Category Archives: Sonic Youth

Sink The Boat That Rocked!

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It’s not clear whether someone asked him or not, but Richard Curtis seems to think that he is now responsible for presenting a vision of Britain that glows with progressive energy and infectious optimism. Not for him the kitchen-sink realism of Ken Loach or Andrea Arnold, or the hard-knock macho silliness of Nick Lowe. He’s more interested in treating the stuffy image of Britain as a curtain that can be pulled back to show a country that will be compelled to dance if someone plays the right song. Thanks are due for making British history as funny as he (and co-writer Ben Elton) did with Blackadder, but his dominance over British film and TV becomes hard to swallow as we are submerged under a tide of worthy feel-good pablum such as The Vicar of Dibley, The Girl in the Cafe, the TV adaptation of Alexander McCall Smith’s cutesy The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, etc. As with overworked screenwriter Andrew Davies, Curtis gets everywhere, and for those of us who would like British culture to contain more than slightly raunchy adaptations of classic novels or movies that make committee-driven American product feel like the works of Jean-Luc Godard, the ubiquity of these two men begins to feel a little oppressive.

The Boat That Rocked is Curtis’ most recent attempt at mythologising the British Experience, taking the fascinating story of Radio Caroline and reducing it to a bog-standard rebels vs. Empire tale riddled with dick jokes, unappealing caricatures, and a depressingly retrograde attitude to women. Actually, “jokes” is the wrong word to describe the zaniness that pervades the movie. There is never anything as concrete as a joke delivered. Instead there is a nebulous air of “humour”, an ambience that feels funny without ever doing anything amusing. It is to comedy as froth is to food. Unfortunately that froth is thinly spread over two hours of footage.

Giving a synopsis of the movie is simultaneously difficult and very easy. Difficult because a lot of small things happen that mean nothing in terms of plot, but easy as the central thread of the movie — youth vs. old age — is presented with Manichean simplicity. As with Radio Caroline, the movie’s fictional counterpart — the imaginatively named Radio Rock — broadcasts pop music from a boat moored somewhere in the North Sea to a large audience of young listeners. Unlike Radio Caroline, Curtis creates a scenario where the British government — and by association the BBC — have restricted the amount of popular music played on licensed national radio, and Radio Rock serves as a corrective to this by pumping out a non-stop barrage of The Who, The Small Faces, The Kinks, and the odd Motown/Stax classic for variety. Of course, the BBC played more popular music — and Radio Caroline less subversive music – than Curtis will admit. He operates in broad strokes, and fact will merely reduce the impact of his blunt message.

While the boat is populated with a menagerie of ill-defined “characters” (in both senses of the word) having the time of their lives, the establishment is painted as a group of out-of-touch, sour-faced nags, as grey as Steve Bell’s caricatures of John Major. It is painful to see Kenneth Branagh trying — and failing — to breathe life into the character of Sir Alastair Dormandy. Given no inner life to work with, Dormandy states quite clearly that he is trying to destroy pirate radio as he thinks it’s horrible and hates the thought of the public enjoying themselves. His unsubtle grouching is mostly aimed his equally hateful second-in-command, played by Jack Davenport. Much has been made of the name of this character — Twatt — though less note has been made of the decision to change the name of personal assistant Miss C from the original name of Miss Clit. Curtis must be more interested in displaying Twatt than acknowledging the existence of Clit, I guess.

That might explain why The Boat That Rocked is set in a retrograde world where women are sexually liberated enough that they don’t seem to mind being swapped around from one Radio Rock DJ to another as if they were soulless commodities. One excruciating scene shows DJ Dave (Nick Frost) attempting to deceive groupie Desiree (Gemma Arterton) into sleeping with virginal wallflower Carl (Tom Sturridge, looking like a rabbit caught in the headlights), the inference being that Desiree will be just fine with this because it’s all fair game and not actually non-consensual sex. Even Radio Rock proprietor Quentin (Bill Nighy) endorses this deflowering project, bringing his niece Marianne (Talulah Riley) onboard as a figurative virginal sacrifice to Carl, who is then seduced by Dave behind his back despite his earlier efforts to help the young man.

