A while back I was playing at a resturaunt. A new waitress who had just started working there, gave me a compliment on my playing, and asked me if I had ever played the Rock Star Video game.
I had seen people trying this game at the electronics stores. You have this controller that's shaped like a guitar but it's just a controller and not a real guitar
I realized that this girl was just trying to find some way to relate to me as a musician, but for me it was like knowing how to drive a car and having someone who doesn't know how, ask you "Hey, have your ever driven a big wheel"?
I didn't say any of this to her or course, because she was only trying to be friendly (She was also terribly cute). So I just said politely "No, but I already know how to play a real guitar".
She told me that (the game) is really fun and that I should try it some time. A waiter who obviously saw the absurdity to what she was saying, jumped in and said (referring to the controller)"It's 3 buttons"!
I laughed, and she suddenly became embarrassed (I think it suddenly hit her how silly this was) and she sheepishly retreated saying "I wanna learn how to play a real one".
Just recently South Park did an episode where Kyle and Stan are playing this exact game (to the music of Kansas's Carry on a wayward sun) at Stan's house. All their neighborhood friends are there too and they are all impressed by this. Stan's father comes home and sees this. He pulls out a real Gibson guitar and amp and asks the kids if they want to see something really cool?
He plays the same Kansas song but he is really playing it.
The kids tell him that his playing the guitar is gay.
The rest of the episode follows how a record label decides to sign Stan and Kyle after they score X number of points on the game.
It was hysterical, but it made me remember that conversation with the waitress a while back and I had to wonder if South Park was that far off in their satire.
And this got me back to my previous comments on music education in schools and I have to wonder if there are kids who can't tell or appreciate the difference between a video game controller that is shaped like a guitar and a real guitar?
Is Rockstar hurting or helping?
On the one hand, it is exposing kids to lot's of great Classic Rock.
On the other hand, it feeds into the whole American Idol, instant gratification myth.
In that same episode of South Park, there was a bit of dialog where Stan's mother comments: Imagane what they might accomplish if all the time spent playing that game was spent learning how to play real instruments?
Recently at an outdoor gig, my songwriting partner overhead a young kid say to his friend (as they where watching me play a real guitar), "I can play better than him on Rockstar the game".
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