We were playing an engagement party gig that had gone on for a solid three hours. It was three in the morning and the air is thick with solid beams of light, blues and greens and reds made manifest in the swirling fog. Our vocalist Lisa wants to sing Rebel Girl by Bikini Kill and I nod because she’s angry and drunk enough to do it justice tonight.
I know she’s there because I can hear her, but I can’t see her through the milky white. I don’t have time to think about it because I’m playing lead guitar and it’s complicated. Maybe we should have practiced more, but now it’s too late and we’re playing.
Then the strobes hit and I see the crowd, floating faces lit up by the light show and made bodiless by the too thick cloud that fills the too small space.
We finish strong and Lisa, her voice raw from the performance, asks if we can do it again.
Someone shouts Aqualung from the back of the family room.
And I knew then in the fog and the lights and roar of the half dozen or so people that were there that evening on the couch, that we could never go back to playing Rock Band 1.
–Â Praxis Loki, Memoirs of a Rock Band
Rock Band 2 is simply an improvement to the Rock Band interface. That said, they also made some changes to the administration of the band. I’ve heard that they also changed how you unlock songs, but since we play to party, we pretty much punch in the unlock code and then play whatever we want.
It’s not about the game man, it’s about the music. Continue reading