It’s the last thing you would expect from Curtis, and one suspects he is trying to pay homage to Carry On-style British sauciness, but his attempts to make this seem charming and empowering fail because the only contrast to this selfish behaviour is the colourless world populated by fun-hating automatons like Branagh and Davenport. It’s either grey cardigans or thoughtless sexual voraciousness, and you don’t want to be on the side of the squares, do you? It doesn’t matter if you treat your fellow man / woman with contempt, as long as you’re having a good time doing it. Besides, Curtis is otherwise politically correct enough to add an almost mute black kid (Ike Hamilton) and a lesbian (Katherine Parkinson) to the crew, because yay diversity! Calling the tone of the movie schizophrenic is putting it mildly.

It doesn’t help that Curtis’ cast of characters are unforgivably awful, and his impressive cast wasted. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Rhys Ifans play egotistical buffoons who care more about upstaging each other than about the feelings of their colleagues, shunning feeble Omega-males Chris O’Dowd, Rhys Darby and Tom Brooke (playing Baldrick-surrogate Thick Kevin) as if tainted. Even Nick Frost’s innate likeability is not enough to make his character endearing, which says much for Curtis’ misunderstanding of tone. If only someone had taken Curtis to one side to explain a truth established a long time ago: there is nothing more tawdry and depressing than hearing an Englishman talk about sex. Memories of Robin Askwith peering through bedroom windows at horrified housewives in their underwear flash through the mind. If Curtis is trying to evoke memories of British sex comedies from the Sixties and Seventies, the pertinent question is: why in the world would anyone in their right mind want to do that?

If we’re meant to be attracted to this group of misogynistic grotesques, the reasons are lost in the edit, which could account for the majority of the movie’s flaws. Tales are told of an original three-hour edit, pared down to 135 minutes in the UK and 90 minutes in the US (where the title has been changed to Pirate Radio). The UK release seems so unfocused that it feels like Curtis lost track of all of the footage in the editing room and accidentally deleted the wrong scenes, leaving us with lots of pointless dancing and a disparate collection of second acts that have no context. As such it is hard to criticise the movie for its sexual politics or unappealing characters because we cannot know if these failings would have been resolved had the editing been tighter. Much as I don’t want to attribute gross negligence to a man who has been telling stories with some success (financial and artistic) for a long time, it’s apparent that The Boat That Rocked is not a finished product. Was Curtis bored with this project by the time of release? Did the shooting schedule run over due to all of the larks, leaving less time for post-production?

This stew of unresolved threads cannot be called a movie. It’s a themed sketch show, intentionally leaving the odd memorable moment adrift in a content-free tone soup of tone. Daisyhellcakes (whose affection for Curtis’ work was severely dented by this movie) observed that its poor-plotting and forced air of jollity were reminiscent of Mamma Mia, and she’s onto something, and not just because criticism of the subject matter comes with the risk of being labelled a humourless prude. Other than a subplot about Carl finding his father (played by Ralph Brown as a stoner, for a change), Curtis cannot bring any subplot to a satisfying conclusion and so resorts to Mamma Mia director Phyllida Lloyd’s trick of battering the audience with relentless upbeat exhibitionism. There are a seemingly infinite number of montages showing people dancing around their radios, cross-cut with shots of DJs yelling tedious insults about penis size at each other over the assorted Sounds of the  Sixties. If you thought Good Morning, Vietnam would have been a better movie without Robin Williams or the clumsy rhetoric about the horrors of war, you were wrong.

Perhaps Curtis has watched too many clip shows on Channel 4, and thinks that as long as he adds a couple of  scenes that resonate enough to get a mention in one of those time-wasting monstrosities then his job is done. The only moment that generates an emotional response is when Chris O’Dowd’s virginal DJ Simple Simon Swofford is jilted by his new bride (January Jones, not setting the world of comedy on fire with her two scenes). As she leaves him after seventeen hours of marriage to be with Rhys Ifans’ lothario Gavin, a heartbroken O’Dowd plays Lorraine Ellison’s gut-wrenchingly beautiful Stay With Me and mimes along, face contorted in pain.

Sadly, any hope that this scene will add an extra dimension by reflecting on the emotional fallout that can come with free love and — more importantly — what these characters actually think other than “Fab grooviness!”  is futile. O’Dowd seemingly forgives Ifans a few minutes later, and by the end of the movie he has found a new love interest whose boobs drive him into paroxysms of screeching joy. The calculation of Curtis is even more apparent when — during a credit sequence that features much of the leftover footage of the cast members dancing badly — Ellison’s breathtaking version of Stay With Me is replaced by a soulless cover version by Welsh squeak-merchant Duffy. Cross-media synergy pours from the screen, with Duffy’s impression of a jilted mouse providing the soundtrack.

