2009 : The Year The Music Died?
Guitars are the enemy. My mantra in the early 90s. Yes, I was a Raver (and despite my ageing decrepit body's attempt to stop the pursuit, I still am). At Raves peak I was a high-school kid. A nerd, who had finally broken out of the geek ghetto and was in with a "cool" gang who got wrecked daily, stole cars and were involved in gang warfare. We were neds, the poor kids, and we listened to the neds favourite music from that time onward, Hardcore dance.
The funny thing is our gang warfare wasn't just split by class, but also by music. The rich kids, aka the McPhee Posse listened to Hip-Hop and were wiggers before the term was coined. The middle-class kids latched on to the other big genre of the day, Grunge and to a lesser extent, Metal. Their angst shown by Kobain's Guyliner adorned fizzog stretched across their more-often-than-not girthy frame.
For many years these greasy oafs were targets of derision for my cronies and I, but that was to change when I went to my first festival. T in the Park 1999 was something of an epiphany for me. I was aware of the power of music and huge crowds having attended huge raves for 5 years previously, but it was only on that weekend I realised what a live band could do. I saw A, Goldfinger, Happy Mondays, Blur and several others who I've long since forgot that schooled me. On my return I promptly gave myself a rockducation with professors Hendrix, Plant, Cobain and co. I no longer feared the shred.
When Guitar Hero 2 launched I bought it on day one for my 360. I failed my first song on easy. As everybody does. I got better over many months of practise. I got a second guitar and was joined by a friend who was as equally entranced by the coloured gems flying down the highway. Over the course of 6 months I played the SHIT out of that game, eventually getting good enough to move on to Hard and cocky enough to think I'd be okay at real guitar. A rash purchase later I learned I wasn't, but I haven't given up on the idea that one day I might be.
Guitar Hero 3 came along and cranked things up a notch with both it's insane tracklisting and it's difficulty. It still remains the hardest music game to master. It was also the first game produced by Red Octane after Activision bought the franchise from the masterminds, Harmonix. While GH2 was technically perfect GH3 not only introduced unwanted boss battles it marked the first appearance of slowdown, completely unforgivable in a music game. Luckily it raised it's ugly head rarely enough to avoid becoming game breaking. While Red Octane messed unnecessarily with a perfect game, Harmonix went on to take the next logical step. Adding a mic and drumset to create Rock Band, not just the perfect party game, but a platform. Simply add DLC to play forever. A slight tweak to iron out a few niggles and RB2 was quickly released, and that's been it from Harmonix. DLC has flown steadily out and supported the platform ethos of the game. We won't see a new Rock Band release till The Beatles focused release towards the end of the year. Rock Band remains the music game connoisseurs platform of choice.
Now this is where the problem for Harmonix starts. Guitar Hero has become MASSIVE. Combine Heidi Klum dancing with a plastic guitar in her pants with release saturation and the mainstream has little idea of Rock Bands existence. They go to the shop and not only see Guitar Hero 3 and Guitar Hero World Tour but now the artist spin-offs. First we had Aerosmith, now Metallica, with Van Halen on the way. While Metallica is definitely an improvement on the awful Aerosmith, I wonder why the songs simply couldn't have been released as DLC. The obvious answer is brand visibility via shelf space. While Harmonix are focusing on quality over quantity Activision are determined to bleed the customer dry and in doing so are over saturating the market.
There's no end in sight. On the horizon we have Guitar Hero 5, a tweak on the world tour formula. Band Hero is aimed at a younger audience with a pop slant. DJ Hero aimed at the Hip-Hop heads complete with a turntable controller. Smash Hits sees World Tour re-released with a best-of-GH tracklisting. And those are just the titles being released this year. Unfortunately it looks like Harmonix are attempting to compete with this by releasing Lego Rock Band to compete with Band Hero for the younger audience. We also have the original music game creators coming on board with Rock Revolution, with awful timing and slowdown on almost every track it's safe to say this one will sink without trace. We can only pray the others do too and we get back to the platform model the real fans want.
Iain
