, to get some simulacrum of a rush we could otherwise never know. They are also for musicians, who can use it to interact with the music they love in a low stress way.

What rhythm games absolutely do not do is scratch the itch musicians have to learn instruments, and to use them to create music. I guess I should not expect Nickelback, a band that has never created “music” as I define it, to understand this. But let’s put it this way: I have never known anyone that has played the guitar, who has stopped playing that guitar after being introduced to Rock Band. On the other hand, I do know people who played Rock Band and found in them a passion that caused them to learn the real guitar.

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.