Making this nostalgic movie in the Internet age — where we have a hither-to unheard-of opportunity to express ourselves or find like-minded individuals — there is potential here for an exploration of what it was like to live in an era when broadcasting thoughts and music from the fringe was a privilege of a select few willing to oppose the restrictive establishment. The Boat That Rocked is not interested in that, and shouldn’t be criticised for telling a different story. Nevertheless, what we get instead of an exploration of… well, anything, is a melange of disconnected anecdotes and an ill-defined shout of rage at officious nay-sayers who think they have the right to monitor and protect our morals. It’s impossible to tell if Curtis has anything substantial to say within the chaos of this edit, though it must be noted that his rush to paint the British government as the enemies of anything progressive means he has to attribute the formation of the pirate-radio-killing Marine Offences Act to a joyless villain with no soul. In real life the act was put into law by the Postmaster General, who at the time was Tony Benn, one of the most fearless and progressive politicians the UK has ever seen. Even though Curtis has made it clear that his movie is a fantasy, it’s still inspired by reality, and this misrepresentation of what Benn stands for leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

The Boat That Rocked is worth avoiding for many reasons: the relentless wave of forced glee, the depressing stream of witless dick jokes, the contrived Field-Of-Dreams-esque uplift of the final scene. However, beneath the whirl of colour and cheekiness  of his fantasy world is a mass of contrivance that betrays the far more interesting and complex tale of the battle between Radio Caroline and Tony Benn. Any serious message that could be derived from the very real conflict between the government and the motormouth DJs of 60s pirate radio has been drowned out by the endless Funn! ™, leaving us with a Cool Brittania promo vid that would have seemed hoary last decade. It’s a vapid exercise in nostalgia porn that wallows in the murkiest waters of seaside-postcard-esque British culture and reveals Curtis’ carefully sculpted reputation as a writer of sophisticated comedy is an empty PR fantasy. Other than the similarly regressive Lesbian Vampire Killers — a contender for worst movie of the decade — The Boat That Rocked is the most dispiriting British film released in 2009. Do yourself a favour and find a copy of Allan Moyle’s Pump Up The Volume instead. It features 100% less Rhys Ifans and has Leonard Cohen and Sonic Youth on the soundtrack. It’s good enough to make me moodily dance around my radio.

Rock Band Wish List #4: I Am PWNed by Activision

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Like Orly Taitz in the grip of another craziness-burp on national TV, I’ve gone on about Rock Band with off-putting regularity over recent months, which makes me feel bad after Canyon was kind enough to buy me Guitar Hero World Tour for Christmas. For the record, I think Neversoft have done a terrific job of taking over the Guitar Hero brand from Harmonix, though their note-placements on some tracks are kinda weird, especially on Guitar Hero III. Sometimes it makes sense, sometimes it can ruin a song. That said, I think their Medium level is more of a challenge, which is nice for me at my current skill level (bored by Rock Band Medium, taxed almost too much by Rock Band Hard), and there are some innovations on Guitar Hero World Tour that Harmonix should seriously consider adopting. Having a five-second pause after you restart a level is a brilliant move (how many times have I had to pause a Rock Band level and then missed six notes when I pressed Resume?), and I found their noteless Beginners level very useful for getting used to the drums. Also, the Music Studio is a superb addition, and though I’ve not had enough time to really give it a workout, even just a cursory attempt shows how much depth it has. My kudos to all involved. I’m sure they will all appreciate my fragrant and robust kudos.


Still, Rock Band is my religion music game of choice. The interface is cleaner, the flow of the note-placements is far smoother, and the songs available for download are incredible. At least one guest to our house has been converted to the Rock Band cause after seeing the awe-inspiring selection. Guitar Hero‘s selection is deeply disappointing, apart from the odd highlight: Born to Run and My Lucky Day by The Boss, an Eagles of Death Metal pack containing Cherry Cola, lots of Jimi. That’s fine, but some of their selections are utterly overshadowed by Rock Band. Example: You can get Debaser and Monkey Gone To Heaven, but with Rock Band you can get all of Doolittle. Rock Band FTW. Even so, I know I’ll be getting Guitar Hero 5, because the song selection is genuinely surprising, and has given the franchise a shot in the arm. The final list was released last week, and some inspired choices have made me very excited.

  • 3 Doors Down – “Kryptonite”
  • A Perfect Circle – “Judith”
  • AFI – “Medicate”
  • Arctic Monkeys – “Brianstorm”
  • Attack! Attack! UK – “You And Me”
  • Band Of Horses – “Cigarettes, Wedding Bands”
  • Beastie Boys – “Gratitude”
  • Beck – “Gamma Ray”
  • Billy Idol – “Dancing With Myself”
  • Billy Squier – “Lonely Is The Night”
  • Blink-182 – “The Rock Show”
  • Blur – “Song 2″
  • Bob Dylan – “All Along The Watchtower”
  • Bon Jovi – “You Give Love A Bad Name”
  • Brand New – “Sowing Season (Yeah)”
  • The Bronx – “Six Days A Week”
  • Bush – “Comedown”
  • Children Of Bodom – “Done With Everything, Die For Nothing”
  • Coldplay – “In My Place”
  • Darker My Love – “Blue Day”
  • Darkest Hour – “Demon(s)”
  • David Bowie – “Fame”
  • Deep Purple – “Woman From Tokyo (’99 Remix)”
  • The Derek Trucks Band – “Younk Funk”
  • Dire Straits – “Sultans Of Swing”
  • The Duke Spirit – “Send A Little Love Token”
  • Duran Duran – “Hungry Like The Wolf”
  • Eagles Of Death Metal – “Wannabe In L.A.”
  • Elliott Smith – “L.A.”
  • Elton John – “Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting)”
  • Face To Face – “Disconnected”
  • Garbage – “Only Happy When It Rains”
  • Gorillaz – “Feel Good Inc.”
  • Gov’t Mule – “Streamline Woman”
  • Grand Funk Railroad – “We’re An American Band”
  • Iggy Pop – “Lust For Life (Live)”
  • Iron Maiden – “2 Minutes To Midnight”
  • Jeff Beck – “Scatterbrain (Live)”
  • Jimmy Eat World – “Bleed American”
  • John Mellencamp – “Hurts So Good”
  • Johnny Cash – “Ring Of Fire”
  • Kaiser Chiefs – “Never Miss A Beat”
  • King Crimson – “21st Century Schizoid Man”
  • Kings Of Leon – “Sex On Fire”
  • Kiss – “Shout It Out Loud”
  • Love and Rockets – “Mirror People”
  • Megadeth – “Sweating Bullets”
  • Motley Crue – “Looks That Kill”
  • Muse – “Plug In Baby”
  • My Morning Jacket – “One Big Holiday”
  • Nirvana – “Lithium (Live)”
  • Nirvana – “Smells Like Teen Spirit”
  • No Doubt – “Ex-Girlfriend”
  • Peter Frampton – “Do You Feel Like We Do? (Live)”
  • The Police – “So Lonely”
  • Public Enemy Featuring Zakk Wylde – “Bring the Noise 20XX”
  • Queen & David Bowie – “Under Pressure”
  • Queens Of The Stone Age – “Make It Wit Chu”
  • Rammstein – “Du Hast”
  • The Rolling Stones – “Sympathy For The Devil”
  • Rose Hill Drive – “Sneak Out”
  • Rush – “The Spirit Of Radio (Live)”
  • Santana – “No One To Depend On (Live)”
  • Scars On Broadway – “They Say”
  • Screaming Trees – “Nearly Lost You”
  • Smashing Pumpkins – “Bullet With Butterfly Wings”
  • Sonic Youth – “Incinerate”
  • Spacehog – “In The Meantime”
  • Stevie Wonder – “Superstition”
  • Sublime – “What I Got”
  • Sunny Day Real Estate – “Seven”
  • T. Rex – “20th Century Boy”
  • The Killers – “All The Pretty Faces”
  • The Raconteurs – “Steady As She Goes”
  • The Sword – “Maiden, Mother & Crone”
  • Thin Lizzy – “Jailbreak”
  • Thrice – “Deadbolt”
  • Tom Petty – “Runnin’ Down A Dream”
  • Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – “American Girl”
  • TV On The Radio – “Wolf Like Me”
  • Vampire Weekend – “A-Punk”
  • Weezer – “Why Bother?”
  • The White Stripes – “Blue Orchid”
  • Wild Cherry – “Play That Funky Music”
  • Wolfmother – “Back Round”

Of course, while that’s a tasty list, Rock Band has already stolen some of the thunder by releasing some of those songs as download content. Over the last year, we have downloaded Nearly Lost You by Screaming Trees, Wolf Like Me by TV On The Radio and Sex on Fire by Kings of Leon, and The Rock Show by Blink-182 came out last week (how long until we get all of Dude Ranch or Enema of the State, sans stupid “comedy” tracks?). Many more of these songs will become available soon, I’m sure. Still, hats off to Activision for making Guitar Hero more inclusive than it has been in the past. As I’ve always maintained, these games can do more than rock out. They can bring different genres of popular music into the fold, and Guitar Hero 5 is definitely doing that.


I cannot even begin to express my joy at seeing Stevie Wonder represented in a game so often determined to plough a very boring pure rock format. It makes me wonder if there’s any way to get all of Talking Book into the game or, even better, all of Innervisions (my favourite Stevie album). Indie nerds everywhere must be psyched at the appearances by Band of Horses — with a track from their incredibly moving sophomore album — and Elliott Smith. Actually, someone questioned the inclusion of the latter on the AV Club, worrying that Smith’s family have become lax in holding onto the rights of his songs. To be honest, while that commenter has a point, I’d hope his family gets a chance to profit from his songwriting genius in a way he never really got a chance to. It’s not because I’m eager to “play” one of his songs. Honest.


Other highly anticipated tracks in that list (for me, at least) include Bullet With Butterfly Wings by the Pumpkins¹ and Incinerate by Sonic Youth (the highlight of their last Geffen album Rather Ripped), but the songs that inspired the title of this Wish List post are Plug In Baby by Muse, Blue Orchid by The White Stripes, and A-Punk by Vampire Weekend. Muse are a band with a sound that usually makes me want to remove my skin and stamp on it, I hate it that much. Nevertheless, Plug In Baby is a madness-inspiring rock anthem I am unable to resist, even if I were to use protective enchantments from ancient Cimmeria, and had planned a Wish List entry about it. I’d even found the video out and everything. Here it is. It’s a monster song.

I’m not sure I would have picked those songs by The Stripes and The Weekend – I’d plump for Seven Nation Army and Oxford Comma – but I’m thrilled anyway, especially by Blue Orchid. So far the only Jack White songs available are his Bond theme with Alicia Keys (and it’s great fun to play), some Raconteurs stuff, and three songs from the Dead Weather album Horehound. Treat You Like A Mother is like Bohemian Rhapsody re-written and performed by a sleazy old tramp who has broken into your house and hides under the stairs with his collection of doll hair, and thus is one of the greatest songs of our time. The other two are excessively boring. That’s why we need primo Jack White music in our music games, thank you. Preferably White Stripes stuff. What with The White Stripes being the best band in the world, and all. Just sayin’.


So, where next for the Wish List? As a lazy way to maintain the blog while I work on other stuff (by which I do not mean using Twitter to bitch about bad movies), I intend to keep going, especially because — in these days where laziness and stress battle it out for dominion of my soul — the game that once was just a pastime has now become a passion, so much so that I will almost certainly be buying DJ Hero even though dance music doesn’t excite me as much as a well-gamified bit of Silversun Pickups². More than that, I see further scope for expansion of the songs available for download, branching out into unexpected genres. More on this as the year progresses.

¹ This song was included because eleven out of ten rock fans polled expressed a wish to whine the lyric “Despite all my rage I’m still just a rat in a cage” in a voice that sounds just like an angry rat in a cage. A bald angry rat in a cage. A bald angry rat in a cage wearing an ELO t-shirt and being chased around said cage by Courtney Love.

² That said, DJ Shadow worked on the mixes, the song list includes Herbie Hancock’s Rockit (!!!!), and you can play the game as Grandmaster Flash or DJ Jazzy Jeff. If that doesn’t make you want to play the game, well, fair enough. But it should make you want to play the game.

Puppet Angel PWNs Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock…

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…All while being worshipped by his loyal fanbase comprising Daffy Duck, Hugo the Hippo, Remy the Rat, Gandalf the Grey, and Theoden, son of Thengel, First Marshall of the Mark, and King of Rohan.

Yes, we got back from our jaunt and bought another bit of pointless kit for the 360, but how could we not? I wager the 360 feels especially loved lately; after buying it I didn’t use it for a few months as I never had time. Call of Duty 3, Dead Rising, and Viva Pinata sit unfinished either in a drawer or in a totally different house. Now the machine is on most of the time.


Canyon and her “band” Wall of Crazy are currently getting 100% on Cream’s Sunshine of Your Love using her favourite guitar-playing avatar Lars Umlaut, and it’s yet another song I’d begun to take for granted but which is now re-revealed through the illusion of interaction to be an astonishing work of art. That’s another terrific side-effect of playing these games; while they’re pretty much nothing more than a really well-designed rhythm attack game with a brilliant interface, they also make you appreciate music in a new way. I say that as someone with no musical training; I’m sure to musicians that doesn’t apply, but to the skill-less bag of fingerless ears that is myself, I now have a different response to songs I know too well. Even Flow, School’s Out, Anarchy In The UK, Sweet Child O’ Mine and Misirlou from the previous game; I love them all over again, and in a new and deeper way.

That said, I’m still a bigger fan of Guitar Hero II over the new one. The band graphics might be more advanced in this, but the screen was livelier in the second, though they seems to be increasing in intensity as the game progresses. Also, even though the new game has some amazing songs (Holiday in Cambodia! Thank you thank you thank you!!!), the choices are often a little more obvious. It’s a no-brainer to add Paranoid by Black Sabbath, or Rock and Roll All Nite by Kiss, but then it’s ultimate funness to play them, so it seems churlish to complain.

Guitar Hero II had some real oddities; Laid to Rest, Psychobilly Freakout by the incomparable Reverend Horton Heat, Who Was In My Room Last Night?, Tattooed Love Boys, and many more. The new game seems to have less “finds”, but as my knowledge of rock (and certainly more recent stuff) is not perfect, I’m still coming across new favourite songs. After playing When We Were Young and My Name is Jonas, I now want to get into these musical chaps The Killers and Weezer. Oy vey, I am an old fart. And hey, who are Priestess? Their song Lay Down has a very appealing lolloping bass line. My avatar Axel Steel agrees.


There are other things I’ve noticed:

  • Choosing to include The Seeker by The Who over their more famous songs is a nice touch, though the CSI fan in me is a little annoyed.
  • While a lot of the regular songs seem longer than the previous game, there don’t seem to be any marathons like The Allman Brothers Band’s Jessica, a personal favourite. How great it would have been to follow the Slash boss battle with November Rain instead of Welcome to the Jungle? Having everything around the same length is less interesting than the variation of the other game, but it’s not a deal breaker (so far, none of my little complaints are. For God’s sake, they’ve got Kool Thing by Sonic Youth on there! Woooord up!).
  • The co-op career mode is great, but I think we’re already on our way to completing it on Easy. I get that it only really works well with a fraction of the songs, but even so, if half an hour gets us to the final level, then it’s a real shame.
  • The Star Power phrases are generally much longer, which would probably piss off the first-time player but is good news for addicts as it rewards the higher skillset.
  • I love the predominance of master material over cover versions, but often the song has a bad mix (Paint It Black) or seems too muted (Cherub Rock).
  • Canyon hates Black Magic Woman by Santana, apparently. She’s still got 100% on it, though.
  • As psyched as I am that Tenacious D’s The Metal is included, part of me weeps that the Godlike face-melter Master Exploder isn’t included. There’s a custom version out there, but God knows how to get hold of that.
  • While playing the co-op career section (our joint name: Professor XS), Canyon chose Xavier Stone as an avatar and I swapped to Midori, the J-Popster. As I spent most of the mode playing bass, I was thrilled to see that Midori is programmed to dance just like Tina Weymouth from Talking Heads. It was like watching a Japanese remake of Stop Making Sense.
  • Where’s the surf guitar??!?!?!
  • For that matter, where’s the blues? The Stevie Ray Vaughan song is a fantastic inclusion, but some BB King or Robert Johnson would have gone down a treat, especially seeing as how the story arc of the game involves a deal with the Devil. There’s a real gap in the game ready to be filled by other guitar genres. What about some Tito Larriva for a start? Hopefully some future download packs will deal with that.
  • Actually, this version is weighted more towards the more recent songs, but then the previous versions did a lot of the old standards, so it’s to be expected. It’s just a shame that an opportunity to edumacate those dang youngsters shouldn’t be passed up, is all.
  • Easy is not as Easy as Guitar Hero II‘s Easy, not by a long shot. I heard people complaining about the difficulty of Barracuda, and thought it was the final song, but it’s in the second level. I would have scoffed, but when we played it we realised it was way harder than anything in the corresponding spot in the previous game. As a beginner it would have really pissed us off.
  • What is with Heart? In the previous game their Crazy On You drove me to Bruce-Lee-style knuckle-cracking distraction. I had thought they were nothing more than a ballady bland-rock band but by Crom, their arrangements are hellishly complicated and asynchronous.
  • I’m not too sure about the boss battles just yet, but then that might be just because I don’t really enjoy listening to Tom Morello’s screechy gimmicky feedback nonsense, and never have.


An aside: we just watched him appraising air guitar as a judge at a contest in the mostly annoying but occasionally sweet documentary Air Guitar Nation, and it’s hard to take him seriously now. And yes, I realise how ridiculous it is to compare an air-guitar-appreciating Tom Morello to a digitised boss-battle-having Tom Morello, but that’s what the world has offered up to me, and I must make lemonade with it. It reminds me that the reflexively mean-spirited nodules posting on the Holy Moly talkbacks were complaining recently about Guitar Hero fans being useless for not trying to get a guitar of their own and learning to play it so that they can become creative instead of slavishly following notes on a screen. Firstly, at least we’re not just playing air guitar in Finland (seriously, I got so angry at the absurdity of that frigging movie, even though it was nothing to get steamed about and the documentary itself was not bad), which is a good thing. Secondly, I can’t hate on Holy Moly too much because another poster brings his angry typing guns to bear on those frigging Picture loan adverts that pollute TV like so much elephant poop.

Thirdly, Guitar Hero players are at least learning skills that might eventually translate into an artistic ability. Salon’s Farhad Manjoo wrote an entertaining post recently claiming that it was an accidental teaching aid.

I’ve interviewed several guitar teachers about the game, and some speak of it as the most revolutionary thing to hit the world of guitar since Jack White learned his first scale. “Guitar Hero” is introducing millions of young people to the possibility of playing the instrument, and it’s also teaching them important skills they’ll need to play… I discussed “Guitar Hero” with a half-dozen guitar teachers across the nation; all said they’d never played the game, but many had heard of it from their students. “Personally I’ve made hundreds or maybe even a couple thousand dollars on it, just because kids see the game and they want to go do the real thing,” says Rob Caviness, who teaches at Backbeat Music, a studio he co-founded just outside of Denver. “I think a lot of kids listen to music and they don’t know what it is — the game lets you pick out one particular instrument and it says, ‘Hey, this is what you can do with it.’”

I also agree wholeheartedly with this:

Red Octane’s Ted Lange argues that “Guitar Hero” instills two important guitar-playing fundamentals: sensitivity to rhythm as well as mastery over “independent hand usage — the fact that you have to do something different with each hand.”

I’m the least ambidextrous person in the world, and I’ve noticed Guitar Hero has changed that. I’m much better at that confounded rub-the-belly-pat-the-head thing, which is surely the official test for ambidexterity. And yes, I walked past a musical instrument shop the other day and stared longingly at a guitar for the first time in my life. I know it’s hard because I’ve tried it before and sucked at it, and I don’t expect to be able to play like Hendrix just because I played along with a game, but I honestly think that now, after months of using training frets, I can make another attempt at the real thing. Whether I do or not is another thing, partially because of the cost of guitars, and partially because I always figured I’d be better at keyboards. Where’s Air Keyboard Nation? Or Air Drumming Nation, which would be right up my street?

In short, please buy the forthcoming debut album by Carusonic: Get Behind Me, Thewlis, featuring a 20-minute jazz version of The Future’s So Bright, I’ve Gotta Wear (Crime-Fighting) Shades, with Ornette Coleman on sax and, in a gamble on my part, non-jazz player Philip Glass on keys. It will either be A Love Supreme for the 21st Century, or Jazz Odyssey all over again.